Morris, R.N. 1960- (Roger Morris, Roger N. Morris)

PERSONAL:

Born 1960, in Manchester, England; married; wife's name Rachel; children: Claire, Luke. Education: Attended Cambridge University.

ADDRESSES:

Home—London, England.

CAREER:

Writer and freelance copywriter.

WRITINGS:

(As Roger Morris) Taking Comfort, Macmillan (London, England), 2006.

The Gentle Axe, Penguin Press (New York, NY), 2007.

Also author of a Web log.

ADAPTATIONS:

One of his short stories, "The Devil's Drum," was adapted as a one-act opera; the story "Revenants" was adapted as a comic book.

SIDELIGHTS:

R.N. Morris writes historical crime novels. His 2007 novel The Gentle Axe features Porfiry Petrovich, the same character found in Dostoevsky's classic novel Crime and Punishment. Set a year and a half after the events of Crime and Punishment, the story finds Petrovich investigating the deaths of two men: one found hung from a tree and a dwarf found poisoned next to him. Doug Southard in the Library Journal, believed that "readers with an appetite for the occasional lurid scene will enjoy" the book. A critic writing in Kirkus Reviews stated: "Morris's Petrovich is more like Sherlock Holmes with a psychological bent, and his novel is closer to genre pulp than to the classics." A contributor to Publishers Weekly thought that Morris "does a good job of depicting Russian society in the 1860s."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, January 1, 2007, Thomas Gaughan, review of The Gentle Axe, p. 64.

Kirkus Reviews, December 15, 2006, review of The Gentle Axe, p. 1239.

Library Journal, March 1, 2007, Doug Southard, review of The Gentle Axe, p. 76.

New York Times Book Review, May 20, 2007, Liesl Schillinger, review of The Gentle Axe, p. 9.

Philadelphia Inquirer, June 20, 2007, Edward Pettit, review of The Gentle Axe.

Publishers Weekly, December 11, 2006, review of The Gentle Axe, p. 45.

Spike, April, 2006, Ian Hocking, review of Taking Comfort.

ONLINE

BookLoons,http://www.bookloons.com/ (August 21, 2007), Tim Davis, review of The Gentle Axe.

Eclectica,http://www.eclectica.org/ (August 21, 2007), Jim Younger, author interview.

It's a Crime,http://itsacrime.typepad.com/ (January 30, 2007), author interview.

R.N. Morris Home Page,http://www.rogernmorris.co.uk (August 21, 2007), author profile.

R.N. Morris MySpace Profile,http://www.myspace.com/gentleaxe (August 21, 2007), author profile.

R.N. Morris Web log,http://rogersplogblogspot.com (August 21, 2007), author profile.