Crime Fiction Lover

Judging by the amount of submissions we receive for news and reviews, crime fiction is doing very well indeed. They say people are reading less… well they’re not reading less crime fiction, lemmetellya. As a result, this week’s new books report barely scratches the surface…

Joanna Wallace’s debut novel, You’d Look Better as a Ghost, introduced one of the most delightfully unlikely protagonists in contemporary crime fiction: Claire, an artist, a grieving daughter and an unapologetic serial killer whose moral compass points in directions all her own. It is a…

At the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Festival held in Harrogate last month, I was lucky enough to get time to sit down and have a good old chinwag with a man described as Australia’s king of crime writing. Meeting Garry Disher was a pleasure; he’s…

Sometimes it’s nice to enjoy a wee dram as you soak in the ambiance of a cleverly crafted mystery novel, and Illicit Still by William McIntyre looks like it could be just the thing. What we have here is some Scottish crime fiction to go…

For the final book in his Russell Avery trilogy, Los Angeles Times investigative journalist James Queally returns to New Jersey – the Garden State – with a story which couldn’t be more topical or timely. The series has been dubbed ‘turnpike noir’ after the famous…

Authenticity is such an important quality in a police procedural crime novel. It’s an elusive quality in writing, too. As readers, we want to be captivated by the world the author gives us through the language they use, and to believe in it. This is…