The cultural climax that is the Brighton Festival has a new attraction this year – the Dark & Stormy crime festival. For the first time crime writers and fans will gather in the city that gave us Pinkie Brown, the trunk murders and the race track razor gangs. Attractions include talks by Brighton crime writer [...]
Good characters are central to a book. An idea flashes out of nowhere and you have a blank outline, people-shaped but empty. Then the work starts. What is their back story? What part do they play? What character traits drive their actions and emotions? Getting it right is vital. It often involves a lot of [...]
You hope your daughter will end up with a brain surgeon or an airline pilot so it’s a surprise to find a multiple killer in the family. Lorry driver by day, by night he is a ruthless assassin skilled in weapons and explosives. And he is not alone. Last time I watched him play he [...]
Guess who’s the guest book columnist in the March issue of Hertfordshire Life? And it's all crime. Reviewing books is almost as much fun as writing them. You have an instinctive personal reaction to each book but it’s only when you put keyboard to word document that you pause to clarify your thoughts. My first [...]
I keep bumping into dead friends on social media. A friend and colleague who died three years ago is still on Facebook. Linkedin is asking me to endorse the many talents of another friend who died at Christmas. Social media is young but it will soon become populated by an army of the undead. A [...]
Bogies are not really a working alternative to counting sheep in bed. I can hear the local railway line and it occurred that if I added up the number of gedunkadunk-gedunkadunks as a train crosses a set of points and divided by the number of bogies per carriage it would tell me how long the [...]
Arguments are rumbling on, very late in the day, about how the First World War should be commemorated. No one would want to see triumphalist events but the “Lions Led By Donkeys” versus “A Just War For Democracy” debate still rages with very little territory gained by either side. The “Great War” doesn’t have the [...]
Of all the words subjected to modern abuse the one that really annoys me is “professional”. Is anyone in need of medical help going to look for a “healthcare amateur”? When your laptop crashes are you going to consult an “IT amateur”? If you want skilled help it doesn’t seem unreasonable to expect the supplier [...]
Trying to stay cheerful while someone sticks a telescope up your bum is a challenge. Guys don’t like being fiddled with below the waist unless it’s for recreational purposes. But I’ve just lost a 60-year-old friend to bowel cancer so I think it’s worth biting the bullet and getting checked if you have any worries. [...]
Opening paragraphs for crime thrillers came up in conversation. I’ve never lined mine up in a row so I had a go. These are they: THE WRECK OF THE MARGHERITA: “He’d been surprised at the sound his father’s skull made when he split it with the axe. He wasn’t sure what he expected, maybe something [...]