88. Discovering a new writer

I don't mean finding the manuscript at the bottom of the slush pile and turning that person into a billionaire, I mean finding a writer previously unknown to me and becoming a fan.

It happened earlier this year with Elinor Lipman, who is not that well known here, but I think is quite famous in the States. She writes deceptively clever comedies of manners and is compared to Jane Austen. She almost deserves it. Finding an Elinor Lipman I haven't read in a charity bookshop is always a thrilling moment.

Then recently I discovered David Benioff. He'd been hiding in plain sight, because he is a Hollywood screenwriter, responsible for Troy (yuck), the early drafts of X-Men: Wolverine (um, nearly) and, most importantly, the adaptation of The Kite Runner. But before he was a screenwriter, he was a novelist, and when he gets bored of writing million-dollar screenplays he continues to pop out the odd novel, the latest of which is City of Thieves. City of Thieves is a cracking read, and I really hope it never becomes a film. David Benioff's first novel, The 25th Hour, became a movie starring Edward Norton. I haven't seen the film yet, but I'm halfway through the book and loving it. He is clearly a better novelist than he is a screenwriter, because The Kite Runner was a beautiful film but I suspect he'd have had to work hard to ruin it. Homer, meanwhile, continues to spin on his pyre, or whatever they did then.

David Benioff also has the gratuitous good fortune of being married to Amanda Peet.

I'm looking for my next discovery. Any suggestions?