The Crime Warp

Crime author Don Winslow has been announced as the first headliner in Harrogate. The Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival has announced the New York King of Crime, Don Winslow, will be a Special Guest. In the first announcement from the festival’s 2018 Programming Chair – the fellow blockbusting author Lee Child - Winslow will join the line-up of up to 90 authors at the festival, which takes place 19-22 July in Harrogate. Winslow has sold over 100 million books worldwide. His latest, The Force, about a corrupt New York cop, has earned him the best reviews of his career. Don Winslow said: “I’m really thrilled to be coming to the UK. I’ve heard great things about the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival from my dear friend Lee Child who was kind enough to invite me to come this year. It's always great to hang out with Lee and I look forward to meeting the authors, readers and booksellers who will be attending the festival.”

What a year 2017 has been for fantastic crime fiction.  I've read so many fab CF books and i haven't managed to get round to reviewing them all. So, here's a sixtet of books I loved in 2017 and just didn't get round to reviewing. - there are more to come in early January as I 'm running well behind on  my reviews.  Available  here Sirens by Joseph Knox Don't you just love a flawed protagonist and don't you just love them more when the odds are stacked firmly against them?  With Aiden Watts your heart is in your mouth throughout.  This is a fast paced, brilliantly formatted book with convincing scene setting and a fab hero - you'll love it. Don't Look Behind You by Mel Sherratt Available here   Everything Sherratt touches seems to turn to gold and Don't Look Behind You, is no exception.  Tense, brutal, fast paced and compelling it's absorbing from beginning to end.  Eden Berrisford is in the thic...

We know so little of the life of William Shakespeare. Some have even questioned his very existence. Where did he get his ideas from for say, The Merchant of Venice or The Two Gentlemen of Verona or even Romeo and Juliet? As far as we know, Shakespeare never left the country. But what if he had? What if a young William had travelled to Italy in the company of two fellow Englishmen as a sort of assistant spy? What if he had stayed in Venice and Verona, associated with locals, perhaps even fallen in love with a local beauty, while gathering intelligence for his queen? What if he had to survive vicious attacks, escape plots on his life and evade the spies of a Pope determined to destroy the English heretic queen? Now, that would be an exciting read, wouldn’t it? Benet Brandreth did just that in his first two William Shakespeare thrillers. The Assassin of Verona follows on from The Spy of Venice . A young William Shakespeare (the year is 1585) is disguised as the steward of the...

Tis the season to be jolly' - well if you follow The Crime Warp you'll realise that, here on the blog, we also see Christmas as a time for reading criminally great crime fiction, so it is fitting that the last two books to be reviewed before 'Christmas' descends, are indeed all about that other Christmas tradition - Christmas Crimes, because we all know Christmas can be Murder!

I have a new friend. An Essex girl of all people! Rosie Strange, the protagonist of the Essex Witch Museum Mysteries (Strange Sight is the second and I enjoyed it as much as the first, if not even more so). Rosie has the perfect attributes for being my friend: a good dose of self-awareness coupled by an equally strong dose of self-acceptance. Yet there is still plenty of scope for mystery.  Descending from a line of people with reputedly extra-sensory gifts, she is firmly rooted in scepticism. Working with (and perhaps having a crush on) Sam, the museum curator and investigator of the paranormal, forces her to confront uncomfortable phenomena, with even a gruesome murder thrown in. It would take more than that though, to shake an Essex girl, unless her blingy boots get scratched in the process or a manicured nail gets broken.  Do you believe in ghosts? Well, at the last Harrogate Crime Writers’ Festival, I attended a panel discussion on murder mysteries and crime fic...

Available  here There's nothing quite like curling up with a Dallas/Roarke thriller on a cold, snowy December evening. Robb's skill as an author make her books flow with delightful elegance as she takes us to a futuristic New York where despite the after effects of a huge war, motives to kill remain very human: greed, jealousy, fear and revenge.  Secrets In Death begins with Eve Dallas witnessing the death by stabbing of a notorious gossip queen/radio/TV star, Larinda Mars. It soon becomes clear that not satisfied with her day job, Larinda has taken to doing a bit of blackmailing on the side.  Now Eve must sift through the woman's life to find out who her victims were and which of them took their revenge.  With the familiar cast of characters, Robb's In Death series never fails to amuse.  Her witty characterization and solid plots make this series light reading with a heartfelt emphasis on empathy and love. I whizzed through...

The Deaths of December by Susi Holliday ‘Have yourself a deadly little Christmas’ … an advent calendar is delivered to a police station. Each window contains the photo of a crime scene. Why would someone want to draw attention to murders? Dealing with the fall-out of a serial killer are a seasoned officer DS Eddie Carmine aka Scrooge – ‘…anything that can distract me from the hell that’s Christmas is a good thing’ and the new girl on the block, Becky, who loves Christmas. The dynamic between these two suggests this might be the first book of a new series of sparkling police procedural books. Published November 2017 by Mulholland Books / Hodder The Absence of Guilt by Mark Giminez If you like thrillers, then you might enjoy this American take on an impending ISIS attack on the Super Bowl. District Judge A. Scott Fenney, one of the last truly moral men among the jackals of the legal profession, has to tread the difficult line between imprisoning a suspect who mig...