Present tense? It’s happening right now!
The other day I was browsing in a bookshop and picked up a crime novel that has been well reviewed. I opened it and it was written in the present tense. Back it went on the shelf. It was the same with the next one I looked at. Is it just me, or are more novels […]
Whistle Up the Devil
I do like a locked room mystery and I can heartily recommend Derek Smith’s Whistle Up the Devil (1953) and newly republished. It’s a fairly short novel, which for me is in its favour, and I read most of it over the course of a train journey. It is a familiar set-up – family curse, eldest […]
Seeing one’s book in a charity shop
I have to admit that this rarely happens to me. My first three novels, the ones featuring Cassandra James in Cambridge, were published only in hardback with shortish print runs (they are now all available as e-books, I hasten to add) and it’s mostly paperbacks in charity shops. The last one, Invisible, was available as a paperback, but […]
I’ve got a new publisher
This blog is mainly about other people’s books, but when momentous happens in my writing life, well, it’s only human to want to mention it. I’m thrilled to be able to say that I have just signed a contract for a two-book deal with Lion Hudson. They’re bringing out my new crime novel in October in the […]
The Tortoise and the Hare
More blog fun for me and Moira over at Clothesinbooks.com. This time we decided that I would pick a book for us both to read and that, without consulting, we would each blog about it on the same day and link our posts. Moira will chose next time. My choice is Elizabeth Jenkins’ 1954 novel, […]
R.I.P. Billy
It was nearly eighteen years ago at the end of January 1998 when a small, long-haired cat turned up at our back door. He was cold and hungry and desperate. We already had two cats. My husband said, ‘if you let that cat in, he’ll be here for good.’ And he was. He wasn’t small for […]
The Japanese have a word for it . . .
Tsundoku means ‘leaving a book unread after buying it, typically piled up with other unread books.’ I don’t know how I have done without this word. I discovered it in Lost in Translation: An Illustrated Compendium of Untranslatable Words from around the World by Ella Frances Sanders. I got this book for Christmas and there are […]
Another birthday! It’s criminal …
My book-buying moratorium has only five days to go. It’s my birthday this week and that has made the wait easier. My daughter gave me Silent Nights: Christmas Mysteries, edited by Martin Edwards, which I had been longing for. And what a splendid collection it is, well worth the wait. Of course there are a […]