Taking a brief break from the hugely popular McRae novels, international bestseller Stuart MacBride is back with a brutal new standalone, Birthdays For the Dead. Detective Constable Ash Henderson is on the trail of vicious serial killer The Birthday Boy – only trouble is, his own daughter is… Read More

This week marks the return of the world famous annual Agatha Christie week. Every September, thousands of Christie fans flock to Torquay to enjoy numerous Christie inspired games, activities and events that take place in and around Devon to celebrate the Queen of Crimes birthday (15th September). Whether it is attending the Vintage Ball, playing some 1920’s pitch-and-putt or indulging in the splendour of the Agatha Christie Theatre Company’s new production of Murder on the Nile, there’s so many ways to get involved and celebrate Agatha’s legacy.   This year’s celebrations kicked off on Sunday the 9th September with the traditional Agatha Christie Fete on Torquay seafront, where stallholders dressed up in their 1920s and ‘30s best, with jazz bands, a Punch and Judy show, and fairground rides. Read More

This month sees our third blog entry from the incredible Paul Finch. The Former The Bill scriptwriter turned author is back this week with a sneak peek into his life as a journalist, a period in which Paul feels had a huge impact in becoming the author he is today...   People often ask me how it happened that I went from being a policeman to writing police stories. Well, the cross-over is not as straightforward as some may think. While I was in the police, I wrote almost no fiction at all. I had a yearning to write – I’d always written fiction as a youngster, and my father had been a professional author, but whenever the temptation came over me, I used to tell myself that I was too tired, too stressed and too busy obsessing about dreadful incidents in the real world – and for the most part that was probably true. But it’s also the case that I was being sucked into a radically different discipline. I was buried in a world of procedure and legalities, which came to completely dominate my daily thinking. It was near enough impossible to go home at night and put the job, or whatever case you’d been working on, out of your mind. These were serious affairs after all, and people’s lives and liberties might be at stake. This is something I’ve tried to bring into the Mark Heckenburg books in fact; the way police life can consume you. Even your recreation time tends to be spent with other police officers, or at least it often was for me, and usually such R&R consisted of drinking hard and yet again discussing the job. Anything else seemed frivolous. Read More

Ever wondered how you make the leap to become a writer? This month sees Paul Finch recall the transition from his days in the Police to his time as a scriptwriter for The Bill in his fourth blog piece for Killer Reads.   The first time I ever put pen to paper to write a serious thriller, it was just after I'd finished serving as an actual police officer. The piece of work in question was a speculative teleplay entitled Knock Off Job. It concerned a murder inside a suburban police station, and presented every member of the shift, both uniform and CID, as potential suspects, none of them knowing who to trust. Now that I look back on it, it was very talkie: lots of tense conversations in dim corridors and cramped offices, lots of frank, fraught interviews, lots of suspicions being cast in every direction. It wouldn't work today simply because modern police stations are filled with CCTV, and the comings and goings of staff and non-staff are more carefully monitored. But the concept was of sufficient interest to the production team at The Bill to make them ask me to come in and see them. I accepted the invitation, and though I didn't realise it at the time, my life changed as a result. Read More

Fed up of mince pies? Sick of carols? Want to swap the saccharine sweet side of Christmas for something a bit more…refreshing? Well, treat yourself to another side of Christmas with Paul Finch’s  short story Midnight Service. If this doesn’t send shivers down your spine, then we don’t know what… Read More

Your name: Lars Kepler Tell us about yourself: We are a husband and wife team and our real names are Alexander Ahndoril and Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril. We were writers in our own names long before Lars Kepler. So we knew by experience that writing is one of the loneliest professions in the… Read More

The world-famous annual Agatha Christie Festival takes place on the English Riviera in South Devon, from 11th-18th September 2011. This spectacular annual festival celebrates the world's greatest crime fiction writer, Dame Agatha Christie and her best-known detectives, Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot. Read More

Your name:  SJI Holliday Tell us about yourself: I was born in Edinburgh and now live in London. I work as a statistician for a pharmaceutical company. I got married in a former lunatic asylum. I like walking along the river (well, along the side of… Read More

Your name: Patrick Kendrick Tell us about yourself: I was in the fire service most of my adult life but always did freelance writing for newspapers and magazines. Initially, I was doing personal experience and crime related stories, but when Gerard Schaefer, a serial killer I wrote about… Read More

Your name: Mark Sennen Tell us about yourself: Originally a programmer by profession but not choice. Decided to ‘finish that novel’ during recession when work was scarce. Now write almost full time (need to do a little programming to supplement meagre author income!). Married with two daughters. Live in the middle… Read More

When Alice Saunders at LAW sent us the script for Sanctus, a debut thriller by Simon Toyne, we knew that we had something special in our hands. Set largely in the fictional city of Ruin, southern Turkey, Sanctus is an apocalyptic conspiracy thriller like no other. Read More

Your name – Mary and Gerry Mayfield, blogging as Maryom and The Mole Your blog’s name – Our Book Reviews Online Blog’s URL – http://ourbookreviewsonline.blogspot.co.uk/ Which types of books do you review?  Anything and everything from children’s picture books through chick lit and literary fiction to Nordic Noir What… Read More