Of course I buy books online, everybody does. But I also can’t pass by a bookshop, and with the good ones – those where there’s more to the stock than the Top Ten airport reads and a wall of discounted remainders – it’s almost impossible not to find something. Some book that you didn’t know…

A couple of interesting TV movies came out of Australia last year, with Guy Pearce playing the title role of Jack Irish in Black Tide and Bad Debts, based on novels by Peter Temple. Not exactly the same tone as Jesse Stone, but for me they seemed to scratch the same itch. They’re making a…

“I’ve never made it all the way through an Inspector Morse. Everyone who loves The Wire is lying. A Touch of Frost is part of a plot to destroy humanity’s will to live. Jonathan Creek went steadily downhill after Caroline Quentin left. The writers on The Mentalist are all fat and ride a golf cart…

When The Kingdom of Bones first came out in hardcover, I was invited to blog about it for The Page 69 Test. This was the result… As a teenager I had a fascination with old-time Penny Dreadfuls and turn-of-the-century thrill fiction. Tom Sayers was a leading character in one of those old story papers, The…

I’ll have some more information on upcoming stuff, including UK and US publication dates for The Bedlam Detective paperback editions, in a few days’ time. For now here’s the BBC’s publicity still for Season 16 of Silent Witness, for which I’ve written a two-hour story.  The season begins this Thursday and if the shot puts…

Just before the holidays I did a Q&A for Litro, the London-based print and online literary magazine. If you could have a superpower, what would it be? Why? The ability to delete selected unpleasant memories. Which would be a whole can of worms because we’re the products of all our experiences, good and bad. Lots of…

It’s been sighted… Available for pre-order here.

Is there an FX house that specialises in totally unconvincing CG cityscapes for period movies? Because  they seem to be getting a lot of work this year.

As part of the runup to Christmas, I’ve written a new short story for Random House’s Dead Good Books site. Set in the Bethlem Royal Hospital in 1912, the action takes place in the period between The Kingdom of Bones and The Bedlam Detective. If you’re a new reader it’ll serve as a brief introduction…

As an early-career writer you work about 90% from the heart and about 10% from the head. Stuff pours out of you. You can lose track of time while you’re working. Everything’s inspiration and there’s little in the way of calculation. I’ve heard writers claiming that they go into a trance-like state when they work…