Front Row: Archive 2013

With Mark Lawson.Martin Freeman returns this week as Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, the second film in Peter Jackson's trilogy. He talks to Mark about the physical difficulties of shooting scenes with Ian McKellen's towering Gandalf and how his commitment to the BBC's Sherlock almost cost him the role altogether.Bret Easton Ellis' cult novel American Psycho has been adapted as a new musical starring Matt Smith as Patrick Bateman, the successful Manhattan banker turned serial killer. Dreda Say Mitchell reviews.Mark investigates whether dividing large publishing houses into small imprints improves authors' chances of winning literary prizes. With Editor in Chief of Atlantic Books Ravi Mirchandani.Jeff Park, Front Row's Crime Fiction aficionado, joins Mark to reveal his Christmas round-up of crime books.Jeff's Top Six:- Samurai Summer, by Ake Edwardson The Ghost Riders Of Ordebec, by Fred Vargas Dead Lions, by Mick Herron The Siege, by Arturo Pérez-Reverte The Enigma Of China, by Qiu Xiaol