Trevor Wood: A race against time and memory
With The Silent Killer, acclaimed author Trevor Wood introduces a new series of gripping Newcastle-set police procedurals. Seasoned detective DCI Jack Parker is battling early-onset Alzheimer’s as he races against time to solve a string of revenge killings – while seeking to conceal his diagnosis from both family and colleagues. THIS HIGH-STAKES CRIME NOVEL begins...
Locked-room mysteries
Back in the day, a ‘locked-room mystery’ meant exactly that – a murder behind not only closed, but locked doors, ostensibly impossible to commit, and thus a mechanical conundrum to unpick. Think Gaston Leroux’s Le mystère de la chambre jaune (1907), or even Arthur Conan Doyle’s personal favourite of all his Sherlock Holmes stories, ‘The Adventure...
Many a woman scorned
If Sarah Vaughan possessed a secret superpower I’d hazard to guess that it was precognition. The storyline of her latest novel Anatomy of a Scandal could have been plucked from today’s newspaper headlines. To label the work as a political thriller would be missing the point, as it is so much more than that. Deftly...
Laura Lippman: No more heroes
Laura Lippman’s latest novel is set in the Maryland suburb of Wilde Lake, Columbia, twenty miles west of Baltimore, where she lived and went to school in the 1970s. The ‘new town’ of Columbia was founded as a well-meaning experiment in egalitarian community living – which in retrospect was always likely to fail. With deliberate...
Think smarter
Laura Lippman’s latest novel Hush Hush sees her ballsy Baltimore private detective Tess Monaghan as a flustered new parent plunged into a disturbing case involving the death of an infant and a venomous stalker. She shares her tips on maintaining suspense in crime fiction by keeping readers sympathetic, engaged and always on the alert. 1. Don’t be...
