Crime Fiction Lover

Originally created by Raymond Chandler, Philip Marlowe has inspired legions of hardboiled PIs. His clipped storytelling style is often mimicked but never bettered. So when a skilled author like Joe Ide comes along and writes a novel about the character, we sit up and pay…

After exposing the machinations within an amateur dramatics group in her bestselling debut novel The Appeal, Janice Hallett turns her attention to the sinister side of classic children’s literature in The Twyford Code. While Hallett revamped the epistolary novel format with The Appeal by telling…

Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt and psychoanalyst Dr Max Liebermann resume their crime-solving collaboration in season two of Vienna Blood, which is available to stream in the US via PBS Masterpiece on Prime Video. Based on the popular Liebermann novels by Frank Tallis, this is a fascinating…

Former newspaper journalist Emma Christie is a crime author whose reputation is growing. Her first novel, The Silent Daughter, was close to winning a number of awards in 2021 and her second, Find Her First, is another wonderful read. It can be described as a…

Best known to crime fiction lovers for his starring roles in the likes of Sherlock and Fargo, Martin Freeman is stepping into very different shoes for The Responder, written by author Tony Schumacher and set in Liverpool, which launches on BBC One at 9pm on…

The American mystery writer Dean Koontz returns, and he’s created an enigmatic new protagonist – but that’s not all we’ve got for you in our new books report this week. Another returnee is British writer Louise Welsh along with her Glaswegian auctioneer Rilke, and there…