A man sails to Ranaig, an obscure, fictional Scottish island. He’s on a mission to kill. He’d been working out how to kill Wallace Lockhart for months, evolving and discarding plans one after the other till his researches had eventually led him to this. It matched his existing skills, it embraced elements of poetic justice,…
You’re riding in your self-driving car when suddenly the doors lock, the route changes and you have lost all control. Then, a mysterious voice tells you, “You are going to die.”
Arthur Maling’s 1979 novel The Rheingold Route may hold the dubious distinction of being the least remembered book to ever win the Edgar Award for best novel of the year. It is a challenge to find anyone who has heard of it, let alone read it. A 2019 internet search turns up virtually nothing besides…
With centuries of history to dive into, the U.K. has borne some of the most notorious serial killers the world has ever seen. But it’s the streets of London that have seen the grisliest goings-on. From as far back as the early 1800s, the once poverty-stricken areas either side of the River Thames have witnessed…
For a writer, obsessions are more useful than ideas. One of mine is true crime. I’m a sucker for it. As a teen, my copy of Helter Skelter, Vincent Bugliosi’s account of prosecuting the Manson murderers, was thumbed to the point of disintegration, and I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, Michelle McNamara’s exploration of her…
A Dangerous Collaboration, the fourth installment of Deanna Raybourn’s Veronica Speedwell Mysteries, has everything a mystery reader could want: a spooky castle on a shadowy isle, a missing bride, and a murderer. In their fourth outing, A Dangerous Collaboration by Deanna Raybourn, Veronica (the semi-legitimate daughter of the Prince of Wales) and Stoker (aka the Honourable Revelstoke…
The Smiling Man by Joseph Knox is the second thriller in the Aiden Waits series set in the seedy streets of Manchester. Readers that like their crime fiction with a heavy helping of darkness will find a lot to love in Joseph Knox’s knockout follow-up to Sirens. DC Aiden Waits is not a favorite of…
I don’t quite know how it happened, but in 2016, I noticed a shift in my own tastes. It happened as a gradual thing and snuck up on me—it was only when I saw that my to-be-read pile had changed complexion did I notice it. I’m sure a lot of authors have two separate TBR…
Most of us love the idea of islands—their beauty, their singularity, their separation from the wider world. And, of course, we all believe that life may somehow be easier on islands, more laid back, simpler, even Edenic. But islands have their dark side, too. And just as most of us are drawn to the mythic…
Archaeological excavations are underway at Oxford, and the student diggers have unearthed something they probably didn’t expect to find: a dead body wrapped in recycling bags. It’s enough to send police cars screaming to the scene, followed at a slightly less frantic pace by Inspector Lewis (Kevin Whately) and his no-longer-unrequited love, pathologist Laura Hobson…
