Crime fiction

It is tone-deaf of Rowling to write a killer who disguises himself in women's clothing, but we should be wary when one review in the Telegraph is reproduced without question

This year, my detective Vera Stanhope turns 21. She first appeared in 1999 in a book called The Crow Trap, which was conceived while I walked miles round the Northumberland countryside with my husband, Tim. He had suffered a major psychotic episode and been hospitalised. Though he'd been allowed home, he was still very poorly and very restless. Walking was the best remedy. It was autumn.  Read more

The popularity of Nordic noir may seem to be fading after its heyday of the early-2010s but Norway's biggest-selling author would beg to differ. Public tax information revealed that Jo Nesbø's two companies took in more than NOK 58 million ($6.5 million) in 2019, of which NOK 45.5 million ($5.1 million) was classed as book royalties.

I have a philosophy that I apply to writing crime fiction-a way that I think about what makes readers read, and also a way that I justify creating scenes that depict, for example, a vivid murder, a harrowing sexual assault, or a gut-wrenching child abduction.  Read more

One of my greatest thrills as a college student was when I was let into the intermediate-level creative writing workshop. You couldn't just sign up and walk in-you had to submit a short story good enough for the professor to deem you worthy. That first day, I sat around the rectangular table with my future colleagues and was handed a set of rules for the class.  Read more