NEW ON OUR BLOG

As well as covering titles and goings on from wider crime fiction and thriller community, Killer Reads focuses on those authors and books from the HarperFiction, Blue Door and Avon lists. The list covers a wide breadth of writers and is the proud home of crime royalty including Agatha Christie,… Read More

A couple of weeks ago we posted up some pictures of Rachel out on location shooting some videos with Will Adams, author of the Daniel Knox series of books. Finally we can reveal the fruits of our labour...not bad after nearly getting chased out of St Martin's in the Fields Crypt! The story behind The Eden Legacy. Will Adams talks about his inspiration for The Lost Labyrinth. Read More

Colleen McCullough introduces us to Too Many Murders... Too Many Murders is the second in my series of whodunit novels featuring Captain Carmine Delmonico of the Holloman P.D. The whodunit format lends itself particularly well to the cases and feats of one single detective~ as demonstrated by the huge number of whodunit authors whose detectives are household names, from Sherlock Holmes, through Hercule Poirot to Adam Dalgliesh. When the plot of a book revolves around a puzzle the writer, has to seek a common denominator elsewhere, and the detective is the most logical. If the readers like the detective, or find him interesting in some way, then he (or she) becomes a friend whose next mystery/adventure is seized upon - what's he up to now? Read More

We're pleased to announce that Reginald Hill has made the shortlist for the Portico Prize for Fiction for Midnight Fugue, a unique award given to books about, or set mainly in, the North of England. Past winners include Val McDermid and Anthony Burgess so he's in great company. Read More

The fast-moving, stunning new standalone psychological thriller – from the award-winning author of the Dalziel and Pascoe series is our Book of the Month for November. Killer Reads presents Reginald Hill‘s The Woodcutter Wolf Hadda’s life has been a fairytale. From humble origins as a Cumbrian woodcutter’s… Read More

The nights are drawing in, the curtains are tightly shut against the cold, your duvet is pulled up to your chin and you're all ready to sink into the latest chilling tale - but what to choose?! We thought we'd make it easy with our editors' top five picks this Halloween. Read More

Killer Reads is thrilled to bring you news of a writing workshop specifically for those who write within the Crime and Thriller genre. Put together by our colleagues at authonomy.com, it’s going to take place on Saturday 11th December here at the HarperCollins offices. Read More

I first said it in 2007: I am all serial killered out.  There's only so much you can do with this type of criminal in crime fiction it's all too easy to fall into cliché territory.  However, before I continue, I should add that I have read novels in the last year that have involved a serial killer and they've been good ones - because they avoided the cliché.  One concentrated on the impact on the lives of those who suffered loss at the hands of the evil and manipulative killer; the other looked at the role the internet and digital communication can play in spreading news and misleading information, including the cult of celebrity as applied to a serial killer. Read More

We are thrilled that S.J. Parris has been shortlisted for the CWA Ellis Peters' Historical Award for her debut crime novel Heresy. The judges describe it as 'An astonishingly accomplished first outing for Giordano Bruno, monk, poet and sleuth, investigating skulduggery in Elizabethan Oxford.  Parris has resurrected an undeservedly forgotten figure and her depiction of a society riven by religious intolerance is timely.' And we couldn't agree more. Read More

Danielle Ramsay is a debut author for HarperCollins, and her dark, gritty north-eastern crime will get your heart racing and your blood pumping. Her first book to hit the shelves is Broken Silence which begins when the mutilated remains of a teenage girl are found in the seaside resort of Whitley Bay. All fingers point to one of three men in her life who should have done everything to protect her - her step-father, her teacher and a police detective. But which one of them is responsible for such a horrific act of murder? Well, you'll have to read the book to find out, but first, let's get under the skin of things in a different way as Danielle discusses her motivations for crime writing. Read More

FRIDAY 8th OCTOBER: Belinda Bauer has won the CWA Gold Dagger for her novel Blacklands published by Corgi. She received the award at the Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards 2010, hosted by Marcus Brigstocke and to be broadcast on ITV3 tomorrow (12 October) at 9pm. Bauer’s début is a… Read More

A pathologist's lab.  An odd and potentially inexplicable death and a weird solid object in the victim's bowel.  This is all pathologist Alexander Caulfield needs - being, as he is, on the threshold of all he's ever dreamed of: professionalism, respectability, a decent wage.  And then suddenly Caulfield is brutally murdered with no indication as to a motive or the culprit, bar a small tattoo reading 'warped whores' and his dismembered body. Renowned for solving a series of brutal murders the year before, Detective Carson Ryder is first on the case, but as each new corpse arrives, beheaded and branded with bizarre tattoos, Ryder realises that this is no ordinary serial killer. And when a secret deeply buried in Ryder's past threatens to come to the surface, Ryder realises that the killer's target may not be as far away as they first believed... Read More