 Red Room Writer Profile
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Matt Beynon Rees's Blog
November 19, 2009
- Novelists aren’t journalists. Research for a novel isn’t the same as researching a journalistic article.I’d have thought that was too obvious to need stating. But then I became a published novelist, and I realized that people thought the two things were rather the same.I was a journalist for almost 20 years before my first novel was published. THE COLLABORATOR OF BETHLEHEM is a crime novel ...
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November 18, 2009
- Michael Anthony is the author of MASS CASUALTIES: A Young Medic’s True Story of Death, Deception and Dishonor in Iraq (Adams Media, October 2009). His book is drawn from his personal journals during the first year he spent serving in Iraq. You can read my interview with him <a ...
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November 13, 2009
- Worn out has-been or drama queen? Interpretations of the Palestinian president's threat to quit vary greatly. By Matt Beynon Rees - GlobalPostJERUSALEM — Sometimes a quitter really does quit for good. The Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, announced last week that he wouldn’t run for re-election in the proposed January elections. Back when he was Yasser Arafat’s deputy in the ...
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November 12, 2009
- When foreign correspondents come to Jerusalem they often ask me for advice on stories and places from which to witness the various conflicts that play out in this city. Next time, I’m going to buy them a ticket to the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo.I go there every Saturday afternoon with my two-year-old son. But perhaps because our favorite animals (the cute little prairie dogs) have hibernated, I ...
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November 6, 2009
- Huffington Post book blogger Jason Pinter has a column about "The State of the Crime Novel." It's a fairly Yankocentric appraisal of current crime writing by a series of top US reviewers. It includes this from veteran mystery columnist Oline H. Cogdill: "One of the main missions of crime novels is to paint a timely portrait of the issues in our times. This doesn't mean these novels ...
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November 4, 2009
- I’m always looking for a good spot in which to kill someone. Still, as a crime writer, I rarely have to ask about potential locations for a good murder. People are keen to suggest that the blood be spilled on their doorstep.Most recently, it was a pastor and his wife.To be fair, they actually said I ought to have my Palestinian detective Omar Yussef visit their church on the top of the Mount of ...
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October 30, 2009
- Strange Things Happen: A Life with The Police, Polo and PygmiesBy Stewart CopelandPublisher UK: The Friday Project US: HarperStudioJust because I write crime fiction doesn’t make me obsessed by The Police. However, this new memoir by The Police drummer is absolutely the most delightful surprise of the year. Copeland writes with the same verve and invention he displays in his deceptively tricky ...
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October 30, 2009
- I'll be talking about my Palestinian crime novels in Jerusalem on Monday, Nov. 16 at 10 a.m. The location is Beit Frankforter, 80 Bethlehem Road, in Baka. So call in sick (if you still have a job) and come along.
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October 29, 2009
- Yet another report accuses Israel of human rights abuses, this time for denying Palestinians water. By Matt Beynon Rees - GlobalPostJERUSALEM — Human-rights reports condemning Israel’s dealings with the Palestinians have become so frequent of late they’re like the dripping of Chinese water torture.In the last few months, there have been reports on the conduct of Israeli forces in Gaza, on ...
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October 28, 2009
- This is where it gets ugly.Last week I zapped off the manuscript of my new novel to my agent in New York. My wife told me to get working on the next book. It’s not because she’s worried about me slacking off and failing to pay the rent. No, it’s because she knows what happens when I’m not writing.Ever read “The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde”? When I’m writing, I’m Dr ...
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October 28, 2009
- By now it’s no secret that the Iraq War has been a disillusioning experience for many of the U.S. servicemen sent there. The literature on the war has, so far, been mostly written by journalists. There’s plenty of it, and like most journalism it runs pretty mainstream and inoffensive, no matter how bloody the scenes depicted. But Michael Anthony, a veteran of the war, has a different ...
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October 27, 2009
- I started to feel recently that my bio on www.mattbeynonrees.com was a bit over-serious. First of all, it was in the third person. I honestly never refer to myself in the third person (except when I'm shopping and I ask my wife "Would Matt Beynon Rees wear a shirt in this shade of pink?") Then I saw that the bio took my writing and -- worse still -- me, rather seriously. I prefer to ...
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October 23, 2009
- A parody of a nationalistic Palestinian song ridicules the intractable dispute between Hamas and Fatah leaders. By Matt Beynon Rees - GlobalPostRAMALLAH, West Bank — Last week, Hamas and Fatah were on the verge of an agreement to end more than two years of civil strife. Then Hamas tore it up, and both sides went back to tearing apart Palestinian politics.The two main political factions, which ...
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October 21, 2009
- One of the advantages of being an author in an “exotic” locale is that people visit and want to hear from you as someone who knows the place well. It’s also one of the disadvantages.Last Friday night, I drove out to Ein Kerem to meet one such group of visitors from Reboot, a U.S. organization that brings together mostly liberal – and certainly not conventional-thinking – Jews to discuss ...
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October 16, 2009
- The last couple of articles about me and my books focus on the fact that I'm rather happy. In this month's Hadassah Magazine, I'm "affable and trim." High school friends reading this on Facebook may wonder where the affability was back then...Profile: Hadassah Magazine October 2009 Matt Beynon Rees By Leora Eren Frucht Only gritty, dark crime fiction could evoke the corruption—and ...
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