The Hidden Legacy began life as two news items which I’d picked up from the radio while driving to work and put to one side in case I might one day be able to use them both as material for separate short stories. The first concerned an 11-year-old schoolgirl who had killed the child she was babysitting back in the late 1960s. Nearly forty years later, having been released under an assumed and protected identity, she was seeking a court injunction to prevent her identity being made public, using as her justification the fact that she now had a teenage daughter who knew nothing of her past.…

Filed under: Book news, Coming soon, Criminal Activity
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LIKE. SHARE. FOLLOW . . . DIE

The ‘Hashtag Murderer’ posts chilling cryptic clues online, pointing to their next target. Taunting the police. Enthralling the press. Capturing the public’s imagination.

But this is no virtual threat.

As the number of his followers rises, so does the body count.

Eight years ago two young girls did something unforgivable. Now ambitious police officer Nasreen and investigative journalist Freddie are thrown together again in a desperate struggle to catch this cunning, fame-crazed killer. But can they stay one step ahead of him? And can they escape their own past?

Time’s running out. Everyone is following the #Murderer.…

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For those seeking yet more criminal activities in their life, this will be of interest:

Introducing Berwins Salon North!
If you haven’t already experienced this unique event then we invite you to join us for what will be a criminally good evening – ‘Punishment’ on Thursday 29th October at The Crown Hotel, Harrogate! Three brilliant expert speakers will take to the stage for the second event in our ‘Crime, Punishment and Retribution’ Autumn Berwins Salon North series, as we turn our focus to raising some serious and complex questions about the path to criminal justice.

Ever since Harrogate International Festivals brought London’s most talked about evening to the town, it’s been a sell-out sensation.…

Filed under: Book events, Criminal Activity, Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival Harrogate
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Fans of Robert Galbraith might just want to give this number a call…..

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Gutted that I didn’t manage to catch up on all the #BritCrime activities over the weekend, but not all is lost as I pour a glass of red and settle back to watch ‘Harper Collins presents….Authors in conversation with BritCrime’, featuring Martyn Waites, Alex Marwood, CL Taylor, Helen Smith and Simon Toyne – and, if you missed it, you can catch up too – just click HERE.…

Filed under: Book events, Book news, Criminal Activity, Events
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With HUNTED – the latest DS Mark ‘Heck’ Heckenburg novel being unleashed today – I am very pleased to welcome former cop and journalist Paul Finch to kick off his blog tour here and to offer an insight into how his writing routine works for him.

Questions concerning daily writing routines are quite difficult to answer for me, mainly because I don’t think I have a recognisable routine that I repeat every day. In general terms, I’m quite haphazard in my normal approach. However, when I’m writing a novel I tend to be a lot more focussed, so perhaps I can widen the terms of this discussion slightly.…

Filed under: Book news, Criminal Activity, Interviews
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Giants of the genre are pitted against a clutch of new voices in one of the most prestigious crime writing prizes in the country.

The longlist for the 2015 Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award sees stalwarts Ian Rankin, Lee Child and John Harvey in the running.

Rankin and Child battle it out, each with their 19th novels in the iconic Rebus and Reacher series. Lee Child’s number one global bestseller Personal takes on Rankin’s Saints of the Shadow Bible, which brought Rebus back from retirement.

John Harvey’s Darkness, Darkness could be a swan song for the gong with Resnick’s last case, 25 years after the Detective Inspector’s first appearance.…

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One of the reasons I wanted to set my new novel The Infidel Stain in 1841 is because that was the year in which Edgar Allan Poe gave birth to the detective story. Although we think of detective stories and thrillers as a modern invention the fact is that most of their themes: murder, the thrill of detection, and the use of a detective story structure to explore and imagine an entire world, were both familiar—and thrilling— to readers a hundred and fifty years ago.

Poe’s story, ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue,’ has a brilliant but odd gentleman investigator who applies his special method of observation and deductive reasoning to a horrific and impossible-seeming crime, dim-witted police, a succession of clues, and the solution elegantly explained at the end.…

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For all the budding crime writers out there:
Dates: Saturday 23 and Sunday 24 May 2015 | Times: 10am-4pm
Price: £449 | Capacity: 16
Erin Kelly.
Learn how to write a thrilling page-turner that readers and publishers will love

There’s nothing like a good psychological thriller – full of twists, turns, suspense and drama. If you want to learn how to turn your idea for a novel into page-turner, this stimulating course will show you how. Over the course of two days, Erin Kelly, bestselling author of The Poison Tree and Broadchurch: The Novel, will teach you how the best psychological thrillers keep readers hooked from the very first page.…

Filed under: Criminal Activity, Events
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I’m delighted to soon be kicking off the blog tour for the latest in Paul Finch’s crime series featuring his great central character DS Mark ‘Heck’ Heckenburg.

So, do drop by here on 7th May, where it’ll all be kicking off!

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Filed under: Book events, Book news, Coming soon, Criminal Activity, News
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