Features

Crime graphic novels: Five of the best

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Back in 1986, the wildfire success of Frank Miller’s stunning comic Batman: The Dark Knight Returns led publishers to take a serious look again at comics and graphic novels as a format for delivering gritty crime stories. While most graphic novels remain in the realm…
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Features

Interview with Pierre Lemaitre

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Pierre Lemaitre is fast becoming one of the most respected and versatile writers in France. After enjoying huge popular success with his award-winning crime fiction, in 2013 he went on to win the Prix Goncourt, the highest literary prize in France, for his moving novel…
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Features

Interview: Peggy Blair

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Based in Ottawa, Peggy Blair had a career as a human rights lawyer before she became a crime novelist. Though she battled to get it published, her debut The Beggar’s Opera (Midnight in Havana here in the UK) won plaudits far behond Canada’s borders and…
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Features

A classic revisited: The Big Bow Mystery

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The Big Bow Mystery by Israel Zangwill wasn’t the first locked room mystery ever published. That accolade goes to Edgar Allen Poe’s short story, The Murders in the Rue Morgue in 1841. However the 1892 book is widely regarded as the first full length novel…
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Features

A classic revisited: Call for the Dead

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For 53 years, David Cornwell has been publishing under his pseudonym John le Carré. He originally adopted the name because he was writing about fictional spies while toiling in his day job for the British Intelligence Service. Such literary excursions probably wouldn’t be allowed today….
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Features

Interview: Adrian McKinty

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Oxford, Denver, New York, Melbourne and even Israel – Adrian McKinty has lived all over the place. However, it’s the streets of Belfast, where he grew up, that form the rainy and menacing setting in his latest series of crime novels. The books centre around…
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