Moggach the Magnificent
I have four prints hanging over my desk in the room where I work. This is one of them:
I brought that print back from the Prado after a short break in Madrid (the one in Spain, not the one …
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 …
Lake of Echoes by Liza Perrat
Can it really be two years since I reviewed The Lost Blackbird by Liza Perrat? Yes, it seems it is. But the two years were worth it because they gave her time to write Lake of Echoes. When you …
Still Life with a Vengeance by Jan Turk Petrie
It seems like so long ago that I first read The Old Boys by William Trevor. And, in fact, it IS a long time ago – fifty-seven years, in fact. Where have they gone? I became a lifelong fan …
A Long Shadow by H L Marsay
Every serious reader from time to time picks up (or, in this case, downloads) books they haven’t heard of by writers they also haven’t heard of. That’s how I came to read this book. Quite often – I might almost …
Running Behind Time by Jan Turk Petrie
I’ve expressed my admiration for Jan Turk Petrie as a writer in the past. She has a very wide range: Dystopian Nordic Noir (I’m not sure, but I think she may have invented this genre); historical fiction; contemporary fiction – …