A criminally good time in Norwich
One of the greatest pleasure of my life as a crime-writer has been my membership of the Crimer Writers’ Association. I have made some wonderful friends whose support over the years has meant a great deal and I have visited some lovely places for the CWA annual conference, which is always held outside London. Last […]
When it’s time to leave the party
I’m currently reading a very enjoyable series, Ellie Griffiths’ Ruth Galloway books. I read the first, The Crossing Places, a few years ago and it didn’t really take, but after the series was recommended by my friend Moira over at http://Clothesinbooks,com, I tried again with A Room Full of Bones and this time it did. I […]
Thin Ice by Quentin Bates
Icelandic crime is big at the moment, what with Trapped reaching its tense conclusion on BBC 4 the Saturday before last. But I have been a fan of Icelandic crime for quite a while – ever since I read Quentin Bates’s first novel, Frozen Out, published around five years ago. I’ve read everything he’s written since […]
Ebooks or print? All or nothing?
Something that has surprised me a little bit recently: a couple of old friends who’ve told me that they have gone over entirely to ebooks. One is my dear friend, Pauline, whom I’ve known since we were eleven. Books and magazines were and are an important part of our friendship (Pauline is my most loyal […]
Should crime novels be mixed in with other books?
Or should they have their own section in book shops? Waterstones in Sheffield has recently reordered their shelves to slot the crime in with the other fiction – and I don’t like it. Hatchards on St Pancras station have done it too. I can appreciate the argument in favour: it is all literature and perhaps […]
Another corker of an ‘impossible crime’ novel
After I blogged about Derek Smith’s Whistle Up the Devil I downloaded his other ‘impossible crime’ novel, Come to Paddington Fair. I was planning to save it, but soon succumbed and what a corker it turned out to be. I would definitely have included it in my list of favourite books set in theatres if I’d […]
Present tense? It’s happening right now!
The other day I was browsing in a bookshop and picked up a crime novel that has been well reviewed. I opened it and it was written in the present tense. Back it went on the shelf. It was the same with the next one I looked at. Is it just me, or are more novels […]
Whistle Up the Devil
I do like a locked room mystery and I can heartily recommend Derek Smith’s Whistle Up the Devil (1953) and newly republished. It’s a fairly short novel, which for me is in its favour, and I read most of it over the course of a train journey. It is a familiar set-up – family curse, eldest […]
Seeing one’s book in a charity shop
I have to admit that this rarely happens to me. My first three novels, the ones featuring Cassandra James in Cambridge, were published only in hardback with shortish print runs (they are now all available as e-books, I hasten to add) and it’s mostly paperbacks in charity shops. The last one, Invisible, was available as a paperback, but […]