Sea views, enviable location: shame about the unexpected visitors!Beverley Jones talks about her new novel The Beach House and how beloved childhood stories provided sinister inspiration for adult nightmares. Once upon a time (in the 1980s), there was a little girl...
Latest News from Mirror BooksMurder at Roaringwater Murder at Roaringwater is the inside story of a young Frenchwoman, Sophie Toscan du Plantier. In this notorious and unresolved crime, the victim seemed to have a premonition of...
Countdown to Daggers Live!Book lovers and crime fiction fans have a unique opportunity to watch the famed Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) Daggers awards, live. Tickets are free, but limited. To book a place, visit: http://bit...
Filmed interviews with authors to feature in National Crime Reading MonthA newly-launched initiative designed to showcase crime writers will feature in National Crime Reading Month in June with four authors talking about their craft and the publishing industry. Launched in...
Love Reading UK’s 100 Top Female-led Crime NovelsWhat an exciting collection this is! Love Reading UK is celebrating National Crime Reading Month in June, hosted by the Crime Writers’ Association, by offering you some of their favourite female-led c...
The Dark Room, by Sam BlakeHare’s Landing, West Cork. A house full of mystery… Rachel Lambert leaves London afraid for her personal safety and determined to uncover the truth behind the sudden death of a homeless ma...
The Invitation by A.M. CastleThe Invitation: join A.M. Castle for a closed circle murder mystery I have always wanted to write a closed circle murder mystery, so I suppose I’ve been lucky – the UK’s first lockdown gave me the mea...
WHAT MAKES A WRITER, by Jay FormanMy father was a psychiatrist and he often told me that psychiatrist’s children are the most messed up people on the planet. He may have been right. Like every other writer I’ve been told “no” more tim...
HISTORY: THE DEVIL’S SCRIPTURE by Jeff DawsonI lived, some years ago, on a Ladysmith Road. It joined another called Kimberley, thoroughfares of solid, red-brick terracing. Show me any British suburb, built c.1900, and I will give you streets nam...
Caught Doing the Bear, by Leslie ScaseIn this article I am going to express some of my personal views on the writer’s use of language in historical novels, both as an author and as a reader. By the use of language, I mean not just the wor...
Writing Forgotten Women by Saeida RouassIn 2015 I came across a Times newspaper article that detailed the crimes of the ‘Moorish Jack the Ripper’. The article was printed in 1906 and offered a gruesome description of a series of murders of...
Man as Monster and the Milgram Experiment by Bryony PearceI’ve always been intrigued by man-as-monster; equally frightened and fascinated by the idea that someone who could help an elderly neighbour with their shopping, let local kids play in their garden an...
‘Sodden boxershorts: Charles Willeford and modern-day publishing’ by John BarlowI’ve just finished reading Charles Willeford’s Hoke Moseley series. The four books, all set in 1980s Miami, are wildly, brilliantly idiosyncratic. As Elmore Leonard said, nobody writes a better crime...
The Adventures of Maud West by Susannah StapletonMaud West ran her detective agency in London for more than thirty years, having started sleuthing on behalf of society’s finest in 1905. Her exploits grabbed headlines throughout the world but, beneat...
Changing Genres by Leigh RussellWriters are wordsmiths. We spend our time playing with words, seeing how we can use them to communicate. But ideas as well as language inspire the books we write, and these ideas can pop up unbidden f...
“Not so much Dun-Roamin’ as having discovered a whole new genre to roam.” – by Simon ScarrowI was on a panel of ‘Roman’ writers at a festival in Harrogate some years ago when a member of the audience asked us if we’d ever contemplate writing outside that historical period. I was quite surpri...
When Covid 19 clips your wings, why not plan a crime festival?By Beverley Jones, author of The Beach House. Remember last summer, when we were all staying home, protecting the NHS and clapping for carers? Little did we know how thoroughly Covid 19 would affect u...
‘The Challenges of Writing a Series’ by Pauline RowsonDead Sea, number four in the Marvik mystery thriller series, was a difficult book to write, not because there was any lack of ideas for the storyline but because it needed to pick up the threads of an...
Martina Cole Awarded the 2021 CWA Diamond DaggerMartina Cole is the recipient of the highest honour in British crime writing, the Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) Diamond Dagger. The long-reigning Queen of Crime Drama is a publishing powerhouse. Ma...
‘Edge of the Grave’ by Robbie MorrisonEdge of the Grave by Robbie Morrison is a dark historical crime novel set in 1930s Glasgow. A city still recovering from the Great War; split by religious division and swarming with razor gangs. For f...
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Case Files 52
The CRA Newsletter: September 2021
The CRA Newsletter: August 2021