The Crime Readers' Association

Writer Seeks Readers By Fergus McNeill

18th December 2015

    Stories can connect people in all kinds of ways. I once drove over a hundred miles to speak at a library event. I had to take the afternoon off work to make sure I wouldn’t be late, and...

Are Some Writers Thieves? By Fergus McNeill

11th December 2015

  I steal a lot of stuff. There aren’t too many professions where you can freely admit that sort of thing but, happily, writing is one of them. I steal indiscriminately, from friends, from...

The Write Way? By David Hodges

6th December 2015

Since the age of 11, when I started writing, I always envisaged myself living in a garret at the top of some old Victorian house in Covent Garden, surrounded by books and with the smell of coffee from...

Why do we like the wrong people? By Fergus McNeill

4th December 2015

Most of us believe that our moral compass points in the right direction. We know the difference between right and wrong, and we generally hope that good will prevail over evil. So why, when we read, d...

Shetland Noir‏ by Mary Bale

1st December 2015

Extract from Threads of Treason and Pamela St Abbs Inspector Campbell Mysteries by Mary Bale. Thursday 12 November At about 7pm we passengers experience an extra quick journey to Sumburgh from Edinbur...

Diary of a Debut Author by Fiona Cummins

22nd November 2015

At 2am, when darkness has settled in for the night, I often hear the pit-pat of footsteps on the landing outside our bedroom. The door pushes open, drenching me in light, and a child appears in the we...

A Day in the Life of Author Vaseem Khan

15th November 2015

5am and my mobile phone wake-up alarm detonates with a rousing rendition of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. A bleary stumble to the bathroom to splash water on my face, then downstairs with laptop in hand. En...

Translation Troubles by Matthew Pritchard

13th November 2015

For those of you who have read my debut novel, Scarecrow, you’ll know that the title is central to the plot. However, when the novel was translated into German, the title was changed to Die Stunde des...

Diary of a Debut Author by Andrea Carter

8th November 2015

The Famous Five, the Five Find-Outers and Dog, the Bobbsey twins and Trixie Belden: I spent my Irish midlands childhood with gangs of child detectives, both English and American. Reading my library bo...

Why Write Crime Fiction? by Matthew Pritchard

6th November 2015

Like most novelists, I write because I love to read. But when I first tried to set pen to paper, this posed me something of a problem. What was I going to write? After all, I loved to read everything:...

Spotlight on Lea O’Harra

5th November 2015

Welcome to CWA Member Lea O’Harra who is advertising her novel Imperfect Strangers with us this month. Lea’s book was published in the UK in Sept 2015 by Endeavour Press. Imperfect Stranger: Synopsis...

J C BriggsPost Mortem by Jean Briggs

23rd October 2015

  ‘Madame Ribault … managed to crawl to a chimney-board, where she traced with her finger, dipped in blood, the letters Commis de MT.’ Handy that, my Inspector Hardacre of Manchester would have s...

J C BriggsPartners in Crime by Jean Briggs

16th October 2015

  Are we to have a Watson? The question is asked by A.A. Milne.  His only detective story, The Red House Mystery, gives the answer. Milnes’s amateur detective, Antony Gillingham who ‘was born not...

What Next? by Peter Tickler

15th October 2015

What Next? by Peter Tickler It’s a strange feeling. My latest crime novel, Dead in the Water, has just been published by Joffe Books. In addition, as I sit at my laptop typing this blog, I am feeling...

J C BriggsPerson or Persons Unknown by Jean Briggs

9th October 2015

  In a letter entitled ‘How I Write My Books’, Wilkie Collins refers to the development of plot and character in the writing of The Woman in White. The central idea of conspiracy, he says, sugges...

Diary of a Debut Author By Jackie Kabler

4th October 2015

I’ve loved books ever since I learned to read…as a child, I would lose myself in anything by Enid Blyton, and I read classics like Little Women and Black Beauty so many times that my copie...

J C BriggsMurder and Its Motives by Jean Briggs

2nd October 2015

  Somewhere recently, I read of a detective who advised his subordinate, young and keen, to disregard motive. Concentrate on the evidence, he insisted, and we’ll get our man – or woman, presumabl...

Can baddies be too goodie? By P.J Nash (Paul Morris)

28th September 2015

Crime fiction is populated with cops and robbers. Of course the good guys and gals hog most of the limelight. But there wouldn’t be much point building up a multi-faceted character on the one ha...

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