Writers behaving badly
SHARP, SLY, AND IMPOSSIBLE to put down, The Book Game is a biting, often funny exploration of friendship, ambition, class, rivalry, missed chances and the reckless pull of desire. Its modern-day setting is Hawton Manor, in the lush Cambridgeshire countryside. Successful egomaniac Cambridge professor Lawrence and his wealthy stay-at-home wife Claudia host eight close friends...
The dark side of the mirror
“One thing needs to be made clear. I did not kill my twin sister.” SO BEGINS LIANN ZHANG’s fiercely entertaining debut Julie Chan Is Dead. The novel charts the hair-raising fortunes of the eponymous narrator, an impoverished grocery store cashier, after she responds to an apparent cry for help from her estranged twin sister Chloe...
Truth, love and justice
A MISSING-PERSON THRILLER, a study in grief, and a courtroom drama is the easiest way to pitch Imran Mahmood’s latest novel, but it is so much more. A profoundly devastating love story emerges as parents find themselves trapped in no-man’s-land. Harry and Zara’s 18-year-old daughter has been missing for six weeks, and the police aren’t...
The heron and the snake
THERE WAS ONE DAY where we took a drive in Lee’s van, piling all in the back. We were all the same knees and elbows, like one of us had six instead of only two apiece. We were close with each other then like that. Then we didn’t have anywhere to go so Lee just...
Friends and traitors
IMAGINE A GROUP OF BEST FRIENDS from university, now in their early forties, reuniting for a weekend to celebrate their enduring friendship. But this isn’t just any reunion – they’re about to open predictions they made about each other twenty years ago. This is the intriguing premise of Holly Watt’s sophisticated crime thriller, a page-turner...
Black Country noir
WHEN I SIT DOWN TO WRITE, I always – and I mean always – wonder why it is that I sort of default to ‘the dark side’, and why said dark side always positions itself in my writing here, where I live – where I actually live – in the Black Country. You probably don’t...
Pulling it all together
Writing has always been my thing. Back when I was a crime reporter in the US, picking my way across murder scenes and figuring out how to get blood out of my shoes, I was there because I wanted to write. And when I worked in communications for the British government, trying to persuade spies...
Dark mysteries on Gothic shores
I grew up on the island of Guernsey, in a house perched high on a cliff, and much as I’ve always loved the sea, I know to be afraid of it. I’ve watched how quickly a calm, clear morning can be swallowed by a storm, how a rogue wave or rip tide will catch you...
Before my story had a hero, it had a villain
My debut novel, The Grief Doctor, follows Arthur Mason, a man consumed by the recent loss of his wife Julia. In the pit of his desperation, a lifeline descends in the form of Dr Elizabeth Codelle, a visionary psychiatrist with a private practice off the North Wales coast. Seeking an end to his turmoil, Arthur...
Bent coppers
Remember when the police used to be the good guys? From virtuous sheriffs in Westerns willing to lay down their life in a last-gasp shoot-out, to honest and methodical detectives such as Inspector French in Freeman Wills Crofts’ classic series of books, these were the people we depended on to keep us safe. But the...
Debts I owe to books
I owe a lot to books. Some have been my teachers, others my emotional and psychological mentors, many my companions in escapism. Quite a few have been money-earners, friend-bringers, pain-resolvers, eye-openers. This is a brief survey of my top ten debts and to which special volumes I owe them. I almost died of pneumonia when...
A Tartan Noir original
I first encountered Bill Knox in a second-hand bookshop in Inverness, twenty-odd years after his death. I was browsing the shelves while hiding from the inevitable Autumn Highland rain, idly looking for nothing in particular. Randomly, I pulled out a battered old hardback and read the title: Death Department. Intrigued, I flicked through a few...
