2024: Publications

2024 has been a busy and hugely positive year for me in so many ways. I'm really grateful for the good fortune I've had and one aspect of that has been the kind messages that I've had from so many readers of this blog. Believe me, they are very much appreciated. I'm now going to inflict on you a three-part review of the year from my perspective, starting with publications. There have been plenty of them, although as you can imagine, most of the writing I've done this year (for example, Miss Winter in the Library with a Knife) will not be published until next year.

My new novel for this year was Hemlock Bay. This is a book I'm really proud of, the fifth Rachel Savernake mystery. It was a lot of fun to write and I was delighted that it received a great reaction (something that one can never, ever take for granted, however optimistic one is about what one has written). There were great reviews in the Daily Mail and the Morning Star (political balance, you see...) and the book was runner-up in the list of crime books of the year in The Critic. Many bloggers, whose support is invaluable, were also very enthusiastic.

  

The fourth book in the series, Sepulchre Street, was published in paperback, and was shortlisted for the eDunnit crime book of the year award: enormously gratifying! The American edition was published while I was in Nashville, under the title The House on Graveyard Lane.

May saw publication in the UK of the revised and expanded paperback edition of The Life of Crime. This was one of the Guardian's books of the month, and there were some terrific reviews, not least in the Times Literary Supplement, which gave it extended coverage. 

My only new short story to be published, 'The Widow', appeared in Midsummer Mysteries, the gorgeously produced anthology I edited for the Crime Writers' Association. Two previously published stories, 'No Peace for the Wicked' and 'End Game' enjoyed a new life in American anthologies. For the British Library, I edited two anthologies, Lessons in Crime and Metropolitan Mysteries. I also wrote introductions for ten novels reprinted in the British Library Crime Classics series, as well as an intro for a book of stories by Tom Mead, of which more soon. I published a variety of articles in different print and online publications, including articles in the Spectator, the Daily Telegraph, and the Catholic Herald. Not to mention  more than 150 blog posts!

So there was always plenty going on. Right now, I'm writing as busily as ever. And, I like to think, to the highest standard I've managed over the years. But for a writer to thrive, he or she needs interested readers. I've been delighted by so many contacts with readers across the world. Their reactions are highly motivational and play a huge part in keeping me enthused about writing - as I certainly am, as much as I've ever been.