Nothing Tra La La?

"My gnomic utterances," said Fen severely, "reduce themselves to three: that I do not believe in the crime passionnel ; that ...

The idea of mashing up detective fiction and sci-fi isn't new. Isaac Asimov did it in The Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun in the 1950s ...

I said in reviewing Martin Edwards' The Life of Crime last month that Patricia Highsmith had been "smuggling her snails in her bra...

This massive history of crime fiction and its creators, from William Godwin to PD James, is brilliant, rich and absorbing. It's especial...

Big Finish have released the cover and blurb for  Allies and Enemies , the trilogy of Blake's 7 audio plays out this December that incl...

"In all his time in camps and prisons, Ivan Denisovich had lost the habit of concerning himself about the next day, or the next year, o...

Disgusted, Mary Whitehouse will be broadcast on Radio 4 on Saturday 5 March. Produced by me and brother Thomas, it’s presented by Samira Ah...

I've been meaning to get to this mystery novel for years. The Dr is a fan of Josephine Tey, and also of Nicola Upson's series of nov...

Published in the UK today by Titan Books (and in the US on the 16th) , Sherlock Holmes - The Great War is my first novel in a while. The bl...

What a delight to be back in the world of Rivers of London , two years after I read the novella October Man  and little more than that since...

I've written about the 100 year-old movie  Das Cabinet des Dr Caligari in the August 2020 issue of the Lancet Psychiatry . You need to ...

The third Jackson Brodie novel (after  Case Histories and One Good Turn ) is another compelling read, by turns warm and funny, then utte...

In 1896, Holmes and Watson are called in to investigate the disappearance of Thomas Kellway from a locked room with a window in the door,...

"This Sherlock Homes story was published in 1890 so contains actions and attitudes reflective of the Victorian era in which it was ...

Yesterday, I attended Conan Doyle and London , a one-day symposium organised by the Institute of English Studies and linked to the forthcom...

After Case Histories  comes One Good Turn , which brings former soldier, cop and private detective Jackson Brodie out of retirement, ruin...

Old Baggage , which I loved, is a prequel to this brilliant, comic novel about bad behaviour during the Second World War. We begin a li...

Another delightful murder mystery starring Lord Peter Wimsey. Like Clouds of Witness , the story is about getting someone off  a charge o...