Anne Penketh – Murder at the ChateauReformed banker Pippa is living her best life in the idyllic town of Louennec in Brittany. Business at her new bakery is booming and she even has a new man. But life in France still has its perils . ....
Margery Allingham Short Story CompetitionA lot of readers are writers, too. Whether you’re a bestselling author or an aspiring wordsmith, if you have a short mystery in the works, the Margery Allingham Short Story Competition wants to...
Jim Eldridge – Murder at the Tower of LondonLondon 1899. The dead body of a Yeoman Warder is discovered at the Tower of London inside a suit of armour belonging to Henry VIII. He had been run through with a sword. The Prince of Wales, fearing...
Helena Dixon – Murder at the Village FairKitty Underhay is riding a carousel… with death. Summer 1935. Enjoying a belated honeymoon visiting her new husband Matt’s family in the rolling Yorkshire hills, Kitty strolls through a village fair....
“The Red Death” by Abraham Kawa‘THE RED DEATH’ BY ABRAHAM KAWA 1970. After a disturbing murder case left DI Chris Bates’ mental health shattered, he spends time recovering in an asylum before being released to a halfway house. When...
Barking up the Right Tree – a new cosy mystery series from the author of Geraldine SteelBy Leigh Russell Life is full of surprises. Partial to round numbers, I always hankered after writing twenty books in my Geraldine Steel series. To begin with, twenty books seemed like an impossibly a...
In conversation with Sara ParetskyThe CWA North America chapter recently hosted an evening in conversation with Sara Paretsky (author of the VI Warshawksi books.) It was recorded and is now hosted on our YouTube channel. Free to watch...
MURDER MYSTERIES: A NEW GOLDEN AGE? asks Tom MeadLike many people, I grew up in thrall to the Golden Age of Detective Fiction (GAD for short). Our home was heaped with Agatha Christie paperbacks, so even before I picked up a single one and actually...
‘The Art of Naming’ by Kim HaysWar and Peace is supposed to contain 500 named characters, and readers find it hard to keep them straight. For one thing, each one is called by multiple names, and, for another, those names are Russia...
‘The Shadows of Rutherford House’ by CE RoseI was once a solicitor who spent each working day dealing with heinous crimes, difficult divorces and professional negligence claims. Now I’m Caroline England/CE Rose author, the ‘Duchess of Dark Dome...
Suspense Novels: Home or Away? by Helen CooperI write this while looking at the covers of my two novels. My debut, The Downstairs Neighbour, features a house with a half-open doorway: an ordinary, familiar image, but with an air of shadowy secrec...
‘Taking to Drink with Dickens’ by JC BriggsI was studying my map of London in 1850 to find the end of the Blackwall Railway where Dickens and Jones must alight in pursuit of a murderer. I needed a tavern in which the murderer could be holed up...
Every Time Unlucky: finding new challenges for a series character by Antony JohnstonDo we expect spy thrillers to have an emotional arc? Perhaps not. Many readers, certainly, seek out the genre for action and tradecraft rather than mental health issues, relationship problems, or dysf...
‘From Dallas, Texas’ by MJ WilliamsMy new book, The Velocity of Blood follows 17-year-old Jack Tolleson as he’s bullied online and offline, fat-shamed, victimized and finally thrown away and forgotten. One day in October, he breaks. In...
‘Witness for the Prosecution: Jumbo Saves the Day’ by JC BriggsI am always astonished by the interesting and extraordinary stories which turn up during my research for the Charles Dickens Investigations. Some things can’t be used and remain in the memory just as...
What if your father turned out to be a serial killer? asks Victoria SelmanMy latest thriller, Truly Darkly Deeply explores a serial killer’s legacy through the eyes of his daughter who, twenty years after his incarceration, still can’t be sure whether he’s actually guilty....
‘What makes great characters tick?’ asks AA ChaudhuriThere’s something about the psychological genre that sucks me in like no other. The pervading sense of dread, the flawed narrator(s), the tension between characters, along with an iconic twist, all ma...
‘CRIME FICTION IN THE BLITZ’ BY MIKE HOLLOWThe trouble with writing historical crime fiction is that it’s fiction, which means you make it all up, but it’s also set in the past, and if you get your history wrong it can really annoy the person...
Are you a saint or a sinner? asks Caroline EnglandWhen it comes to my psychological suspense novels, I’m a counsellor, therapist and particularly a psychologist. How I love to excavate my characters’ innermost thoughts and feelings and find out who t...
Writing about Food in FictionI love mysteries that talk of food. Some of my favourite series include the Inspector Chen Cao series by Qiu Xiaolong, which brings Chinese everyday cuisine to life, Mia P Manansala’s Tita Rosie...
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