Petra’s Ghost – Irish and Camino Trivia Time!
Well, it’s less than a week before my dark thriller, PETRA’S GHOST hits the shelves here in Canada (a month later for you Yanks and Brits). So, since the novel follows Daniel, an Irish ex-pat who walks the Camino de Santiago, I thought we’d have some Irish and Camino themed trivia to celebrate. How many…
Interview with C.J. Tudor
Bio J. Tudor is the author of The Chalk Man, and lives in Nottingham, England, with her partner and three-year-old daughter. Over the years she has worked as a copywriter, television presenter, voice-over artist, and dog walker. She is now thrilled to be able to write full-time, and doesn’t miss chasing wet dogs through muddy fields all…
Social Creature By Tara Isabella Burton
Props to Stacey Maddon, my friend and past Writing Mystery teacher, who put me on to this novel. It was in Stacey’s class that I started what would become the first Candace Starr crime novel, The Starr Sting Scale (Dundurn Press, Feb 2020). So, I guess I have more to thank Stacey for than his…
The Blood Spilt By Åsa Larsson
Before reviewing this book, I had to look up the term “Nordic Noir.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_noir) Basically, it is crime fiction that is set somewhere in Scandinavia that is short on metaphor and long on bleak landscapes. The weather in that part of the world lends itself well to bleakness apparently, particularly in the north. And this…
Book Review: The Chalk Man by C.J. Tudor
Okay, this time I wasn’t going to be fooled by initials into reviewing a book that was really written by a dude. C.J. Tudor’s first name is Caroline. Her friends call her Caz. I also write under initials my initials. My first name is Carole. The only nickname I had that ever stuck was the…
The Perfect Nanny by Leila Slimani
I am really getting into these English translations. As with The First Prehistoric Serial Killer by Teresa Solana, The Perfect Nanny was originally written in another language. In this case, French rather than Spanish. The author is Moroccan born but Parisian living, Leila Slimani. She won France’s most prestigious literary prize, the Goncourt for this…
The Forty Elephants Gang
If you think girl gangs are something new, you should know that sisters have been doing it for themselves in the criminal world since Victorian times. The Forty Elephants gang was an all-female organized crime collective active in London’s Elephant and Castle District from at least 1873 right into the 1950’s. They specialized in shoplifting,…
Interview with Denise Mina
Bio After a peripatetic childhood in Glasgow, Paris, London, Invergordon, Bergen and Perth, Denise Mina left school early. Working in a number of dead-end jobs, all of them badly, before studying at night school to get into Glasgow University Law School. Denise went on to study for a PhD at Strathclyde, misusing her student grant…
The First Prehistoric Serial Killer & other stories By Teresa Solana
What a great bunch of fiction, well written and witty, and full of unnatural death. You can’t ask for much better entertainment for a girl like me. Teresa Solena is one of Spain’s best known crime writers, and while her stories are often dark, they are always funny. And none of that humour gets lost…
Interview with Elka Ray
Elka Ray is a Canadian/UK author, editor, and illustrator. For adults, Elka writes crime, and is the author of three novels – the upcoming romantic mystery Divorce is Murder, due out with Seventh Street/Prometheus in June 2019; Saigon Dark (2016), a noir thriller; a lighter mystery, Hanoi Jane (2011); and a collection of short crime…