MattRees.net

Any writer knows that things can go wrong sometimes. Characters start to get wooden. Scenes won’t come alive. But the slipperiest dilemma of all –– because it’s the one least likely to be obvious when you’re re-reading the manuscript –– is when certain words turn out to have unintended consequences. A fine example of this [...]

Last night my dream was a really terrific thriller plot. Naturally, because I thought I was watching a thriller unfold in images before me, I don’t remember much of what happened (do YOU remember what happens in a thriller after you’ve read it?) However, it included a number of details which I find encouraging. First, [...]

Thriller titles often seem designed to confuse prospective readers. Pick up a book by a well-known author, read the title which is something like “Better Off Dead,” and you’re likely to think: “Did I already read that one? It seems to me titles in the thriller world have moved away from any kind of descriptive [...]

Shots Ezine has an interview with me. The excellent Laura Harman has me talking about the centrality of music to the plot and the writing of MOZART’S LAST ARIA, my new historical thriller about the death of the great composer. We also chatted about the relevance of Mozart’s music to our lives today and how [...]

Adam Lebor, a superb thriller-writer in his own right, picks some top summer thriller reads in the Financial Times this week (where there’s also a big profile of Lee Child). Adam very kindly includes one of my Omar Yussef mysteries, The Saladin Murders (US title: A Grave in Gaza). Here’s what he writes: There are [...]

It’s surely hard to startle a British journalist, so I’m rather pleased to see that I managed to do so. The Guardian leads its thriller roundup this weekend with my new novel MOZART’S LAST ARIA. Reviewer John O’Connell says: “Israel-based Welshman Rees is best known for his thrillers featuring Palestinian detective Omar Yussef. Mozart’s Last [...]

Our understanding of distant places is so often based purely on their politics – particularly if they have some perceived impact on our own. Journalists tend to focus on that politics, because they can interview leaders and quote ordinary people talking about what those leaders are doing. Let’s say that journalism’s problem is that its [...]

If I wrote a crime novel filled with the kind of twaddle that passes for breathtaking revelation in this week’s blanket Wikileaks coverage, it’d be panned. Surprise, surprise. The Saudis want America to do a number on Iran, without taking responsibility for it themselves (and meanwhile Saudis are the big funders of al-Qaeda). Sarkozy shouts [...]

Robert Harris has been one of my favorite authors since I first laid hands on “Fatherland,” his “what if the Nazis had won” thriller. “Enigma” and “Archangel” were even better. His first two Roman ventures “Pompei” and “Imperium” were by no means the worst books I read in the years of their publication. Then came [...]

In this weekend’s Sunday Times reviewer John Dugdale describes my Palestinian sleuth Omar Yussef as “one of the most beguiling of current sleuths.” You can read the roundup in full at Times Online, but here’s the bit about my newest novel THE FOURTH ASSASSIN: Set in a pulsating, multicultural city, Matt Rees’s The Fourth Assassin [...]