More on my moratorium
I did buy a book this week, but let me explain. I’ve decided that there has to be one exception to my non-book-buying rule and it’s this: I really can’t go to a book launch and not buy a book. It just wouldn’t feel right. And to turn down an invitation to a book launch because I’m […]
The Adventures of Moriarty
I always enjoy writing a story to a brief and ‘The Mystery of the Missing Child’ was no exception. I’d been thinking for a while that I’d like to try my hand at a Sherlock Holmes pastiche. So when Maxim Jakubowski put out a call for stories featuring Holmes’s arch-enemy, Professor Moriarty, ‘the Napoleon of […]
How I bought a book by accident
I’ll come on to how I did that in a minute. It’s two weeks now since I decided to have a three month moratorium on book-buying. It hasn’t been easy and yesterday I would have probably succumbed if it hadn’t been for the thought of having to own up to the lapse on this blog. I […]
A book on punctuation makes me laugh out loud
‘A couple I’ll call Penny and Jeter come out to my bungalow in Rockaway and proceed to devour the cheries I’ve put out in a bowl on the table. Jeter says, “Don’t put a bowl of cherries in front of Penny and I.” I am not about to snatch the cherries away unless Jeter learns […]
Ten novels set in the theatre
Along with my good blogfriend Moira at http://clothesinbooks.blogspot.co.uk I am posting my list of ten novels with theatrical settings. Theatres are closed communities of people engaged in a very stressful profession and so make wonderful settings – for crime novels in particular. Actors are good at lying. Deceiving people is what they do for living. And […]
Why don’t people close their curtains in crime dramas?
Time for some more crime fiction clichés. Last Saturday’s episode of Beck began with a gangster and his family narrowly escaping being shot. Later, at home at night, he is an easy target standing next to a picture window in a well-lit room and is picked off by a sniper. Surely closing the curtains or blind […]
A great artist
I didn’t expect a great deal from the Ai Weiwei exhibition at the RA, but I happened to be in London on the day of one of the Friends previews, so I thought I’d go. So often I am a little disappointed by contemporary art, but not this time. For me the most moving work […]
Crime fiction clichés
On Saturday night I was watching Beck on BBC4. At one point Beck arrives at the house of a woman whose friends have reported her missing. He rings the bell, no answer, and touches the door which swings open. And I wondered, do killers and kidnappers never think to lock the door when they leave? […]