General Fiction Books
Cozy crime comes in all sizes, but it still has an odd name. The characters may be eccentric, the setting twee, but when it comes down to it, there is still a dead person lying on the carpet. Marple had her village with its higher crime rate than Gotham, Poirot had various summer vacation spots,...
Some of the best speculative fiction starts with an idea that is not far removed from the normal, a simple nudge to reality can lead to many places. In the case of J. Michael Straczynski’s The Glass Box, this place is a psychiatric hospital. The reason for being sent there? New government...
When I finally get around to building that time machine, I made a note not to visit 14th century Europe. The continent was a hodgepodge of wars and battles. Even during times of peace you could still stumble across the wrong village, and they would kill you for your shoes. Not a century for...
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.
When you enter midlife, you must watch out that you do not get lost in the past. Past glories that may have been, lovers that were or could have been. There is a reason that some people drift into a crisis, seeing the grass could have been greener had they picked a different path. When you are...
I am a massive fan of historic fiction; it is a fantastic way of bringing the past to life. It depends on the author how heavily they lean on the historic part or the fiction part. Some books are thinly disguised pseudo fantasy held together by a whisper of historic accuracy, while others read...
Comparing a detective series to Sherlock Holmes is not always helpful as that is such an iconic character who has gone off to be in a thousand different spin offs, but on occasion it is apropos. If a series is about a super intelligent detective with a penchant for opium who works with a...
What makes a good noir story? Is it the setting, the characters, a murder? All these things, but also none of them. I have read many ‘classic’ noir stories about a grizzled PI investigating a femme fatale set some time in the 40/50s, but I have also read them set in alternative...
Coming-of-age stories are perennial favorites because most of us get the chance to come-of-age at some point. You may know a few immature adults, but when it comes down to it, they are not walking around in short trousers and attending school. The reason that we do not all write about our own...
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.
There is an art to the short story. They should not try to emulate their longer cousins, or even the novelette format. A short story should pop up, throws a few punches then head off again without a backwards glance, but the best of them with leave an impression, a lingering sense of something...
Joining a band is a rite of passage that everyone should try at least once. I got as far as forming a fake band with my mates at university, but then we had no commitment. To really make it you will need to buckle down and learn an instrument and write some songs – or just be a punk band....
According to esteemed author Robert Rankin there are only ever three locations in a Private Investigator novel. A bar, the alley behind the bar and a rooftop to have the final showdown on. Billie Walker is no normal PI, she is not an investigator, but an Inquirer. She goes as far as to say that...
There is a reason that criminal gangs fall apart. As an individual you can take responsibility for your own action, plan ever detail and keep your mouth shut when the job is done, but what about the others? They may be getting cold feet or have a loudmouth. The Smoke Kings are a group that...
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