I’ve never knowingly seen in action how a book becomes a word-of-mouth best-seller – the dream of all writers whose books are not (yet) advertised on 10-foot-high billboards by their publishers. So I was intrigued when I first became aware of the insistent whispering and tweeting about Lissa Evans’ Second World War novel, Crooked Heart. […]
Manda Scott watches Peaky Blinders
Warning: contains spoilers! If you’re old enough to remember Last of the Mohicans – the first, amazing, black-and-white-but-blood-red-scarlet-on-the-inside, Philip Madoc version in which he learned the Mohawk language to play the part, not the ghastly, plastic Daniel Day Lewis vehicle – will know that once in a while, the BBC steps beyond its comfort zone […]
Historical Crime Roundup
Since I told our esteemed editors that I’d do a round up of some of the recent crime fiction published by HWA members, I’ve become overexcited and overwhelmed by the number of superb books that have published this year. It has, at least, made my Christmas shopping a bit easier, but my kindle has overloaded, […]
The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters
Eagerly awaited, Sarah Waters’ latest novel The Paying Guests does not disappoint. Fans of Waters have come to expect her tight and ingenious plotting, meticulous period scene setting and vividly distinctive use of language: who but she would describe the sound of a dripping tap as making, ‘the occasional echoey plink of drips,’ or the eyes of […]