Honkaku: a century of the Japanese whodunnits keeping readers guessing
These fiendishly clever mystery novels have spawned pop culture icons, anime and a museum. And, best of all, honkaku plays fair – you have the clues to solve the crime
‘Bill and I got pretty friendly’: James Patterson on writing with Clinton and clashing with Trump
His plot-driven thrillers have seen him sell more books than Tolkien, and he has even co-written fiction with the former president. But it’s readers of the future he wants to enthral
The best recent crime and thrillers – review roundup
The Khan by Saima Mir; Tall Bones by Anna Bailey; Greenwich Park by Katherine Faulkner; The Girls Are All So Nice Here by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn; and Bullet Train by Kotaro Isaka
The best recent thrillers – review roundup
Mystery unravels layer by layer in intricate tales of trafficking, abduction and a New Yorker with a sixth sense – plus, a 27th outing for Alan Banks
The best recent crime and thrillers – review roundup
The House Uptown by Melissa Ginsburg; My Brother by Karin Smirnoff; Dangerous Women by Hope Adams; A Fine Madness by Alan Judd; Lie Beside Me by Gytha Lodge; and A Rage in Harlem by Chester Himes
Jessie Greengrass: ‘Frog and Toad Are Friends contains one of the best jokes ever written’
The author on underrated ‘great of feminist literature’ Gaudy Night, looking forward to every Ian Rankin novel, and never finishing Middlemarch
From Line of Duty to The Fall: why can’t TV shows stop killing women?
Extreme violence against women seems to have become a staple of TV crime shows. Writers and producers reveal what’s behind the high female body count – and what needs to change
Val McDermid: ‘To survive, you had to be twice as good as the guys’
The Scottish crime writer on working in a newsroom in the 70s, coping with lockdown and the transformation of attitudes to gay couples in her home nation
The best recent thrillers – review roundup
Captivity, secrets and the spirit of Raymond Chandler lurk in remarkable new titles from Will Dean, Abigail Dean, Jane Harper and Steph Cha
Devils, Lusts and Strange Desires: The Life of Patricia Highsmith – review
When friends mean less than plots ... a flawed portrayal of the noir novelist as a figure bordering on the grotesque
Mick Herron: ‘I look at Jackson Lamb and think: My God, did I write that? My mother reads this stuff!’
As the first book in his spy series, Slow Horses, is made into a TV drama, Herron talks about his slow-burn success – and the resemblance of a certain blustering villain to our PM
Shelter by Catherine Jinks review – frenetic outback thriller from a masterful storyteller
Tension and terror from a prolific author who’s demonstrated she’s just as comfortable penning picture books as mapping the terrain of vicious killers
Stuart MacBride: ‘I love writing fictional serial killers. But I cannot stand reading about real ones’
The bestselling novelist stresses that his relish for the kind of bloodshed that features in new novel The Coffinmaker’s Garden is strictly confined to stories
Jolly, artificial and extremely satisfying: the simple joy of ‘Grandma lit’
With these books you know what you’re getting. And this year, for me, that has been a very uncomplicated form of self-care
Top 10 Christmas crime stories
From Dashiell Hammett to Agatha Christie and PD James, the festive season has inspired some of fiction’s finest criminal minds