A friend for life
Yesterday on a day trip from Sheffield to Oxford the train speed through Solihull. I can never see the sign go flashing past without being profoundly thankful that I am no longer working for the Inland Revenue. It’s many years since I caught the train from Birmingham to Solihull every day to my job at […]
A Weekend to Remember
I have been a member of the London Library for almost forty years, and have often mentioned it on my blog as one of my favourite places in the world. And Cambridge University Library has a special place in my heart too. All in all, I love libraries. It was Borges who wrote, ‘I have […]
A Splendid Read: Martin Edwards Sepulchre Street
‘I want you to solve my murder,’ said the woman in white. Rachel Savernake gave a sardonic smile. ‘Quite a challenge. ‘Rumour has it you seldom refuse a dare.’ Sepulchre Street is the fourth in the Rachel Savernake series and I think it is the best so far. It grips from the start. It is […]
A poignant experience
I always feel at home in a library or an archive. When I made an appointment last week to visit Sheffield University library, it took me back to the many days I’ve spent doing research in the British Library, the V & A library, the Courtauld Institute, and elsewhere. I arrived at the library, and […]
What to read in hospital
Recently I had to have surgery and so the question arose: what should I take to read while waiting to go the operating theatre? It had to be something that I could easily pick and up and put down in the intervals of having my blood pressure taken, being briefed by the anaesthetist, and so […]
Be afraid …
Writing is a solitary occupation and like many writers I welcome a reason to get out of the house, whether it is to a CWA conference, Crimefest, or a book launch. I am especially thrilled to be heading to Newcastle at the end of October to the wonderful Lit and Phil, to listen to one […]
Golden Age Treats
This Deadly Ilse: A Golden Age Mystery Map is a perfect gift for the GA fan in your life – or for yourself. It is attractively designed and the captions are written by Martin Edwards – need I say more? Some of the locations and the books associated with them were familiar to me – […]
The Life of Crime by Martin Edwards: a splendid read
This book is the result of a lifetime of reading a vast range of crime fiction. Martin Edwards claims that despite its length – running as it does (with exhaustive indexes) to 724 pages – The Life of Crime is a miracle of concision and that is hardly an exaggeration. Chronologically it spans the late […]
I’m a guest on The First Two Pages
Art Taylor is an award-winning short story writer, whose work I much admire. He has a blog called The First Two Pages for which he invites writers to discuss the choices that they made in writing the first two pages of a story or novel. And today that writer is me and I am honoured […]