The Crime Warp

Available  here Opening a Ruth Galloway/ Harry Nelson book is like Christmas has come early.  I've followed this series for years and love the gentle blend of police procedural and archaeology with a dash of mysticism thrown in for good measure.  In The Chalk Pit human bones are discovered in an underground tunnel in Norwich. When Ruth discovers they are recent bones with cut marks indicating possible cannibalism, it becomes a murder inquiry - enter DI Harry Nelson stage right.   When a rough sleeper approaches Harry to report his friend, fellow rough sleeper, Babs, missing and then soon after is stabbed to death himself harry is involved in both a murder investigation and a missing persons one. All the trails seem to lead to the underground tunnels. The things I enjoyed most about The Chalk Pit are: 1/ The way Griffiths weaves an entire thread of underground, references based in both fact and the world of fiction.  It makes...

Available  here It gives me great pleasure to host Abi Curtis' Blog Tour for her debut novel Water & Glass on The Crime Warp today.  Abi's blog tour runs from 30th November till 7th December.  Today she is going to give us five reasons to do a creative writing course, which as I've just started my own PHD at Leeds Trinity University is particularly interesting for me.

Have you got the stomach to read about disappeared children and extreme abuse? Are you prepared to be plunged into a horrifying scenario? Yes? Then you will be interested in the following three books, each immersing you in a mother’s absolute nightmare.  Here and Gone by Haylen Beck (Harvill Secker, 2017) An intriguing thriller about a woman and her two children who are plunged into a nightmare of harrowing evil. This sort of book is the type often turned into film, and it seems it has already been picked up by James Shamus, a prominent screen writer and producer (Brokeback Mountain and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). (Haylen Beck is the pen name of Stuart Neville, author of the Serena Flanagan detective series set in Belfast) 99 Red Balloons – by Elisabeth Carpenter, (Avon, 2017) Two young girls go missing – twenty years apart. Is there a connection? If you are up for an emotional rollercoaster ride, then this psychological thriller is for you. An exc...

‘I am guilty. I killed somebody because   I didn’t know how else to help my family. I must be punished for that and I will bear my punishment with humility.’  Would you give your life for someone else? Most societies have a concept of sacrifice. The West, to a large extent based on Judeo-Christian values, has a strong archetype of self sacrifice. You may have already considered who you, hypothetically, would give your life for. But would you kill for someone else? Would you bear both the weight of the guilt and the punishment meted out by our justice system for the sake, of say, your family? In this fascinating and well written psychological thriller set in Germany, Kurbjuweit introduces the neighbour from hell, a police force unwilling to help and a family threatened to the core of their sanity and living in fear. And a murder.  If, like me, you have had a neighbour from hell, you will thrill at this murder, revel in it, rejoice that it was committe...

John Grisham has another first – a crime book written - not for the usual suspects, but for crime authors and want-to-be bookshop owners. Camino Island brings the world of crime into the heart of the literary scene. Once again Grisham, this time as author, rather than lawyer, writes what he knows about and paints for us the world of authors, the book signing circuit, bookshop owners and the struggles of getting published. Get to know the ins and outs of running a successful bookshop, what life is like for a struggling author, the incestuous world of publishing and the shenanigans that this literary universe contains.   Grisham also outlines writing do´s and don´ts – a useful quick guide to the aspiring crime writer-reader!  The theft of Scott F. Fitzgerald’s priceless original manuscripts, which are stolen from Princeton University, form the backdrop of the story which takes us to the resort town of Camino Island, Florida. There we enter the world of the flamboyant b...