There are two ways of writing a book – the first one is the obvious route: start at the beginning and write until you get to the end. The other way is to write a book that isn’t a book at all – in fact, it’s a blog. Years ago, we used to occasionally read…
Category: Novels
‘Barking at Winston’ by Barry Stone
Barking at Winston When battered rescue dog Bruce is adopted by a wild and wacky family, he finds his new owners have troubles of their own. As well as sharing several episodes from his own short life, Brucie uses his canine second sight to dig into the truth behind a complex tale of family life…
How to Be a Crap Writer
Back in April 2016, I started writing reviews of the books I read. This prompted me to look at adding a bit more variety to my reading habits. Now, that doesn’t mean I was suddenly going to start perusing the sort of books I wouldn’t normally touch with a barge pole, just one or two…
‘The House of Silk’ by Anthony Horowitz
The House of Silk: The Bestselling Sherlock Holmes Novel Sherlock Holmes is dead and now his ageing companion, Dr Watson, also teeters towards death. With no-one left to answer to, the great detective’s biographer puts pen to paper one last time to document two very different, yet inexplicably connected, mysteries. When Edmund Carstairs turns up…
A Book Cover Paints A Thousand Words…
When I started putting ideas together for the cover of my middle-grade book ‘The House That Wasn’t There’, it’s fair to say I didn’t really know what I was doing. The problem was that, as usual, I’d come up with a title that intrigued me, but part of that intrigue meant I had to work…
‘Long Way Home’ by Eva Dolan
Long Way Home When a man is found burned to death in a garden shed, Hate Crimes Unit Detective Zigic and bolshie sidekick Ferreira find themselves battling a wall of silence. Investigating an ill-treated and untrusting immigrant population who are slow to give up the truth, the good guys are left with nowhere to go…
Killer Clothing…
One of the things I like about writing historical fiction is doing research. Well, I’ll clarify that a bit – the thing I really like is looking at pictures. Trouble is, finding images that will fire the old imagination ain’t that easy, so sometimes it comes down to good old fashioned reading. I mentioned in…
‘Oy Yew’ by Ana Salote
Oy Yew Nabbed by waif-catchers in the alley where he spends his days sniffing bread and dreaming of floury loafs, Oy Yew is dragged in front of the wiry-haired Mrs Rutheday who sets him to work at bench 54. Oy meets Linnet Pale, a colour-drained girl who becomes his first friend. But assembling unknown items…
‘Fatal Forgery’ by Susan Grossey
Fatal Forgery Long before the days of online banking, a big part of any banker’s working life was trust – but not all bank employees were able to resist the lure of hard cash. In 1824, respectable banker Henry Fauntleroy is arrested on charges of forgery, leaving Constable Samuel Plank to find out exactly what’s…
‘The Corrections’ by Jonathan Franzen
The Corrections All Enid Lambert wants is to have one last Christmas with her family round her. She and her husband Alfred are getting on a bit and the reality of their lives together has reached a point where the words ‘fractured’ and ‘awkward’ may be the best they can hope for. At times, the…
Colin Garrow 