Monday 23 April has been designated World Book Night 2012 and the charity effort will see 1,000,000 free books given to needy people in the United States, Ireland and Germany. It’s an effort to promote reading and to celebrate some great fiction authors, and a great idea to boot.

In each region different books are being distributed and if you visit the WBN website you’ll see the recommendations for Ireland. They’re all excellent, popular and accessible fiction books that their recipients should really enjoy. There are only a handful of crime fiction titles on the list though – Sleepyhead by Mark Billingham, The Road by Cormac McCarthy and The Take by Martina Cole. Other top non-crime authors appearing amongst the 25 titles include Stephen King, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and Iain M Banks.

Considering the popularity of crime fiction at the moment, we’re a little surprised there aren’t more titles from our favourite genre on there. So we’re busy compiling our own, alternative, all-crime list of recommendations for World Book Night. Plus, we’ve got an interview with top British crime author, the creator of Thorne, none other than Mark Billingham on the way.