Chris Bridges’ The Death Bed is highly dependant upon his former job as a nurse, but given my past as a regular patient, I can attest to the level of his accuracy from the point of view of a …

William Hussey’s The Woman Who Wasn’t There, released just before Harrogate 2026, was a surprise to me when I rearranged for the podcast around his Jericho series to discover that he&#8…

AJ Hawley's World of Crime · Episode

DV Bishop’s Shadow of Madness is the 6th in the Cesare Aldo series. By this point in a writer’s career an isolated location novel often appears in the list of books they have written. B…

AJ Hawley's World of Crime · Episode

Now that my life seems to have hit its normal stride again, I’ve been focussing on the books that intrigued me from my trip to the Theakston’s Festival. The latest in my library being L…

In the third Miller novel, Mark’s background as a comedian has come to the fore once again. This storyline wouldn’t work for Thorne as it starts off with several different comedic overt…

In the ten years I’ve been reviewing the hardest books I’ve imagined I’d try to write are those within the wider sub-genre of crime fiction. Frances Crawford’s A bad bad Pla…

After 2 weeks away when reading was very difficult to concentrate on, surrounded by strangers just as uncomfortable as yourself, the latest in the series of which I’ve become a great fan of a…

This weeks’ Newark Festival was an eclectic one, with me appearing at three different events. One was the launch of the Newark Festival charity book that I wrote to raise money for them, the …

This Wednesday just gone I was at Nottingham Waterstones to see Mark Edwards and KL Slater. In the heat of this week it seemed weird to be talking about a book set on New Years Eve in a snowy Scott…

With so many authors on this year’s list that I’ve read before, I wasn’t sure at first if I’d read anything by Sarah Pinborough, but looking through my archive, I’ve d…

The Death of Us is a book that if I were reading in isolation, I wouldn’t know where to put, because it has a plotline that will put a lot of people off and it’s gloomy outlook made me …

Congratulations to all of the authors who have been longlisted for this years’ Theakston’s Crime Book of the Year. Below is a review of one of the books I’d not read before the lo…

Before I read Quantum of Menace I had no idea how much of a fan of James Bond Vaseem Khan is. This book has been officially sanctioned by the Fleming estate and is a spin off. Although when I descr…

Simon Mason’s 4th Wilkins’ book brings together the two men from the opposite sides of the tracks once again. Ryan Wilkins and his son, Little Ryan are by far my favourite characters, b…

Louise Candlish openly admits in the interview with the narrator at the end of the book that she likes to write books about property, so Candlish fans will not be surprised that this is another pla…

Yesterday on the 14th of April I was invited down to London for the launch of Theakston’s Crime 2026, run by Harrogate International Festivals. As part of this, it was a good idea to have a l…

Yesterday as I was searching for what to read next, Audible had Yemi Dipeolu’s Kiss Marry Kill on offer. Reading the synopsis, it sounded slightly generic when my PA read it to me, and the co…

For the first time in a while, I’ve gone to my TBR pile. This book has been in my library since it was shortlisted for last years’ Bloody Scotland prize and the only reason that it&#821…

The Other Couple is a very apt title, because throughout this novel, which is told from multiple perspectives (but unfortunately with only a single narrator on the audiobook), was really well const…

Reading through the synopsis of books is something that I generally avoid, but when you’re isolating and have time to read more books sometimes you come across a book with a similar plotline …

The Midnight Feast by Lucy Foley is a really interesting story about a community battling against a rich incomer who has decided to build a hotel on their family’s land. The hotel’s ope…

Several years after reading The Murder Game and after seeing Tom speaking to TM Logan in Nottingham Waterstones, I purchased this after hearing how unique the plot was. Tom, as a former travel jour…

When you read as many books as I do you come across a lot of different styles of writing, but the first time you read an author, you don’t know what their style is or how they will surprise y…

Murder in the Dressing Room by Holly Stars could be a new sub-genre of crime: The drag queen detective. This came recommended as something different and it definitely was, as it was the first time …

In Daniel Aubrey’s second novel, The Dying Light, Freya’s life gets more and more complicated as she looks into the corruption surrounding book one. This book is a hard one to review as…

Last Friday night I was listening to Neil Lancaster being interviewed about his latest book The Dark Heart on UKCBC and realised that it was a while since I’d read one, so decided to read the…

Tom Mead’s 4th Spector novel is probably the most complex novel that he’s written. Although no 3 was a lot more violent because it was aiming towards the Asian side of the locked room, …

Lisa Jewell’s Don’t let him in is an examination of coercive control, toxic masculinity, fraud and a spiteful sod. But that’s just the main character, voiced by Richard Armitage i…

On Cara Hunter’s birthday I read the third in the Eve Hunter series by Deborah Masson. We all get our names from somewhere when writing and I’ll be checking whether this is coincidence …

As the title says, this is definitely the book I wish I’d written for personal reasons, as I wrote an essay on CCTV and whom might be watching the watchers back in 2009, back when the legisla…

As a crime writer, I’ve always been a big fan of The Traitors, right from series one and now that both the UK and NZ versions have had published authors, with Harriet Tyce and Vanda Symon, yo…

Over Christmas whilst waiting for several things to come to fruition I was randomly watching 4oD and saw an advert for a TV show called The Revenge Club, but I couldn’t get Paramount, so goog…

At the end of the year, I’ve still got a massive TBR pile, but have just finished my third podcast season and needed a break from crime, so this is why it has been approximately two weeks sin…

Today, the final episode of series 3, of my podcast AJ Hawley’s World of Crime was recorded with Antti Tuomainen. This has been the first proper series of it since I instigated it during my h…

After several years away from Wyndham and Banerjee they are back in The Burning Grounds. Abir Mukherjee deservedly won the Theakstons Crime Book of the year with Hunted and the nature of the standa…

In preparation for my interview with Alis Hawkins I’m reading her latest series, The Oxford Mysteries. Although I’ve been aware of her work for a long time due to our collaboration with…

After a year away, it is finally great to read another Val book, of all the characters she could have chosen, it had to be Karen Pirie. Post this years Harrogate the second Karen Pirie book was ada…

On this busy Thursday with some of my favourite authors being published, it’s nice to also read one of the most original writers on the scene today in Callum McSorley. I prepared to discuss t…

When Antony was in Nottingham Waterstones I played the on tour event and solved that one with the help of the people on my table, but unlike anybody else reading this book, I also needed assistance…