The Art of Detection

In the beginning - Colin Murray on the history of the detective genre

New to the thriller genre, Colin Murray's recently published debut After a Dead Dog was very well received. Here he writes about what drew him to the genre in the first place and what he feels are the most important books in its history.

For me, it all started with the black statuette of a bird. It was only about a foot tall and rather unprepossessing, but it was love at first sight...

Suzette A. Hill - Getting Published - My debut novel

Suzette A. Hill is the author of the deliciously quirky thriller A Load of Old Bones. It is also her debut novel of sorts, having published it herself previously. She has very kindly written this piece just for us, telling the story behind her publication with great advice for budding authors from someone who knows the game inside out.

Having a “debut” novel commercially published at the advanced age of sixty-six is a curiously surreal, albeit exciting, experience. Certainly it is very gratifying, but it is also unexpected because despite having a literary background (i.e. reading English at two universities and spending all my professional life teaching Eng. Lit.) I never had the remotest desire to write any fiction. What few creative urges I possessed were entirely satisfied in the vicarious pleasure of textual criticism and analysis. Novels I read, discussed, and lectured upon; but I harboured no wish - secret or otherwise - to actually produce one myself. It was only when I retired and moved up to Herefordshire that the Thing happened - and even then it was entirely unplanned.