The Pantser’s Life For Me: To Plot or Not to Plot
I began one of my books with the sentence, “All I’d said was, I wouldn’t mind seeing her in her knickers.” That was all I had – except the pantser’s abiding thought: “That sounds like an interesting book. I wonder …
Genre Writing: Defying the Police Procedural Rules
Writers of genre fiction who don’t give readers exactly what they expect from that genre can pay a heavy price. It’s generally accepted by authors that writers of “literary fiction” can write their own rules, but if you write genre …
The Neon Lawyer by Victor Methos
So good it could be British crime fiction
I read an enormous amount of crime fiction – English, Scottish, (I’m not going to say British because Scottish, English and Welsh crime fiction are very different from each other), Irish, American, …
The Undiscovered Deaths of Grace McGill By C S Robertson
Crime Fiction Doesn’t Get Much Better Than This
Craig Robertson was a new writer to me, and this was one of those serendipitous discoveries for which you thank the fates. I can’t remember what led me to this book, but …
The Darkness by Ragnar Jónasson Translated by Victoria Cribb
It’s a broccoli book – and I hate broccoli
If, like me, you were raised in a book loving family, one of the things you were taught at an early age was that books, once started, should be finished. You …
4½ Stars for Rules for Perfect Murders by Peter Swanson
This is a very clever book on a number of levels. Peter Swanson has pulled off two very difficult tricks in one book:
- He has made us care about a character who, if not actively dislikeable, has nothing to commend
Darkness Comes – What Genre Is It?
You have to have a genre
There’s a question that every writer has to answer about every book. The question is: What genre is it? Readers want to know, because readers have firm opinions about the genres they like and …
You don’t need testicles to put yourself first
When my daughter was nine, we moved house. For the previous year or so she had told us that her ambition was to be a doctor; she returned home on the first day at her new school and said she …
Moriarty Meets His Match by Anna Castle
I came to this book, the first in the Professor and Mrs Moriarty Mystery Series, because I so much enjoy the author’s Francis Bacon historical fiction series. The Moriarty books are different from the Francis Bacon books, as you would …