New Retro

After meeting Sarah Ward once again at Ilkeston Library, I learned about her new Clara James series of which she had just released her third book. Later in the year I will be interviewing Sarah for the first time on my podcast, although I have interviewed Sarah on other forums before and read the majority …

Another side of India

Abir Mukherjee as a crime writer has now diversified from his original historical crime fiction with Hunted and The Pinnacle. As a writer, often ideas can bleed into other sub-genres that you write and I think that this occurred with Mukherjee's Wyndham books and The Pinnacle, given that although there are decades between them, they …

The world I knew a little about

Alex Stone's latest, The Jealous Girl, looks into a world I know a little about, but not loads. Living in the middle of Nottinghamshire and having a carer that lives on the outskirts of Derbyshire means that I live in a semi rural community where horses are not common, but are seen. My carer also …

Inbetween Podcasts

When you're inbetween podcasts and writing a first draft of a novel, I find that I still need to read something to fill the rest of my day when I'm not working. And after finding Thorogood's Marlow Murder series as a 2-1 on Audible the other day, I discovered more of his books on that …

What a second novel

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 patient. Chris seems to be comfortable about writing about all things medical and a trainee nurse …

My latest John Grisham

With festival season largely over for the year now, any reading I do will either be related to my podcast, my own novel or purely for pleasure. This book falls in the purely for pleasure category. Ever since my early years of reading audio books, John Grisham has been one of the stalwarts of my …

A definite planner

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'd written this book. I discovered this one day before talking to him. This was an actual advantage during the podcast, as I couldn't give …

Isolated Aldo

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. But coupled with snow and a personal journey this is a really good example of how a well planned series can …

The Chair’s latest Book

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 Lisa Jewell's It could have been Her. After recently reading Let him in preparation for Harrogate, I didn't think Lisa could …

Dancing and Detecting

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 overtones. When somebody trips over a dog (don't worry the dog wasn't harmed) it is a rather unique opening to a book. But as …