I Blame the Parents
Who would have thought I’d be stricter than a Victorian mama? One of the pleasures of getting older is rereading old favourites and finding that you see them from a different angle. I am currently listening to Timothy West reading (superbly) The Small House at Allington, which I first read in my twenties. I naturally identified […]
I Actually Wore This
I was going to write that it is a long time since a book review made me cry with laughter. But on reflection I don’t think a book review has ever made me cry with laughter. Not until I read a review of I Actually Wore This: Clothes We Can’t Believe We Bought by Tom […]
Little Bones by Sam Blake
Attending what seems to be a routine break-in at the home of artist, Zoe Grant, Detective Garda Cathy Connolly makes a grisly discovery: an old wedding dress with a baby’s bones sewn into its hem. And then the dress’s original owner, Zoe’s grandmother, is found dead in a Dublin suburb. Cathy and her team struggle […]
Bodies from the Library
Bodies from the Library has become an annual event. I went for the first time last year and thoroughly enjoyed it, so I was delighted to be invited to speak this year. Sarah Ward and I will be talking about ‘Forgotten Women Authors’. Sarah’s choice is Elizabeth Daly and mine is Ethel Lina White. I’ve already […]
Margot Kinberg
It’s a great pleasure to have Margot Kinberg as my guest on the blog today. Margot’s wonderful blog, Confessions of a Mystery Novelist, is a must-read for me and many other fans of crime fiction. Her knowledge of crime fiction is encyclopaedic, she blogs every day – yes, every day! – and yet her standard never […]
Getting out of the house
Writing a novel is of necessity a solitary occupation. It is important to get out of the house sometimes. So it was that last Friday I headed off to Edinburgh to the Crime Writers Association conference. I was born and grew up on the north-east coast and am always happy to find myself heading north […]
Agatha Christie’s The Pale Horse: funny AND scary
Mark Easterbrook goes to see his writer friend, Mrs Oliver, to ask her to open a church fête. Mrs Oliver “in a state apparently bordering on insanity, was prowling around the room, muttering to herself . . . ‘But why,’ demanded Mrs Oliver of the universe, ‘why doesn’t the idiot say at once that he saw the […]
The Flight from Solihull
On Wednesday the train I caught from Sheffield to Oxford went through Solihull and I felt a deep sense of relief even after all these years that I didn’t have to get off the train and go to work there. It was a long time ago – so long that people were still allowed to smoke […]
‘When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d’
A week or two ago my dear friend Deb sent me this message and link: First verse of Walt Whitman’s poem, as recited by a very old soul: http://whitmanalabama.com/verses/1. Do check it out: it’s wonderful. Deb didn’t say what the poem was and it turned out to ‘Song of Myself.’ But the poem by Whitman that had […]
If only cats could type . . .
Freddie got off to a bad start in life. He was the only survivor of a litter born outdoors. A kind woman took him in, but her cat and dog wouldn’t accept him, and he ended up at a rescue centre, which is where we found him. Perhaps that is why he is so companionable now […]