Year: 2019

Lyndsay Faye on Victorian Writing What are women useful for? The question has plagued humanity since the dawn of time. Certain answers are more obvious than others: we excel at pregnancy by comparison to men. […]

The Mathematics of Mystery Some novelists are all but born knowing they should write.  Some study literature, or creative writing, become experts is the academic form of the art.  Some belong to families of writers […]

Search of “Dunits” We’re all familiar with the term “Whodunit.” Classic mysteries by authors like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, and Dorothy L. Sayers set the standard that has endeared the genre to millions […]

Who The Spies Really Were Most of us hold a certain image in our minds of who a spy is: Ian Fleming’s James Bond— particularly as interpreted by the movies, John le Carré’s George Smiley, […]

Ten Great Crime Stories Set During the Holidays As we head toward the cold, night-wrapped end of the year, let us reflect on crime classics that take place in December. The holidays have it all: […]

A CRIME WRITER IS BORN In 1981 my parents purchased a JVC HR-3660, one of the first VHS-based VCRs commercially available in Ireland. It was top-loading, weighed more than thirty pounds and had a row […]

MY TOP TEN AUSTRALIAN MYSTERIES WITH A UNIQUE SENSE OF PLACE The diverse Australian landscape offers a wealth of opportunities for the mystery and thriller writer. Beyond the cosmopolitan cities it’s a harsh, unforgiving country, […]

So what actually is Folk Horror? In times of national – and international – uncertainty we often turn to genre fiction for escapism and entertainment. This has been borne out throughout the Twentieth Century. Vicious […]

The True Grist of Oklahoma Thrillers Oklahoma!—a mostly bouncy show—also has a murder in it. My native state has only been a state for about a hundred years. Long before statehood, the land was traversed […]