What makes a really great crime novel?
In the end, however, what drives a great crime novel is a sense of ever-rising puzzlement in the reader. Every lead seems to make the situat
I didn't sign up for this!
I’m currently working on reviving four crime novels I wrote back in the 1990s, for republication. Most of the time this is a delightful experience – I really get into them again. Every now and then, however, it can be thoroughly dispiriting. Rereading them, it’s clear that one of the four books is weaker than the others. Particular passages shout ‘not good enough!’ at me. In some, I give the reader too much information – the great crime writers give nothing away they don’t ha
