How do young lovers snatch time together in the 1930s? They play hide and seek, of course. But as a Christmas gathering in a great country house reaches its peak, one such game will result in murder, the unravelling of long hidden secrets and, potentially, a grave miscarriage of justice. What’s it about? When the […]
Dead Opposite the Church The factual title gives you a feel for how this crime novel will develop: facts are followed by facts and little intuition is needed to connect them, which is just as well, as our main protagonist is rather short on intuition… What’s it about? Edward Packman ran his weekly newspaper as […]
Puzzle fans rejoice: DI Manson is on the case. As part of their ongoing mission to revive excellent but neglected authors, Dean Street Press are reissuing some of the most entertaining golden age crime fiction. ‘Who Killed Dick Whittington’ (written by husband and wife writing team E. & M. A. Radford) is indeed a classic […]
‘I thought that love would last forever. I was wrong.’ So wrote Auden in his beautiful and haunting poem, ‘Funeral Blues’. But, what if it could? In these digital days of iPhones, iPads and iWatches, how far away are we from the possibility of an iRachel? Cass Hunter explores longing, loss, love and, erm, the […]
How do you make a witch? Sharon Bolton has some ideas, and her latest novel is a wonderfully chilling tale of conspiracy and murder in a small northern town at the foot of Pendle Forest. What’s it about? ‘I imagine that Patsy regained consciousness slowly, and that her first lucid thought was that she was […]
I’d not heard of Lisa Jackson before, but her books dominated a whole shelf on the library’s crime section, so I thought her books would be worth a read. Unfortunately, by the time I had finished reading the prologue, I was already feeling reservations… What’s it about? Dr Kacey Lambert was once targeted by a […]
Sleep. We know we need it, yet most of us probably don’t get enough of it. As a society I think we’re probably pretty good at ruefully acknowledging the why we don’t get enough: maybe we had to stay up late to prepare for an important presentation the next day; maybe we work long, late […]
‘Perfect People’ is a stand-alone story by popular crime writer, Peter James, in which the political is made, and remains, intensely personal. What’s it about? Having lost their four year old son to a rare genetic disease, John and Naomi Klaesson seek out controversial geneticist Leo Dettore in an attempt to ensure their next child […]
I would love to run a bookshop. By which I mean I would love to live in one, arranging the books just so, dipping in and out of my favourite tomes, discovering new authors and titles as part of my job – what bliss it all seems! But of course, the reality would be rather […]
Snap decisions can be dangerous. We never meet Eileen Bright. Instead, we begin with a hot, airless car and her three small children: Jack, Joy and Merry. They fuss and bicker exactly as you would expect, but underneath their casual cruelties there is a deep fog of unease: their mother went to get help, but […]