Splendid reprints of a forgotten GA author
On a morning early in 1940 Mrs Mudge, the charlady, arrives at Lulverton Little theatre, home of the local amateur dramatic society, whose first performance of Measure for Measure is due to take place that evening. She goes into the box office: ‘with the still whining vacuum-cleaner dragging behind her like an unhappy dog on […]
Criminal Pursuits
Criminal Pursuits, edited by best-selling author Samantha Lee Howe, will be published on October 10th by Telos Publishing, and I am very happy to say that I have a story in it. The royalties are going to an excellent cause: to quote from their website: ‘POhWER is a charity which helps people who, because of […]
Martin Edwards The Crooked Shore
The Crooked Shore got off to a splendid start. I always enjoy a cold case enquiry. Twenty-one years ago, Ramona Smith left the bar in Bowness where she worked and was never seen again. No body was ever found, but there was plenty of circumstantiai evidence and it all pointed to Gerry Lace as her […]
Who are you going to call?
It’s the 1930s and after making a will in your favour, your great-uncle has been found in the library with a dagger through his heart. You didn’t do it, but your fingerprints are on the hilt. Or maybe someone you love has been convicted of murder and condemned to death. You have only weeks to […]
A battle of wits?
Recently my old friend Pauline reminded me that when we were teenagers, we used to read Agatha Christie together and try to work whodunit. We must have been thirteen or fourteen years old. We would even draw up lists of suspects and clues. I had forgotten all about that. And I can’t remember whether we ever […]
Proustian moments
I’ve been thinking about perfumes and how evocative both can be, since I read that Joanne Harris wears a different scent for every book she writes and uses it to get into the zone. I have sometimes done the same. And this reminded me of something I wrote years ago about perfumes and their names. […]
The Blitz Spirit?
Last year comparisons were often made between the pandemic and the Blitz in WWII. I thought of that recently as I read Margaret Kennedy’s Where Stands a Winged Sentry, her splendid memoir of the months between May and September 1940, when German invasion appeared imminent and it seemed likely that Britain would lose the war. […]
I’ve started, so I’ll finish?
Certainly there was a time when I felt duty-bound to finish a book once I had started it. I am not quite sure when that stopped. Certainly I felt that way as a conscientious student doing an English degree. Once I had started something – Paradise Lost, War and Peace, all Shakespeare’s plays which I […]
Writing in lockdown, or Cassandra redux
Or should that be NOT writing, or at least, not writing a great detail. Last year’s tally included two short stories and a fair amount of work on a novel, including a lot of research and a synopis. However to date I have only written about 5,000 words of that novel. Not a lot to […]
Sarah Ward, also writing as Rhiannon Ward, is my guest
I loved Sarah’s first four novels which were police procedurals set in the Peak District where we both live. Her most recent novel, The Quickening, is a gripping and atmospheric Gothic tale, published under the name Rhiannon Ward. It’s a pleasure to interview her. Your most recent novel, The Quickening, is a new departure. Where […]