Murder
What to expect in 2016 (less mercy from the taxman)
In with the new How the new year is being celebrated around the world. From 1 January… BRITAIN: Annual Investment…
Robert Nairac: brave to a fault
Captain Robert Nairac was a Grenadier Guards officer serving in Northern Ireland when on 14 May 1977 he was abducted…
Can this year’s Gesualdo celebrations be about the music rather than the blood and gore?
The allure of Carlo Gesualdo, eighth Count of Conza and third Prince of Venosa, has been felt by music-lovers from…
Could I have prevented a Kray murder?
Could I have prevented a Kray murder?
Life in Rio’s most infamous favela — where you have to pay the cops to arrest criminals
When Stefan Zweig first arrived in Rio de Janeiro in 1936, he was overwhelmed not only by the city’s magnificent…
Rid of their enemies, the Caesars set about murdering family and friends
According to Francis Bacon, the House of York was ‘a race often dipped in its own blood’. That being so,…
The gangs of LA are caught in an unending bloody vendetta
Ryan Gattis’s novel All Involved is set in South Central Los Angeles in 1992, during the riots that began after…
The war on drugs is stupid and counter-productive
Rosalio Reta was 13 years old when recruited by a Mexican drug cartel. He was given a loyalty test —…
The Outsider — from the viewpoint of the victim’s family
In 1975 the Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe, in a lecture at the University of Massachusetts, identified Joseph Conrad’s Heart of…
A profile of the worlds’s most famous film director — with the most famous profile
‘Do it with scissors’ was Alfred Hitchcock’s advice for prospective murderers, though a glance at these two biographies reminds us…
Life in the LA ghetto was nasty, brutish and short — until one brave detective took on the gangs
Los Angeles ghetto life — thrashed, twisted and black — is not a world that most Americans care to visit.…
Cybersex is a dangerous world (especially for novelists)
Few first novels are as successful as S.J. Watson’s Before I Go to Sleep, which married a startling and unusual…
Which great French novelist was also a crossword-setter?
One could have endless fun setting quiz questions about Georges Perec. Which French novelist had a scientific paper, ‘Experimental demonstration…
The man who was mistaken for a deer
‘And anything by Michael Connelly’ were the final words of advice from one of my best friends in discussing books…
At least South Africa has the world’s best murder trials
South Africa’s spectacular murder trials – first Oscar Pistorius, now Shrien Dewani – help take minds off other difficulties
J.K. Rowling is just too nice – and too lucky – to satirise publishing
J.K. Rowling’s second novel under the Robert Galbraith moniker is a whodunit set in the publishing industry. This isn’t a…
Terrorists still can't 'execute' anyone
During the sudden advances of ISIS in Iraq, one visual image stood for their brutality. As the Daily Mail reported…
Sex and squalor in San Francisco
Frog Music begins with a crime against a young mother, committed in a tiny space. Unlike Emma Donoghue’s bestselling novel…
Six months as a TV critic, and I’ve seen enough corpses to last a lifetime
It was Shetland that tipped me over the edge. Not the place, but the TV series. Although that’s set in…
The Shock of the Fall is a worthy Costa Book of the Year
About 30 pages in and unable to find my bearings, I flipped to the end of this novel — well,…
William S. Burroughs was a writer – not a painter, prophet, philosopher
William S. Burroughs lived his life in the grand transgressive tradition of Lord Byron and Oscar Wilde and, like all…
How to avoid bankers in your nativity scene
With an eye to the blasphemy underlying some of the loveliest Renaissance painting, Honor Clerk will be choosing her Christmas cards more carefully this year
The Breath of Night, by Michael Arditti
There is always meat in Michael Arditti’s novels. He is a writer who presents moral problems via fiction but is…
