Boris Starling
Encyclopedia
Boris Starling is a British novelist and screenwriter
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...

. He was educated at Eton College
Eton College
Eton College, often referred to simply as Eton, is a British independent school for boys aged 13 to 18. It was founded in 1440 by King Henry VI as "The King's College of Our Lady of Eton besides Wyndsor"....

 and Trinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Trinity has more members than any other college in Cambridge or Oxford, with around 700 undergraduates, 430 graduates, and over 170 Fellows...

, where he graduated with a first in History.

Life

Starling is the great-grandson of the English physiologist Ernest Starling. His sister Belinda was also an author; her novel The Journal of Dora Damage was published posthumously in the UK and US in late 2007. She died in August 2006 of complications following bile duct surgery. She was 34.

Boris Starling lives in Dorset
Dorset
Dorset , is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The county town is Dorchester which is situated in the south. The Hampshire towns of Bournemouth and Christchurch joined the county with the reorganisation of local government in 1974...

 with his wife, a television producer, and their children. He is currently working on a variety of book, film and television projects. A keen sportsman, he plays football for the Prairie Dogs team of West London, and is a member of the José Raúl Capablanca
José Raúl Capablanca
José Raúl Capablanca y Graupera was a Cuban chess player who was world chess champion from 1921 to 1927. One of the greatest players of all time, he was renowned for his exceptional endgame skill and speed of play...

 Memorial Chess Society, founded by fellow author Charles Cumming
Charles Cumming
Charles Cumming is a British writer of spy fiction. The son of Ian Cumming and Caroline Pilkington , he was educated at Ludgrove School , Eton College and the University of Edinburgh , where he graduated with 1st Class Honours in English Literature...

. He and Cumming were part of the gold medal-winning team at the 2008 World Poohsticks
Poohsticks
Poohsticks is a game first mentioned in The House at Pooh Corner, a Winnie-the-Pooh book by A. A. Milne. It is a simple game which may be played on any bridge over running water; each player drops a stick on the upstream side of a bridge and the one whose stick first appears on the downstream side...

 championships, held in Oxfordshire, England. Starling was also Eton College
Eton College
Eton College, often referred to simply as Eton, is a British independent school for boys aged 13 to 18. It was founded in 1440 by King Henry VI as "The King's College of Our Lady of Eton besides Wyndsor"....

's Visiting Writer in Michaelmas 2007.

Career

He worked first as a journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...

 for newspapers such as The Sun
The Sun (newspaper)
The Sun is a daily national tabloid newspaper published in the United Kingdom and owned by News Corporation. Sister editions are published in Glasgow and Dublin...

 and the Sunday Telegraph
Sunday Telegraph
The Sunday Telegraph is a British broadsheet newspaper, founded in February 1961. It is the sister paper of The Daily Telegraph, but is run separately with a different editorial staff, although there is some cross-usage of stories...

, and then for Control Risks
Control Risks Group
Control Risks is a global risk and strategic consulting firm specialising in political, security and integrity risk. Control Risks’ aim is to help its clients to understand and manage the risks of operating in complex or hostile environments...

, a firm which assesses the risks to companies of terrorism and political upheaval, and provides services ranging from confidential investigations to kidnap resolution.

In 1996, he appeared on the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 quiz show Mastermind
Mastermind (TV series)
Mastermind is a British quiz show, well known for its challenging questions, intimidating setting and air of seriousness.Devised by Bill Wright, the basic format of Mastermind has never changed — four and in later contests five contestants face two rounds, one on a specialised subject of the...

, where he reached the semi-finals. His specialist topics were 'Hergé and the Books of Tintin
The Adventures of Tintin
The Adventures of Tintin is a series of classic comic books created by Belgian artist , who wrote under the pen name of Hergé...

', and 'The Life and Novels of Dick Francis
Dick Francis
Richard Stanley "Dick" Francis CBE was an English jockey and crime writer, many of whose novels centre around horse racing.- Personal life :...

', who came to watch the filming.

His first book, Messiah, was published in 1999. Set in London, Messiah features a serial killer known as Silver Tongue, who is killing men in a variety of bizarre ways, with the only constant being the removal of their tongues and insertion of a silver spoon into their mouths.

Notable for its fast pace and high levels of gore, Messiah was a commercial and critical success, reaching both the New York Times and the official UK bestseller lists. It was subsequently adapted for television by the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

, with Starling taking a cameo role as a murder victim's corpse. There have been four television sequels broadcast. Messiah I-IV starred Ken Stott
Ken Stott
Kenneth Campbell "Ken" Stott is a Scottish actor, particularly known in the United Kingdom for his many roles in television.-Early life:...

 in the lead role as DCI Redfern Metcalfe. For Messiah V, Marc Warren
Marc Warren
Marc Warren is an English actor, known for his British television roles as Danny Blue in Hustle, Dougie Raymond in The Vice and Dominic Foy in State of Play.-Career:...

 took over as DCI Joseph Walker, heading up an entirely new cast. Messiah V was broadcast on BBC1 in January 2008. Starling is listed as series creator of the franchise.

His second book, also a New York Times bestseller, and winner of the W. H. Smith 'Thumping Good Read' Award, was Storm. Set in Aberdeen, Storm begins with a ferry disaster, and follows the subsequent week in the life of Kate Beauchamp, one of the detectives from Messiah, as she tries to find a serial killer while her estranged father heads up the investigation into the ferry sinking.

Starling changed tack substantially with his third novel. Vodka is a sprawling, epic story of Russia immediately after the end of the Soviet Union, and runs several storylines in tandem: the efforts of an American banker, Alice Liddell, to effect the first privatisation in Russian history; the battle between Slav and Chechen gangs for control of Moscow's vodka market; and the hunt for a serial killer who is killing children and draining their blood.

Reaction to Vodka was mixed; some critics felt that Starling had over-reached himself in trying to portray a society on the edge of anarchy in all its ingloriousness, while others praised this same ambition, plus the characterisation and the depth of the research which helped paint such a convincing picture of Moscow in the early 1990s.

Another shift in period and location came with the publication of Starling's fourth novel, Visibility. Visibility is set in the winter of 1952, when the Great Fog has rolled into London, shutting down most transportation routes and sickening the populace with its noxious haze. Herbert Smith, drummed out of MI5 as the patsy for a bungled Soviet spy caper, is now a detective inspector in the murder division at New Scotland Yard, where he is treated with harsh wariness by his fellow policemen. Assigned to investigate a suspicious drowning, Smith discovers that the victim, a young biochemist and son of a highly placed government official, had in the hours before his death claimed to be in possession of a discovery that could change the world.

Many critics feel that Visibility is the best of Starling's books so far. The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...

s Maxim Jakubowski called it "mystery at its best", while in the New Statesman
New Statesman
New Statesman is a British centre-left political and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s....

 Adam LeBor said: "Visibility is an intelligent and thought-provoking book, one that asks lingering questions about the very nature of loyalty and love."

Under the pseudonym Daniel Blake, Starling has begun a series of thrillers featuring Franco Patrese, a Pittsburgh homicide detective who later joins the FBI. The first book was published in the UK as 'Soul Murder' and in the US as 'Thou Shalt Kill.' The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review said that the book 'captures the essentials of Pittsburgh better than most natives could... This is a well-imagined thriller, a nice addition to the crowded police-procedural genre, with vivid characters and nimble-but-fitting plot twists.'

The sequel, to be released as 'City Of Sins' in the UK in October 2011 and as 'City Of The Dead' in the US in April 2012, is set in New Orleans around the time of Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was a powerful Atlantic hurricane. It is the costliest natural disaster, as well as one of the five deadliest hurricanes, in the history of the United States. Among recorded Atlantic hurricanes, it was the sixth strongest overall...

.

Starling has also written a screen adaptation of 'Blood Over Water', a non-fiction book by David and James Livingston about their experiences rowing against each other in the 2003 Boat Race.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK