Summer Reading
The school holidays have started. I don’t expect to do much writing, but I plan to do plenty of reading. First on the list is my book group’s big read, Middlemarch, and I am so much looking forward to it. It’s a long time since I have reread it from cover to cover, and I’ll […]
How long is too long?
It is a feature of crime fiction as a genre that a lot of writers are expected to produce a book a year, often featuring the same detective. It’s not surprising that some of these series get a little tired and even the sainted Agatha wasn’t exempt from this. I’ve just read one of her […]
The West End Front
I’ve decided this year to try to make more of my London Library subscription. I’ve been a member since 1984 – I think – around thirty years at any rate and since 1990 I haven’t actually been living in London, though I was pretty close when I was in Cambridge. Sadly Sheffield does not have […]
A Race Against Time
I recently read ‘VANTAGE STIKER, a little known Golden Age crime novel from 1931 by a writer called Helen Simpson. Martin Edwards mentioned it to me, and told me it was very difficult to get hold of, but as often happens, the London Library came up trumps. I enjoyed it. She is a lively and […]
Chloroform
I spent Thursday to Sunday last week at Crimefest, where I moderated a couple of panels. Linda Stratmann was on one of them. She is the author of a book entitled CHLOROFORM which I’d heard was good – and it is. As far as I’d thought at all about it, I’d been aware of chloroform […]