4th March 2014
In a new feature every other Tuesday the CRA will be focusing on books from new sponsors ‘Endeavour Press Ltd’. First up is ‘An Act of Evil’ by Robert Richardson. The Blurb: Wh...
3rd March 2014
Death Surge A telephone call to say that his nephew is missing cuts short Detective Inspector Andy Horton’s sailing trip to France. Summoned back to the Isle of Wight, Horton learns that Johnnie has n...
3rd March 2014
The Midnight Visitor Mort Manor is shunned by the locals. Newcomers to the village, Bel and her TV actor partner, are unaware of its evil reputation. But their dream home is a house of murders, past a...
3rd March 2014
The Whispering Fosse House, home of the reclusive Luisa Gilmore, harbours curious secrets – including one that stretches back almost a century, to the ill-fated Palestrina Choir. When Oxford don, Mic...
3rd March 2014
Jazz and Die is set at an international jazz festival in Swanage. Jordan jumps at a chance to get away from her vertiginous new flat facing the sea at Lancing, even if she has to protect an awkward an...
3rd March 2014
‘A good death is better than a bad conscience,’ said Sophie. 1983: Georgie, Theo, Sophie and Helena, four disparate Cambridge undergraduates, set out to scale Ausangate, one of the highest...
3rd March 2014
The Darke Chronicles introduces the aristocratic and flamboyant Victorian detective Luther Darke who tackles seemingly inexplicable mysteries that have baffled Scotland Yard. The seven cases that feat...
1st March 2014
The eighth marine mystery crime novel featuring DI Andy Horton When ex con, Daryl Woodley is found dead on the marshes bordering Langstone Harbour the Intelligence Directorate believe his murder is li...
28th February 2014
Creating a likeable, interesting and complex main character, one the reader can have empathy with, one they want to trust, to feel his/her pain and disappointments, root for throughout the story is a...
26th February 2014
As a new fiction writer, specialising in psychological thrillers, I’ve taken no creative writing courses, joined no writers’ groups and even managed to fail my ‘O’ level English Literature. Not...
21st February 2014
Every known murder scene has a detective combing for clues. Every detective has a prime enemy – and it’s not always the criminal. For the detective, the first enemy is often the crime sc...
16th February 2014
The Crime Writers’ Association has been running its Debut Dagger for over 15 years. The entry period for the 2014 Debut Dagger is now closed but this seemed like a good time to look back and hav...
14th February 2014
Are crime writers psychopaths? Pauline Rowson The relationship between writers and their characters takes many forms. Some of my characters irritate me, others entertain, some make me feel cuddly and...
7th February 2014
Why the crime genre is so popular Crime fiction is the bestselling genre and tops the most borrowed fiction books from public libraries in the UK. So what is it that makes crime fiction so popular? F...
31st January 2014
A Price To Pay – the ideas behind the story For the last three weeks, I’ve been discussing where ideas for novels come from. Sometimes, they ambush you. You might be sitting at home, minding your own...
24th January 2014
Cut Adrift – the ideas behind the story My previous two posts looked at where ideas for novels come from. For some writers, a book is created when a very particular thought hits home: what if? This wa...
22nd January 2014
Click by Alison Joseph ‘You’d know if he was dead, though, wouldn’t you? Your own husband…..’ She stared into the black water. Around her the trees dripped with recent ra...
22nd January 2014
David Stuart Davies writes: Reading books is becoming a specialist activity no longer enjoyed by the general public, writer Ruth Rendell has warned. The crime novelist and peer said reading is no long...
21st January 2014
Where do your ideas come from? Chris Simms says that he’s sometimes tempted to tell audiences that he downloads them from www.ideasfornovels.com. But however much authors may dislike bein...
17th January 2014
Outside the White Lines – the ideas behind the story In last week’s post, I described how one question makes authors quake in their shoes: where do your ideas come from? Most writers – myself included...