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Drew Payne

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  1. Yes, it worked for me. But there are so many Christians out there who aren't homophobic and see conversion therapy as the abuse it is, I know because I know some of them, but they never get the publicity.
  2. My government has let me down, again. Am I of any value to them? They certainly don’t seem concerned about me. They made me a promise, told me to wait and wait, but never kept it and now… In July 2018 prime minister Theresa May promised to ban conversion therapy. In 2019, Boris Johnson repeated the pledge during that year’s general election campaign. Yet here we are, November 2023, and again there is no sign of the promised ban. This month’s King’s Speech, were the government outlines the legalisation they plan to present to parliament, saw no mention of banning conversion therapy, so it remains completely legal to carry on abusing LGBTQ+ people in the name of conversion therapy. I’ve made no secret that I survived conversion therapy, in my late teens, but the harm didn’t end when I broke away from it. I suffered from depression, flashbacks, problems accepting my sexuality and severe difficulties making and keeping relationships throughout my twenties. I lost my twenties to the depression caused by the emotional abuse I just couldn’t shake off. It wasn’t until I was twenty-eight, and a wonderful counsellor called Gale Simon helped me put my life back together. “I refuse to acknowledge that so-called ‘conversion therapy’ is therapy in any way. It is mental and physical abuse. Some would call it torture,” said 76-year-old transgender woman Carolyn Merce. And she is right, she lived throw it. But it isn’t just personal stories, like hers and mine. There is a great deal of evidence that conversion therapy doesn’t work, and actually harms people. A brief literature search, of two peer reviewed medical journal databases, on a Sunday afternoon, and I found ten references that conversion therapy doesn’t work and sixteen references that it causes harm. This was by no means a comprehensive search, I am certain that there is a far bigger pool of evidence of the harm it causes and its complete ineffectiveness. Why hasn’t it been banned yet, as we were promised? Brazil, Samoa, Fiji, Argentina, Ecuador, Malta, Uruguay, Spain, Taiwan and Germany have all banned it, so why hasn’t Britain? Earlier this year, Penny Mordaunt, the leader of the House of Commons, said that draft legislation would be published before the end of that parliamentary session. That parliamentary session ended and we are now in a new one, but no ban was put before parliament. In September, a spokesperson for No 10, the seat of British government, refused to say if the government had plans to ban it. Then loud rumours came out that the government had dropped plans for any ban. A government press release about the King’s Speech, issued on 4th November, made no mention of a conversion therapy ban. By many this was taken as an indication of the government’s plans, and they were proved right. On 7th November, King Charles delivered the government’s King’s Speech and there was no mention of a conversion therapy ban, again. “I am angered but sadly not surprised by the government’s decision to drop a ban on conversion practices. The prime minister has shown a callous disregard for LGBT+ lives of late and has chosen to prioritise listening to perpetrators over that of engaging with victims of abuse.” Jayne Ozanne, founder of the Ban Conversion Therapy Coalition. It quickly became clear the Tory Back Bench MP Miriam Cates had been lobbying other Tory MPs for prime minister Rishi Sunak to drop the ban. Her texts to fellow MPs claimed that the ban would “criminalise” parents and doctors who “council” children against changing gender. She also claimed that the ban will “split” the Conservative party and “anger” their base. Both claims were not backed by any evidence but 40 Tory MPs signed her letter. There are 350 Conservative MPs in Parliament, which means only 11.4% supported Cates, but Sunak gave into her claims. Miriam Cates is a notoriously Anti-Trans Evangelical Christian. She wrote an article claiming, again without any evidence, that banning conversion therapy will stop parents and doctors from helping “confused young peopl. However, conversion therapists prey on confused people, not helping them but damaging them, as the evidence shows. But Cates’s views are also shared by the Evangelical Alliance, who says they represent 3,500 churches, and argue a ban would restrict “religious freedoms”. More and more though, the support for conversion therapy is disappearing, especially as the truth of it emerges. The Royal College of Psychiatrists and the Royal College of General Practitioners have also called for a ban, both of whom promote evidence based healthcare. While the UK Council for Psychotherapy said of it: “Exclusion, stigma and prejudice may precipitate mental health issues for any person subjected to these abuses.” The Equality and Human Rights Commission says legislation outlawing conversion therapy is overdue. Their chair, Baroness Kishwer Falkner, wrote to Women and Equalities Minister Kemi Badenoch, stating the legislation "is needed". The Church of England’s General Synod called for the government to ban it, in 2017, after hearing experiences of “spiritual abuse” practiced in the name of conversion therapy. John Sentamu, the archbishop of York, said conversion therapy was “theologically unsound, so the sooner the practice is banned, I can sleep at night”. And more than 370 religious leaders, around the world, are calling for a ban on conversion therapy. But isn’t it a practice only abusing a small number of people? The Government’s own research found 7% of LGBTQ+ people have experienced some type of conversion practice. While the Ban Conversion Therapy Coalition’s online survey, of the LGBTQ community, found 40% of respondents said they had undergone some form of it. Would any other form of “therapy” that abused people to the degree that conversion practice does, with zero success rate, be even tolerated? A YouGov poll found 62% of voters wanted the ban, a fact that any government facing a General Election should be taking notice of, but not this one. Rishi Sunak seems to be more interested in listening to a small minority of his MPs, 11.4%, then medical and church bodies and a large percentage of voters. Fortunately, there has been an outcry, in parliament, against this broken promise. Labour has promised to ban conversion therapy, with no acceptations, when they get back into government. On 7th October, Labour MP Anneliese Dodds, the chairwoman of the Labour Party, promised to ban conversion therapy, with “no loopholes”, if Labour are in power after the next general election. But Labour are still in opposition and there isn’t a hope for a general election until next year. The has also been an outcry from within the Tory party. “We’re looking at every possible opportunity and we’re definitely not going to let this drop,” said Tory MP Elliot Colburn in reply to the ban being dropped. This isn’t surprising. Only 40 Tory MPs signed that letter to Rishi Sunak and there are large and public divisions within the Tory party. But why weren’t Colburn and his supporters lobbying Sunak while they were writing the King’s Speech? A letter signed by only 40 Tory MPs swayed Sunak’s mind. On Thursday 9th November, two days after the King’s Speech, a bipartisan Private Member’s Bill to ban conversion therapy, the “Conversion Therapy Prohibition (Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity)” bill, was announced. It was drawn first that day in the House of Lords ballot. It was introduced by the vice chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Humanist Group, Baroness Burt of Solihull. The bill would set a blanket ban on conversion therapy. There will finally be a debate in parliament about banning conversion therapy but I don’t see this Private Member’s Bill going further than that. The Parliamentary session 2019-21, saw 192 Private Members’ Bills put before parliament, but only 7 received royal assent, became law. That is only 3.6% of Private Members’ Bills became law. The vast majority failed because they didn’t make it past the second reading stage. In a normal Parliamentary year, thirteen Fridays are allocated for debates of Private Members’ Bills, which take place between the 9.30am and 2.30pm. Even if a Bill is approved at Second Reading, MPs second debate of the bill, the progress beyond that to it becoming law is not guaranteed because the Government can veto it by refusing to introduce a Money Resolution or a Ways and Means Resolution, were the impact on the public themselves and the public purse is assessed. Unfortunately, there is very little chance this Private Members’ Bill will become law. This Tory government has already dropped the promise to ban it, why would they support a Private Members’ Bill banning it? The only chance of getting a legal ban on conversion therapy is to wait for a Labour government, which is probably a year away, and even then, will it be an immediate priority for them? They will have an economy that is in free-fall, under resourced public services, with poor staff morale, that are failing to meet targets, and a cost-of-living crisis effecting all but the rich. Will banning conversion therapy be top of their list of laws to get through parliament? I cannot turn back the clock and prevent my younger self becoming sucked into conversion therapy, I cannot change or prevent the hurt and abuse I suffered, and nor will a ban of conversion therapy do this. What it will do is prevent young and/or vulnerable LGBTQ people being abused and damaged in the name of conversion therapy, it will stop other LGBTQ people being driven to suicide because of what happened to them during conversion therapy. It will stop other people living through the nightmare that I did, and that thought gives me so much hope and relief. I want that to happen tomorrow, but again this government has let me down and ignored me, and there will be no ban in the near future. Alan Cumming, actor and writer, said: “It’s not just about banning conversion therapy, it’s about sending a message to young queer people that their government does not believe there’s anything wrong with them, and that they have no need to convert or change. Until conversion therapy is banned, the UK government is sending a message that it is inherently homophobic.” Many people still say that conversion therapy should still be offered if people want it, it’s that person’s personal choice. I question how much it is a choice, how many people are forced and/or pressurised into going into it. I didn’t make an informed choice when I went into it. But my response, to this claim, is different. As a healthcare professional, no other healthcare professional, therapist or professional should be offering it, because they should only be offering evidence based care. Care and therapies where there is evidence that they work and are beneficial. There is no evidence that conversion therapy works and a lot of evidence that it is very harmful to those who undertake it. It is very unprofessional to offer anyone conversion therapy. Drew
  3. Drew Payne

    Thirty-Nine

    Thanks. There's part of Liam that needs to be needed, God knows his mother didn't need him, and Ed needs someone, on many levels. More about that in the next chapters. I'm really glad you liked his book analysis, I got into trouble for making the same analysis (but for different reasons) when I was thirteen. I loved Alice in Wonderland because of the weird world it created. Maybe it's a book I should re-read, at some time.
  4. Drew Payne

    Thirty-Nine

    Thank you. I need to show Liam growing up, that he isn't twelve anymore, and I need to show his character developing.
  5. He hadn’t seen the lad Ed since he left him in the middle of the ward’s corridor that afternoon. When he returned to the Common Room, he’d told Pearl, the nurse, that Ed had gone to his room. “Thanks Liam,” she said, giving him a smile, though her smile just pushed up the corners of her mouth, it didn’t light-up her face. He’d sat down again on one of the sofas there and carried on reading his book. It was noisy, someone had turned up the volume of the television, but he just ignored i
  6. They say prostitution is the oldest profession, therefore those men who visit prostitutes must be the oldest Customer Demographic, but what do we know about them? The majority of research done has focused on prostitutes, very little on the men who use their services. Sarah Earle and Keith Sharp make these men the focus of their research and raise some fascinating points. This book is written from a sociological study, looking specifically at men who use the internet to find sex workers. Earle and Sharp looked at attitudes to body image, intimacy and emotions, sexual acts and health risks with sex work among these men. Their findings make interesting reading, they deflate the myth that men only go to sex workers for sex and the image of the dirty old man. The internet has opened up the area of sex work but we know little about the men who use it, their motives and their health needs. Earle and Sharp have opened a window onto this subject but their work shows that there is a lot more to do. There are two main drawbacks with this book. Firstly, there is the authors’ style which is very academic and is not the easiest of reads. Secondly, it is expensive, over £40 for its Kindle edition; for a book 144 pages long this is a lot. This book takes a different perspective on this subject and is welcome for it, but at its price it might be a library read for most of us. (This review was originally written as a commission by the Nursing Standard magazine) Find it here on Amazon
  7. I think I need to add something here for clarity. I'm a member of Newham Writers Workshop and have a short story published in this anthology. Saying that, my review is honest and there is so much good writing in this anthology.
  8. Thank you. I learned to review books from a great guy called Roger Evans. He taught me that my job is to tell the reader if the book is worth reading or not. Christie is often dismissed as a lightweight writer, and many of her early books were more puzzle and plot than novel. But the books she wrote during and after the Second World War are so much better, she works on her characters and the plot coming from them. This is one of her best books but I needed to explain why. It was also eye-opening re-reading it.
  9. It is such a good anthology and Paul's drabbles are also very funny.
  10. This anthology is a collection from a writers workshop in East London. As such is has been designed to showcase the writing coming out of this workshop, and so is a very mixed anthology. This isn’t just a collection of short stories only, or just poetry or only essays. This collection contains many different styles of writing. There are short stories here, but also poetry, essays and even drabbles (100 word stories). The strength here is this collection’s variety. If you don’t want to read poetry or an essay, then the next piece is something different. And there is a lot of variety here, there’s twenty-eight different pieces of writing in this collection. There are certainly highlights here. Belgin Durmush’s short story is a surreal satire on dysfunctional committees, while George Tsappis’s story finds the humanity in less than a glorious time for the British occupiers of 1940’s Cyprus. The poems here span many different styles. Frank Crocker’s poems are pithy and humorous, revolving around one subject or another. George Fuller’s poems paint lyrical pictures of different events and places. Dharma Paul’s poems engage the mind and emotions. But the standout poems here are Deborah Collins’s, both lyrically and memorably, captures the strange and disjointed world of East London during lockdown. And there are Paul Butler’s drabbles. He uses 100 words to tell his concise and sharply funny stories. This anthology is full of different and new writing, it is a chance to find some new authors from East London, and is read that can be dipped in and out of, or read in one or two sittings. Find something original here. Find it here on Amazon
  11. I read a lot of them as a teenager (Aunty Agatha did teach me the importance of plots), but coming back to them as an adult, I've found a lot more to them. This one was so dark.
  12. Ruth Rendell was known for her dark psychological thrillers, but she also wrote many short stories, throughout her career. This was her first collection of them, many of which had been previously published in different magazines. At her best, she always had a feel and understanding for character, especially people caught up in events greater than themselves. Here are several short stories that showcase that ability. She captures characters both on the edge of society and those who are bastions of it. These are also the best stories here, were Rendell writes about a character caught up in a situation, with tragic ends. Rendell uses the twist-in-the-tale format for some of these stories, unfortunately it only sometimes works, other times the twist is so obvious that it is a wonder she completed the story. This collection was originally published in 1976, with the stories all written before then, and many of the attitudes in these stories haven’t aged well. Attitudes to mental illness, child abduction and sexism depicted here do creek with age. The pleasure of this collection, though, is in Rendall’s understanding of character, and at its best it is fascinating. Find it here on Amazon
  13. Fortunately, Fountain doesn't take that attitude with the people he is writing about here, though several of those people seemed to be taking that attitude about themselves. That's why I found this book so fascinating.
  14. Tim Fountain set out here to explore Britain’s sexual highways and byways, to explore the fetish clubs, swingers’ clubs, dogging sites and much, much more. He didn’t want to just observe but to explore and experience the sexual underbelly of Britain, the side of Britain that isn’t celebrated in the guide books, well most of them. The result is this book, but it’s more than just a chronical through one man’s sexual adventure. What lifts this book is Fountain’s style and perspective. He doesn’t make fun of or caricature the people he is writing about, he tries to get to know them instead, even when those people are caricaturing themselves. His descriptions aren’t salacious or voyeuristic, this isn’t soft porn masquerading as serious writing. Fountain’s writing does have a strong feel of place, and many of these places are sadly seedy. So many of these clubs are housed in rundown places, as if the venue reflects the embarrassment the participants feel. Fountain’s feeling for place is at its best with his description of a heterosexual brothel, housed on a rundown Manchester industrial estate. Fountain wrote this book after writing and performing his one-man play Sex Addict. He had come out about having sex with over 5,000 people and been labelled a pervert by the mainstream media for that. This book was written after that and seems to be his way of exploring what is labelled “abnormal” by the same mainstream media. But this book is as much about Fountain as those he’s writing about and this adds to the satisfaction of this read. Throughout the book he is emailing and flirting with a man called Richard, who lives in Glasgow. They met after Richard saw a production of Fountain’s play. This anchors the book in Fountain’s own story. This book was written in 2008, before dating apps, but Fountain charts how much dating and hooking-up had already moved online. So much of this book wouldn’t have been possible without the internet, Fountain wouldn’t have found a fraction of these different groups without it, he made so many contacts via the internet and forums on his laptop. Fountain’s prose and insights lift this book into the fascinating read that it is. This isn’t a smut book, as its title and cover might suggest, but a fascinating journey through a side of British society that we don’t talk about, much. Unfortunately, and not by Fountain’s choice, many of his trips through this world are on the seedy side, though he never openly laughs at them. Find it here on Amazon
  15. It’s the suburbs in the 1970s, and two teenage lads, Enn and Vic, go to a teenage party to meet girls. Vic is the charming and handsome boy, who is always successful with the girls, while Enn is tongue-tied and awkward around them. At this party Vic pushes Enn to talk to them, to finally have some success with the opposite sex, but the girls at this party are amazing and so easy to talk to. This short story is a showcase for Neil Gaiman’s storytelling skills and his otherworldly imagination. Enn, who narrates this story, is almost a perfect picture of teenage angst. Vic is that teenage boy who every other boy wants to be friends with, he’s handsome and able to talk to girls. But what is most memorable here are the girls at the party, both beautiful and otherworldly, but it is their otherworldliness is so memorable. They talk like people who do not understand this world, but not in a bad science-fiction way. Their otherworldliness feels so right and within character for them, and yet each girl is different too, none of them having quite the same otherworldliness. It is these girls that make this story memorable and lifts it into a strange and interesting tale. This is only a short story, easily read in one sitting, but it is a fine example of Gaiman’s writing. If you haven’t read any of his writing before, then this is a great introduction. If you know his work well, then it is a great way to spend some time in his world. Gaiman’s strength has always been that he has a wonderful imagination and combines it with great storytelling skills. Here is an easily readable story of his. Find it here on Amazon
  16. My short story, Even a Monkey Can Fall from a Tree, can be read in this, new anthology, Showtime 2023, but there’s more to it than just that. Every year, Newham Writers Workshop publishes an anthology of its members work, and I’m member of them and this is the fourth anthology I’ve had work published in. But I’m also now part of the editorial team that published it. I had the easy job. My fellow writers, Belgin and Paula, had the hardest task. They proofread and edited all the submissions and they did a wonderful job of it. They captured those annoying repetitions, corrected those silly spelling mistakes we all make and helped the writer to clarify what they were writing. Editing is not my strong point and I’m so grateful for those who can do it well. My role was the formatting of the manuscript, uploading it to Amazon and promoting it online (Which this blog is the first stage of). I had to format it into eBook and paper back book formats. This wasn’t too difficult, except the writer who had their work in a strange format and screwed half the book’s formatting (!!). Martin, my partner, helped me with the cover. The cover picture is Alphabetti Spaghetti by Alex Chinneck. This is a series of sculptures, of post boxes tied into a knot, placed across the country. There is one just down the road from us, its also a piece of public art in the London borough of Newham, which is a theme we kind of fell into for our cover illustrations. The anthology is a showcase of our members work, hence the name, and it contains so much good writing, a chance I got to experience formatting it, and that writing is so varied. There is poetry, short stories, memoirs and a memorial essay. A lot of current poetry I find dense and difficult to understand, but I’m happy that I can’t say that for my fellow writers here. Many of the poems here are lyrical, painting wonderful images with their words, others use words to take an aim at their subjects. Beautiful-Words by Deborah Collins, Noise by Paul Butler, The Tankard’s Mahogany Bar by George Fuller and Resignation by Catherine Daniels are all fine examples of the poetry here. There is a richness of prose here too, and on such a diverse range of subjects, challenging subjects, not simply cosy and safe. Ros Allison gives us another short story about female friendship. Sarah Winslow, Nicola Catton, Dharma Paul and Belgin Durmush all have written short stories that use fantasy themes, ranging from light and whimsical, to dark and memorable. These stories include meeting your hero, strange events in a coffee shop, through meeting yourself and a very dark story about a house that suddenly appears on a hill. My own story, Even a Monkey Can Fall from a Tree, is about a young man who catches Monkey pox (Mpox). Through this infection he finds himself on the receiving end of a world of judgment and homophobia. The inspiration came from reading about different men’s experiences during the outbreak of Monkey Pox in the summer of 2022. As I read their experiences, I felt such an echo of the homophobia circling around HIV in the 1980s & 1990s. It was disturbing to hear all that homophobia resurfacing again. It shouted out to me to write about it, to explore the cost of it. There is also non-fiction in this anthology, personal essays that draw on universal experiences. Dave Chambers’s essay, Uncle Bob, is about how he moved away from and then left the Catholic Church through his relationship with his uncle. Frank Crocker’s essay is about loss, first experienced as a child and then much later as an adult. The last piece in the anthology is also one of the most poignant pieces here. It is a memorial essay about our former treasurer, Margaret Griffith. Margaret died suddenly and unexpectantly in August 2022. Her death had surprised and shocked us all, she had been our longest serving member. This essay, drawn from the eulogies at her funeral, is a way of us remembering such a prominent member of our workshop. This anthology is a showcase of the work coming out of our writers workshop, the original and different voices producing work in East London. You can get a copy of it here. Happy reading Drew
  17. Drew Payne

    Thirty-Eight

    Oohs, spoilers, spoilers (!!). Bless him but Liam isn't very good at pushing himself forward, and he still has a habit of retreating back into himself. I want to capture the changing nature of the ward, these are patients and they will be discharged and staff will change. Liam isn't living in a normal home environment (though his life with his mother was never normal), and I wanted to show how transient it can be.
  18. Liam sat in the corner of the sofa hidden away in the Common Room reading his latest book. His book was something safe to hide behind. He could lose himself in reading it, but he could also use it as a barrier against other people. He could hold it up in front of his face stopping others from looking directly at him, from talking with him, and it worked. People there left him alone. He'd had his dinner - again a meal so overcooked that there was little taste to it - and now he was killing
  19. Drew Payne

    Easter Witness

    Thank you. I wrote this story over ten years ago, sadly so little has changed since then. I still hear right-wing Christians calling for marriage equality to be repealed, and Row v Wade, in the States, should be a wake-up call to all of us.
  20. It is 1976 and Mary Ann Singleton changes her visit to San Francisco into a permanent move. Naïve from her sheltered live in Cleveland, she wants a new life in The City. She finds an apartment at 28 Barbary Lane, and gets drawn into the found family her landlady, Mrs Madrigal, has created from the other tenants there. There is bohemian Mona Ramsey, gay Michael "Mouse" Tolliver and womanising Brian Hawkins. Though we are introduced into this by Mary Ann, this isn’t her story alone. Soon we are following the different lives of the residents of 28 Barbary Lane. Armistead Maupin’s stroke of genius was to set this story within a household of apartments and the tenants who live there, with their unconventional mother-figure in Mrs Madrigal. Through their lives he could write about the different aspects of San Francisco life in the 1970s. The other genius is that not just Maupin populated this novel with a large number of LGBT characters but that he treated them the same as all the other characters. They don’t come to sordid ends or end in pathetic suicides, they just have as messy and complicated lives as the straight characters. This novel was originally written as a newspaper serial and its style still reflects that, short and episodic scenes that rely on dialog, rather than description, to build character and atmosphere. This creates a fast-paced read, peppered frequently with jokes, but from time-to-time I did want a few passages of description just to slow down the pace and give me a moment to breath. This isn’t a historical novel, it was written in the 1970s and gloriously reflects the times. This isn’t a story about bright colours and brighter pop music. It explores the social change and different lifestyles that the 1960s had hinted at. It reminds us how important the 1970s were, especially if you are LGBT. Unfortunately, it does portray some of the 1970’s sexual politics that we now find questionable, it was a different time. Maupin wasn’t the first author to write a multi-character, multi-plot novel, but what he did was fill his novel with characters that had previously not been given a central role, and to portray them in an honest, open and non-sensational way. For so many LGBT people, of a certain age, this was a revolutionary novel. And today, it is still a novel that can hold a reader’s attention for a fascinating journey, with a lot of good jokes along the way. Find it here on Amazon
  21. I have only one bit of advice about starting writing, do it now! It's too easy to put it off, and you live in Valencia, there MUST be some great inspiration from there.
  22. @Gary L, that is such a perfect disscription of PD James's novel, she was a great novelist who just happened to write crime novels. The first one of her novels I read was Death of An Expert Witness, what an amazing and dark novel, she made death so unpleasant and horrible.
  23. This is a slim volume, just one short story, The Part-Time Job, and an essay, Murder Most Fowl, but it’s a perfect quick read as an eBook. The Part-Time Job is a story about revenge and murder. The unnamed narrator was bullied at school by Keith Manston-Green and at twelve vowed to kill him. The rest of the story is how he achieves this. As a motive for murder this might seem petty and trivial but to anyone whose school days were blighted by bullying will identify with this narrator’s actions, though may not agree with them. But this is a very pedestrian plot, the narrator achieves his goal in a rather obvious way. What lifts this story is the unexpected and dark twist at the end. If you stay reading to the end, then you are rewarded with a very dark and satisfying ending. Murder Most Fowl is an essay about why James wrote mystery crime novels, and this is a real gem. She doesn’t write about how she writes, where she finds her plots and inspiration. Instead she writes about why she writes in mystery/crime genre and what she hopes to achieve doing that. It also gives an interesting reading list of her favourite authors, what she enjoyed from their books. PD James was an amazingly talented author, whose novels were always more than just about the puzzle of who the murder is. Her novels also explored different and interesting themes, underneath her murder plots. Like so many great authors, after her death there seemed a rush to publish the remainder of her unpublished work, the short stories and essays that had been published in magazines and newspapers, but were never published in book form. This slight volume is a product of this. James was always a great writer, even here, but this book is more for the PD James fan, it isn’t a place to first discover her work, there are several of her novels that are better for that, but this book is still an interesting read. Find it here on Amazon
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