Novel recipes: roast chicken and artichokes from The Talented Mr Ripley

While chicken is a Sunday tradition according to the doomed Dickie Greenleaf, this easy but tasty dish is one for any day of the week, says Kate Young

Broken River by J Robert Lennon review – wickedly plotted slowburner

A psychological thriller about a middle-class family’s ill-starred house move, from a writer at the top of his game

Maigret, Morse, Poirot: none of them will help you crack a case in real life

The Met is inviting graduates to train as detectives without plodding the beat. Let’s just hope these high-flyers don’t take their cues from crime fiction

How Chilean arsenic eaters vindicated a classic work of crime fiction

I thought Dorothy L Sayers’ 1930 novel Strong Poison wouldn’t stand up to modern science – but modern genetic research has just proved me wrong

See What I Have Done review – the Lizzie Borden case brilliantly realised

Sarah Schmidt’s meticulously researched debut novel recreates one of America’s most notorious crimes with verve

Adam Diment, the superstar spy novelist who vanished for four decades

Once a million-selling man about town, he has cultivated obscurity for many years. But that may be set to change as his books are readied for republication

How Colin Dexter changed the face of crime fiction

Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse novels began a boomtime in crime fiction on television and in bookshops – and we are still feeling its effects

Colin Dexter: the writer who brought novel ideas to television

TV took the Inspector Morse stories of the late Colin Dexter into the homes of millions – and he wasn’t the only novelist to bathe in the glow of the small screen

Ariel Levy, Krissy Kneen, Cat Marnell – literary highlights for Australia in March

Shadowy cults, Paul Robeson-inspired travelogues, stories of rape and reconciliation, and a Booker prize winner are coming to bookstores this month

Nicolás Obregón: ‘Tokyo is a million cities … and it’s full of secrets’

A city that can be ‘Blade Runner and old Japan all at once’ inspired Blue Light Yokohama novelist Nicolás Obregón – who is in thrall to Tokyo’s towers, street food and quiet corners

The Long Drop by Denise Mina review – meet Scotland’s worst serial killer

This true crime story about Peter Manuel, ‘the Beast of Birkenshaw’, alternates between a bizarre pub crawl with a relative of the victims and his trial for murder in 1958

The Crime Writer by Jill Dawson review – suspense in 60s Suffolk

Patricia Highsmith is involved with a married woman in this fascinating fictional biography of the late writer

Is reading a murder mystery somehow better than watching one on TV?

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific concepts