The Crime Warp

Dear Reader,  The Character of Marshal Sweeney Delaney   I wrote Gangster in Our Midst (2017) to tell the neglected true Iowa story about the Italian man who came to my hometown in the 1920s—where he remained off and on for the next 60 years.  This was my first historical novel, and creating three-dimensional characters was new to me: Developing men, women and children whom the reader could visualize; plus, defining their back stories, what brought them to this stage of their lives.  I knew the town marshal would be the protagonist in the story, and his character would be based on William (Bill) Hahn, who had served as town marshal for over 30 years. (The antagonist, of course, would be the gangster, Louie La Cava.)  I recall the surge of excitement I felt realizing  Verlie , Bill Hahn’s eldest daughter, was still Betty with Verlie living. She had been born in the town in 1916 and never left—and a decade earlier, she had wri...

Longlists for the coveted 2020 CWA  Daggers will be revealed at noon on Friday  5 June for its ten categories, including non- fiction, short stories and debut crime fiction. The world-famous Crime Writers’  Association (CWA) Daggers, which honour  the very best in crime writing, are the oldest  awards in the genre. Created in 1955, the  CWA Daggers have been synonymous with  quality crime writing for over half a century. Past winners of the Gold Dagger (best  crime  novel) include Jane Harper, Mick  Herron,  Ann Cleeves, Ian Rankin, Belinda  Bauer and Val McDermid. The Daggers are  also renowned for showcasing new talent  with the coveted John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger, which in the past has spotted now  established names including Dreda Say Mitchell, Louise Welsh and Gillian Flynn. Judging year 2019-2020 has seen a major reorganisation of the Daggers’ judging panels  ...

Available here The Last Trial, as you may have surmised from the title is a legal thriller about a defense lawyer's final trial before retirement. However, that's not all it's about. Turow explores many themes in this weighty novel, but the essence of the case involves accusations of murder, insider dealing and faked cancer drug trial results.  Here's the blurb: From the bestselling author of  Presumed Innocent,  Scott Turow’s  The Last Trial  recounts the final case of Kindle County’s most revered courtroom advocate, Sandy Stern. Already eighty-five years old, and in precarious health, Stern has been persuaded to defend an old friend, Kiril Pafko. A former Nobel Prize-winner in Medicine, Pafko, shockingly, has been charged in a federal racketeering indictment with fraud, insider trading and murder. As the trial progresses, Stern will question everything he thought he knew about his friend. Despite Pafko's many failings, is he innocent of the terri...

Dear Reader,    I’ve been doing quite a bit of publicity lately for my genre releases, like the Cursed anthology, my short monster novel The Storm , my novella Blood Red Sky and The Colour of Madness movie tie-in – yes, there’s a feature coming soon based on something I wrote, it’s all very exciting! But when Liz kindly asked if I’d do a piece for Crime Warp I figured it was an opportunity to pen something about being a new crime writer who is not only launching crime novels in lockdown, but currently writing my third thriller.               When all of this chaos was kicking off, my better half Marie and I were down in London dealing with a family emergency I won’t go into here. We’d just done a signing at Forbidden Planet for Cursed , and my first crime novel as PL Kane – Her Last Secret , which Liz has said some lovely things about… thank you again, Liz – had just come out in paperback. We were lo...

Dear reader, I have a confession to make, I don’t think my family are blessed with great brains. In fact I’m sure we are not. I first began to think that when I was a kid of fourteen watching my grandma throwing bread crusts into the street for the pigeons and the Vicar came by and said, ‘Such a waste when you think of all the starving children in Africa.’ Grandma thought for a moment and replied, ‘Well I’ll have a go but I don’t think I can throw that far.’ It was apparent that grandma’s brain was....well...limited. We come from the East End, dad’s a docker, his dad was a docker in fact all the male members of the family were dockers. You didn’t need much brain power to unload a thousand Japanese colour televisions off a boat. The brain power was needed in working out how to smuggle one of them past the security gate. There was an upside of course, Xmas was fun. I had three brothers and two sisters and we always got what had come in on the last ship to doc...

  It's lovely to have Dave Sivers over here on The Crime Warp today ... of course we are maintinaing soical distance, yet despite that, Dave had provided us with a lovely selection of home made scones ... who'd have thought I'd be scoffing scones, drinking coffee and chatting with an old friend wearing my Hazmat suit. So, onto the interview... Liz: Tell us a bit about your current book release, Dave. Dave:  In Ink introduces a new protagonist, DI Nathan Quarrel, and is set in West Hertfordshire, especially the small market town of Tring and the larger town of Hemel Hempstead. It’s a serial killer chiller in which the killer’s MO includes a macabre calling card based on Tarot cards. Liz:  How long did In Ink take to write? Available here Dave: In the past I’ve been a pantser – I’ve known how the book opens, known how it will end, and flown from A to B by the seat of my pants. I found, though, that the first draft probably took longer than ...