<----  Back To Previous Page s Print this page

s

Peter Abrahams

USA Flag (1947 - )

About The Author: Peter Abrahams ..... "And still do (read a lot), but I became much more demanding in my reading. Besides all the usual things - depth of characterization, atmosphere, the telling details--I grew to want that extra something that's so hard to pin down, related to the voice of the writer and the resonance of the story, which I think of as the spirit of the book. So many novels have none at all, but the great ones--Pale Fire, The Comedians, Crime and Punishment to name a few that affected me--glow with it.
Nabokov is one of my favorites. The sheer brilliance! He makes it look so easy. I wonder what writers he read after the age of forty, say. Any writers at all, other than himself? Why bother?
Closer to my own field, I've been influenced by Graham Greene. I refer especially to what he called his entertainments. They are crime novels as far as I'm concerned (A Gun for Sale, Stamboul Train, Brighton Rock), and that's what I do. One of the problems in crime fiction is the evanescence of the reading experience, how light these stories--no matter how crammed with noir--really are. Greene's are weighty, and what momentum he establishes when they get going! With Greene, there's also the voice, so sympathetic at times, at other times off-putting, often both at once. I love how he does that.

Awards
Edgar Awards Best Novel nominee (1995) : Lights Out
Shamus Awards Best Novel nominee (2006) : Oblivion

Series Novels and More

Echo Falls
1. Down the Rabbit Hole (2005)
2. Behind the Curtain (2006)
3. Into the Dark (2008)

Novels
The Fury of Rachel Monette (1980)
Tongues of Fire (1982)
Red Message (1986)
Hard Rain (1988)
Pressure Drop (1989)
Revolution Number 9 (1992)
Lights Out (1994)
The Fan (1995)
A Perfect Crime (1998)
Crying Wolf (2000)
Last of the Dixie Heroes (2001)
The Tutor (2002)
Their Wildest Dreams (2003)
Oblivion (2005)
End of Story (2006)
Nerve Damage (2007)
Delusion (2008)
Reality Check (2009)
Bullet Point (2010)

Collections
Up All Night (2008) (with Libba Bray, David Levithan, Patricia McCormick, Sarah Weeks and Gene Yang)

Picture Books
Quacky Baseball (2011)

Author information courtesy of Elliott Books.  Visit us at http://www.ElliottBooks.com