The Crime Readers’ Association
The CRA website was set up by the Crime Writers Association. It’s free to subscribe and is full of information about crime writers, new novels, and there are often giveaways, too. I’m delighted that I’ve been asked to be the featured author for June. This involves writing four blog posts and the first one – […]
State of Emergency
‘One evening in 1969, [Ted Heath] the Leader of the Opposition invited five of Britain’s leading trade unionists, among them Vic Feather and Jack Jones, to dinner at his Albany flat . . . to his guests’ delight Heath was persuaded to show off his new piano, and even played a couple of short pieces. […]
Gone fishing
Well, not quite that, but I will be travelling for the next two weeks and won’t be blogging. At least, now that I have an e-reader, I don’t have to ponder about which books to take. I can take ALL OF THEM. Au revoir, dear readers.
Sue Hepworth, writer of romcoms, is my guest
My writing life – in fact, my life generally – would be so much poorer without my friend and fellow-writer, Sue Hepworth. Since we first met around fifteen years ago, we have each read and commented on everything the other has written and been each other’s staunch supporters in the vicissitudes of the writing life. […]
The pleasure of rereading Michael Gilbert’s crime novels
There are times when I just don’t have the energy to tackle something new, and a return to old favourites is exactly what I need. Michael Gilbert is fitting the bill at the moment. To read his novels is to take a masterclass in crime fiction. He wrote a lot: over 400 short stories and […]
Singled Out
I’ve very much enjoyed Virginia Nicholson’s Singled Out: How Two Million Women Survived Without Men after the First World War. It is the kind of gossipy, anecdotal history that is very easy to read. Nicholson has done an enormous amount of research. The pages throng with remarkable women who managed to find meaning in life without a […]
The Assassination of the Archduke
This book by Greg King and Susan Woolmans is subtitled: ‘Sarajevo 1914 and the Murder that Changed the World.’ It was recommended by Elaine at http://randomjottings.typepad.com. I decided that it was something I didn’t know enough about. It did after all set in train a sequence of events that led to the deaths of millions, including my […]
10 Books that have made me laugh
Today Moira at ClothesinBooks.com and I are posting our list of books that have made us laugh. Mine are, in no particular order: Three Men in a Boat, by Jerome K. Jerome. A classic. I particularly love the part where they try to open a tin of pineapple without a tin-opener, and Uncle Podger hanging a picture, […]
An Officer and a Spy
Robert Harris’s novel, An Officer and a Spy, has won the CWA Ian Fleming Gold Dagger for the best thriller of the year and deservedly so. It is a masterly fictional account of the Dreyfus affair, one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in history. I have been intrigued by it since I came across it […]
Crimewriter Sarah Rayne is my guest
I love a theatrical mystery, so Sarah Rayne’s Ghost Song, set in the vividly realised Tarleton theatre on London’s Bankside, has been on my TBR pile for a while. I’ve just finished it and loved all the details of the old music hall shows, the terrific creepiness of the old theatre at night, and the can’t-stop-reading suspense. Sarah […]