Author of the Cassandra James series and of standalone suspense novels.
I was a respectable academic, lecturing in art history at a Cambridge college before I turned to crime. My first three novels featured literary historian and accidental sleuth, Cassandra James, and my most recent is Invisible, a standalone suspense novel.
I am happy to take part in events in libraries, bookshops, at literary festivals, crime fiction conventions and – almost anywhere really.
A Reading Life
Crime writer Christine Poulson's blog on reading, writing, and all things literary
Wonder Boys: A Twist on the Campus Novel
‘For the one thousandth time I resorted to the nine-page plot outline, single-spaced, tattered and coffee-stained, that I’d fired off on a vainglorious April morning five years before . . . An accidental poisoning, a car crash, a house on fire; the birth of three children and a miraculous trotter named Faithless; a theft, an […]
The Unstrung Harp by Edward Gorey
To give it its full title: The Unstrung Harp; or, Mr Earbrass Writes a Novel (1953). There is no-one quite like Edward Gorey whose illustrations conjure up a rather sinister, vaguely Edwardian world. I can’t really give the full flavour of the book without breaching copyright as the pictures are half of it. The cover will have […]
The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate
It is the 1930s and eighteen year old Fanny has been invited to a daunting house-party at Hampton Park. Her terrifying hostess Lady Montdore and the fashionable Mrs Chaddesley Corbett call her over and ask her, ‘Are you in love?’ ‘I felt myself becoming scarlet in the face. How could they have guessed my secret? […]
REVIEWS
‘Invisible’s got an excellent, tense plot, shifting between the two main characters, with a good number of surprises along the way. Poulson always has great, strong women characters, with real lives and feelings . . . I liked the fact that the depictions of violence and injury were realistic without being over-detailed or gloating . . . It was a pleasure to find a book that did the excitement, the jeopardy and the thrills without putting off this reader . . . a very good read for anyone.’
- CLOTHES IN BOOKS‘This is splendidly written fare from the reliable Poulson, written with keen psychological insight.’ [Invisible]
- CRIMETIME‘Invisible is a great thriller. I can’t say too much more about the plot because the twists and turns are the whole point of reading a book that wrong foots the reader at every turn . . . Christine Poulson kept me reading by giving out just enough information to intrigue and puzzle so that I had to read just one more chapter. That’s why, in the end, I just dropped everything else and read the last half of Invisible in one sitting.’
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