UK Crime Novelist Confessional At Library

Dunedin residents will have a chance to interrogate UK crime-writing sensation RJ Ellory on Friday 10 September when he talks about his latest novel, Saints of New York.
Following the death of his mother, a seven-year-old Ellory was sent to boarding school by his father. His reunion with his grandmother at sixteen was short-lived as she died a year later, leaving Ellory and his brother to fend for themselves again. By seventeen, Ellory was experiencing life on the wrong side of the prison bars after being caught poaching chickens.
Despite early disappointments - 22 works rejected by publishers over a six-year period, the equivalent of 400 letters saying ‘No’ - Ellory’s ‘bloody-minded’ attitude kept his writing ambitions alive.
His persistence paid off and his first published novel, Candlemoth, hit the shelves in 2004, leading the way for seven more novels, including his bestseller, A Quiet Belief in Angels.
His work has been translated into twenty-three languages and he has just won this year’s prestigious Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year for A Simple Act of Violence, to sit alongside several other international awards.
This new novel promises to be as compelling as his others and the public are encouraged to book tickets in advance to hear the story behind his stories.