My journey through Benjamin’s Italy

Throughout lockdown, the world of books has expanded for me and I've come across authors in many ways, but this one was down to a Facebook website, run by author Emma Christie, called The Debuts. This was put together by Emma in an attempt to ensure publicity for those authors published during lockdown that would …

The Reading Agency reveals Quick Reads 2022 authors

THE READING AGENCY ANNOUNCES QUICK READS 2022 AUTHORS WRITING BITESIZE BOOKS FOR THE LIFE-CHANGING LITERACY PROGRAMME -       Authors revealed at Evening Standard Stories Festival featuring Mosse & Wheatle -       ‘Buy one gift one’ 10th anniversary campaign sees 35,507 books donated to new readers -       Quick Reads 2022 titles set to form part of World Book Night booklist Publishing on 14 April …

Chris’s first Standalone

Thanks to social media, I have become aware of authors in many different ways. This weekend just gone, Chris was the chair of the forensics panel at Bloody Scotland with Lin Anderson and Elly Griffiths. But last year, he interviewed a psychologist about serial killers, also to do with Bloody Scotland. Along with his interview …

Reading the Winner

Robbie Morrison, winner of The Bloody Scotland Debut Crime Novel Of The Year in the The Albert Halls at Bloody Scotland, Scotland's International Crime Writing Festival in Stirling on the 17/09/2021. Paul Reich Last Monday night, after finishing Edge of the Grave that morning, I interviewed both Robbie Morrison and Craig Russell on UK Crime …

Help, I’ve reached book burn out

As it is Bloody Scotland's launch today, this week has been a rather manic one, because I had a fixed deadline for two books over the twelve hour mark. Considering the normal length of book that I read is around ten hours, a twelve hour book is outside the norm, but when faced with Craig …

Russell’s Hyde

Festival short list's can create many kinds of books that interviewers have to read that they wouldn't normally consider, Hyde was one of these for me. With it's length of just over 14 hours, a book which is in my view possibly too long, but when you look at the language style and the book …

The shortest of Four

Alan Parks' fourth Harry McCoy book is the second book in this year's Bloody Scotland McIlvanney Prize shortlist that I've read. On the 20th of September, I shall be interviewing both the winner of the McIlvanney prize and the McIlvanney debut prize, so over the next few weeks I've got two more books to read. …

Holiday’s latest Release

After reading Black Wood, one of my first audiobook purchases from Audible, under Susi Holiday's other pen name (SJI Holiday), it's been a while before I picked up another audiobook by this author; this wasn't a deliberate avoidance, I simply wasn't aware that she'd written under another name. Given the number of times I've seen …

My 5th Candlish

Those People is a nice end to a busy week, this Saturday afternoon I finished the book after dropping something off for a friend, it's nice to do other things besides reading, I have been busy all week doing that. This book of Louise's has been as complicated as her other four that I have …

The start of a series

To me the characters of Wexford and Burden were primarily TV creations until I was old enough to understand that they came from a long running series, written by Ruth Rendell. Once, already, I've delved into the large collection, but now that all of the Wexford's are free, I saw a massive opportunity to cover …