Danuta Reah has joined three fellow crime writers to promote their books, and crime fiction in general, under the name of The LadyKillers. After all, they say the female of the species is deadlier than the male...
Between them, these four up-and-coming British women crime writers have committed upwards of sixty murders - all purely in print, of course. Their victims have been shot, stabbed, strangled, garrotted, and disposed of in many more gruesome and ingenious ways. On the odd rare occasion, people have even died of natural causes, but they don't wish to encourage that kind of thing. The full line-up is (left to right, starting with Danuta):
- Lesley Horton, whose first novel, Snares of Guilt, was published in June 2002 after she took early retirement from teaching in order to fulfil her ambition to write crime fiction. Her latest, published in 2005, is Devils in the Mirror.
- Priscilla Masters is the author of ten crime novels, the first of which, Winding Up The Serpent in 1995, introduced Detective Inspector Joanna Piercy, a freewheeling cycling enthusiast based in the moorlands of Staffordshire.
- Zoë Sharp decided to write her first crime novel after being on the receiving end of death-threat letters through her work as a magazine columnist. Road Kill - the fifth in her series featuring her no-nonsense ex-army heroine, Charlie Fox - was published in paperback in 2006. She is currently working on a new crime thriller set in the English Lake District.
The LadyKillers are available as a group or individually for bookshop events, to run workshops for prospective writers, to talk to reading groups, or for conferences and literary festivals.
To contact them: e-mail info@ladykillers.info or visit their website: www.ladykillers.info