R.I.P. Billy
It was nearly eighteen years ago at the end of January 1998 when a small, long-haired cat turned up at our back door. He was cold and hungry and desperate. We already had two cats. My husband said, ‘if you let that cat in, he’ll be here for good.’ And he was. He wasn’t small for […]
The Japanese have a word for it . . .
Tsundoku means ‘leaving a book unread after buying it, typically piled up with other unread books.’ I don’t know how I have done without this word. I discovered it in Lost in Translation: An Illustrated Compendium of Untranslatable Words from around the World by Ella Frances Sanders. I got this book for Christmas and there are […]
Another birthday! It’s criminal …
My book-buying moratorium has only five days to go. It’s my birthday this week and that has made the wait easier. My daughter gave me Silent Nights: Christmas Mysteries, edited by Martin Edwards, which I had been longing for. And what a splendid collection it is, well worth the wait. Of course there are a […]
I bought a book!
Visiting Cambridge on Friday to do some research for a story, I realise that I should have made an further exemption from my book-buying moratorium: because I can’t be in Cambridge without going to Heffers Bookshop – and I can’t go to Heffers without buying a book. It is one of my favourite book shops, […]
Christie’s Death Comes as the End
After I’d seen the splendid Egypt: Faith after the Pharaohs at the British Museum, I went to the London Library and got out Agatha Christie’s Come Tell Me How You Live. She published it in 1945 under her married name of Agatha Christie Mallowan, and it is an account of the trips to the Syria that […]
Crime Drama Clichés 3
I’ve been enjoying the excellent 3rd series of The Bridge, though I do miss Martin, who is now banged up in prison. However, original though the series is, it is not quite a cliché-free zone. Here’s one I spotted: someone lets themselves into their car and you know, just know, that a sinister figure is going to […]
Crime-writer Leigh Russell is my guest
It’s a pleasure to welcome Leigh to my blog today. I thoroughly enjoyed her new novel, Blood Axe, and found myself slowing down so that I didn’t get to the end – and the solution – too quickly. We know from the beginning that the killer has adopted the persona of a Viking warrior intent on pillage […]
Two thirds of the way through my book moratorium
It is two months today since I began my book-buying moratorium – and I am still going strong. It was most difficult at the beginning, when I was trying to break the habit. There was a danger that I just would buy more DVDs instead – they too are so cheap in charity shops – […]
I’m a little bit in love with . . .
. . . Stellan Skarsgård – or, should I say, John River, the leading character in River. This BBC crime drama, scripted by Abi Morgan, has been perhaps the stand-out show of the year for me, even I wasn’t totally convinced at the beginning. A policeman who sees dead people? How was this going to work? Hadn’t we […]