Why Readers Return: Characters, Crime & The Feeling They Leave Behind | Chris McDonald

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Recorded30 May 2026

Publisherfeeds.buzzsprout.com

Handlerec:18644889

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Crime writer Chris McDonald joins Confessions of a Book Collector to discuss his new private investigator novel, The Wrong Man, and why readers remember how a book made them feel long after they've forgotten the plot.Chris shares how a chance conversation on a Manchester football pitch convinced him that ordinary people could become authors, why he secretly wrote his first novel without telling anyone, and how an image of a body on an ice rink stayed in his head for a decade before becoming a book.The conversation explores the enduring appeal of fictional detectives, the influence of American noir, building a crime festival from scratch with Stockport Noir, and how music shaped both his writing and his reading life.

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