Reviews

‘Christine Poulson’s wonderful sense of place brings Cambridge to life. Cassie overcomes the problems facing her with wit and guile aplenty and ensures the reader’s empathy from first word to last . . . an enthralling and engaging read that underlines Christine’s burgeoning reputation as a crime novelist to watch.’ [Stage Fright]

- SHOTS MAGAZINE

The Rector’s Daughter

This 1924 novel by F. M. Mayor was chosen by listeners to Radio 4 as a neglected classic in response to an appeal by OPEN BOOK and it is currently being serialized as A Book at Bed-Time. This got me thinking and I got my paperback copy – a Penguin Modern Classic – down from […]

Wallander and film noir

This blog is mostly about reading, and sometimes about writing, but I do watch DVDS and TV as well. I have tended though to watch less and less TV over the years. There is hardly anything I like these days, not even dramatizations of the classics. I prefer to hang on to my own idea […]

Bodies in the Bookshop

More about that in a moment, but first I want to lament the passing of an old friend. Over the years I must have bought dozens of books from Galloway and Porter. They stocked remaindered books and were especially strong – from my point of view – on fiction, art history, cookery and guide books. […]

Paradise

‘I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library’ wrote Jorge Luis Borges. Me, too. A week or two ago I was in the London Library and it occurred to me that this is very nearly my favorite place on earth. Libraries have always been very special places to me. I wrote […]

CADS

CADS stands for a periodical called Crime and Detective Stories, ‘an irregular magazine of comment and criticism about crime and detective stories,’ to use the editor’s own words. It arrives through my letter-box around twice a year and and as I never know when it is going to appear, it always comes as a pleasant […]