'Do You Write Under Your Own Name?'

  I'm truly sorry to report the death, on Wednesday, of Jessica Mann, a crime writer and reviewer of distinction. It's only a mo...

I'm back from Alibis in the Archives at Gladstone's Library, the second week-end event celebrating the British Crime Writing Arc...

I'm back home, briefly, after an exhilarating Crimefest, superbly organised as usual by Adrian, Myles, Liz and Donna. It's always...

Last Thursday evening was for me very special. The highpoint of my crime writing life, no less. For Thursday was when, during a wonderful...

Something a little different today. Since the sad death of Bob Adey, author of the wonderful Locked Room Murders , I've been reflecting ...

The competing merits of stand-alone and series crime novels is a topic of perennial interest, and I'm delighted to say that Jessica...

Jessica Mann is a thoughtful and thought-provoking writer whose primary reputation is as a crime novelist. Amongst other things, she's w...

A time for reflection, today. Along with Jessica Mann, I was interviewed for Radio 4's obituary programme, Last Word , which aired this ...

Jessica Mann is a writer of very interesting novels, some of which I’ve mentioned in the past. She’s also a critic and commentator, with a v...

I was really pleased when Jessica Mann responded to my suggestion that she write something about how she got started as a writer. It's t...

When I bought Jessica Mann’s A Charitable End from Jamie Sturgeon recently, he told me a story that I never knew before. We were discussin...

A Charitable End was Jessica Mann’s first novel, published back in 1971. I was pleased to find a first edition in Jamie Sturgeon’s last cat...

There’s little doubt that – as a generalisation – crime novels have grown fatter over the years. Jessica Mann pointed out a while back that,...

My recent Jessica Mann reading binge has continued with A Private Inquiry , first published in 1996. This came twenty years after The Eighth...

‘Write what you know’ is a tired – and unnecessarily limiting - cliché of advice for budding writers, but like most clichés, it contains an ...

Jessica Mann is a British writer I’ve mentioned several times on this blog, and I’m surprised her work is not more widely discussed, as she ...

Jessica Mann is an accomplished novelist, and I plan to write about her fiction in a future blog post, but my choice today for Patti Abbott’...

I’ve been giving more thought to the discussion about gruesome crime fiction that we had the other day. It is always slightly unnerving when...