You often hear it said that ‘character is plot’.  For me, relationships between the characters in a novel are crucial to building a plot. This applies to novels of all kinds, I believe. It’s certainly true of crime novels, even in those where there is a very strong focus on plot – whether a whodunit [...] Read More →

Writers often say that writing a short story is harder work than writing a novel. If it’s an exaggeration, there is still some truth in it. And there are plenty of financial reasons to prefer writing novels to short stories. So much so that Harry Keating, in his book on Writing Crime Fiction, said the [...] Read More →

Series or stand-alone? No genre lends itself better to the writing of a series than crime fiction. Anyone who doubts this need only consider the celebrity of Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Philip Marlowe, Inspector Morse and the lasting fame of their creators.  Yet the way in which writers treat series characters has changed with the [...] Read More →

It’s often said that ‘short stories don’t sell’, and there are few print outlets for short mysteries and anthologies these days. Yet surely in an age of decreasing attention spans, short stories ought to be enjoying widespread popularity?

The inspiration for THE HANGING WOOD, the fifth in my series of Lake District Mysteries, came from my increasing fascination with sibling relationships. As an only child, I’ve often thought the ways in which brothers and sisters inter-act together to be rather mysterious – and also fascinating. In the past, I never found it easy [...] Read More →