An Act of Evil: Robert RichardsonIn 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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
A Good Death, Helen Davis‘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...
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...
CRA Giveaway: Death Lies Beneath (DI Horton Series)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...
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...
Music to my Ears – A J WainesAs 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...
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...
Call Time: Finn ClarkeThe 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...
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...
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...
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...
Featured Author Friday: Chris SimmsCut 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...
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...
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...
Margery Allingham: mystery on Mersea IslandWhere 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...
Featured Author Friday: Chris SimmsOutside 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...
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Case Files 47
The CRA Newsletter: November 2020
The CRA Newsletter: October 2020