The Crime Warp

Available here DI Clive Lussac has forgotten how to do his job. Ten years of embedded technology – ‘iMe’ – has led to complete control and the eradication of crime. Then the impossible happens. A body is found, and the killer is untraceable. With new partner Zoe Jordan, Clive must re-sharpen his detective skills and find the killer without technology, before time runs out for the next victim… If this blurb doesn't draw you in then I don't know what will. The Crime warp is delighted to feature a Q&A with Proximity author Jem Tugwell ... and he can certainly come again because he brought .... BISCUITS! Where did the inspiration for Proximity come from? From my dread that the world of Proximity is really close to happening. We already have companies in Sweden and the USA whose employees have embedded RFID chips, ‘smart’ motorways causing congestion, and every bit of weather being given a name. We have an overbearing nanny state looking to...

I have lived in Middlesbury, the fictional town that DCI Warren Jones plies his trade in, since 2011. I say lived in, because in many ways that's how I feel about the place I have spent so many hours imagining. Available here Setting my series in a fictionalised location was simple pragmatism – I can furnish Middlesbury with whatever I need to tell my story. And so now, eight books in and counting, I have a big, old rambling town with its own character and its own stories to tell. So, let me put on my red peaked cap, hoist my high-visibility umbrella, and take you on a guided tour of Middlesbury. Middlesbury is a small, seeming genteel, market town in North Hertfordshire (its name is a not-so subtle pun on the middle England that it originally epitomised). As we discover in the first book, The Last Straw , Middlesbury would appear to be worlds away from the mean streets of Coventry, where Warren Jones started his career. But in short order we have a brutal murder ...

It was quite by accident that I came across this delicious series. I saw Alexandra Sokoloff at Bloody Scotland 2018 on a panel about the portrayal of women in crime fiction and was impressed by her views about how us crime writers need to change the narrative of women as victims in the genre. Fast forward to a chance Facebook post telling me the newest one in The Huntress series Available here was due out, but with the warning not to read out of sequence and that was me ...  Now, series complete after a binge fest I'm just about able to articulate some of my thoughts about The Huntress. Crime fiction has always been about spotlighting what's wrong in society, about fearlessly exploring issues through our writing and reading, about observing and commenting on what's happening in society ... Sokoloff does all of these from a feminist perspective and hats off to her for saying it how it is.  Set gainst the back drop of #METOO, stories of male entitlement as...

DCS Palmer of the Met is a Londoner. Born in S London his Met career started on the East End beat in the 60’s and then as a young CID constable fighting the organised crime gangs of the Krays and Richardson’s amongst others and progressed to now, where as head of the Serial Murder Squad he fights retirement as hard as he fights crime. Sometimes in a current case an old adversary from the early days pops up. Not one to pull punches or give a hoot for political correctness if it hinders his inquiries Palmer has gone as far as he will go in the Met. and he knows it. Master of the one line put down and slave to his sciatica   he can be as nasty or as nice as he likes.    The mid 1990’s was a time of re-awakening for Palmer as the Information Technology East End revolution turned forensic science, communication and information gathering skills upside down. Realising the value of this revolution to crime solving Palmer co-opted Detective Sergeant Gheeta Singh,...

THEAKSTON FESTIVAL ROUNDS UP SIX SUSPECTS ON CRIME NOVEL AWARD SHORTLIST The shortlist for crime writing’s most wanted accolade, the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year, has been announced The shortlist in full: Belinda Bauer -  Snap Steve Cavanagh -  Thirteen Mick Herron -  London Rules Val McDermid -  Broken Ground Liam McIlvanney -  The Quaker Khurrum Rahman -  East of Hounslow Available here The shortlisted six were whittled down from a longlist of 18 titles. The prize, now in its 15 th  year, was created to celebrate the very best in crime fiction. Belinda Bauer, a previous winner of the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award for her novel  Rubbernecker  in 2014, is shortlisted with her 2018 Man Booker longlisted,  Snap . Snap , which is inspired by the murder of a pregnant woman, Marie Wilks, on the M50 in 1988 (the real-life crime remains unsolved), became...