‘Every hour a glass of wine’ – the female writers who drank

The long list of male alcoholic authors is well known, but what about their literary sisters? Olivia Laing looks back on the great female writers who sought refuge in the bottle and salvation on the page

How true can crime fiction be?

Steve Mosby: Real events often inspire writers, but incorporating real-life trauma into entertainment requires very delicate handling

Can you help solve a murder in Newcastle?

Crime Story, a festival taking place in Newcastle this weekend, offers amateur sleuths the chance to discover how a real crime can be solved with the help of scientists and police investigators. Award-winning novelist Margaret Murphy, who collaborates with forensic scientist Dave Barclay under the pseudonym AD Garrett, explains more

John Banville: ‘Quirke comes from the damaged recesses of my Irish soul’

Irish author reveals pleasure and pain of creating pathologist in Benjamin Black books set to star in BBC TV adaptation

Why women are hooked on violent crime fiction

Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett: Reading about grisly sex murders and mutilation is a safe way to explore the threats we sense in the world around us

How Patricia Highsmith became hip

Big names are lining up to make films and books based on Highsmith's novels. John Dugdale finds out what it is that makes her work so adaptable

Tony Parsons could read plenty of crime novels with heart if he wanted to

Crime writers are understandably outraged that the Man and Boy author says their genre lacks feeling. Can we compose a corrective reading list for him?

Topless Pulp Fiction Appreciation Society takes off

New York book club inspired by 'good books and sunny days and enjoying both as nearly in the altogether as the law allows'

Why is first person narrative so popular in detective novels?

Readers answer other readers' questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific concepts

Would squeaky clean detective fiction be too true to be good?

Liz Williams: A chief constable says fictional detectives should be better behaved and less corrupt. It's a fair cop, guv

Genre fiction radiates from a literary centre

In the fourth of our series on literary definitions, novelist Anita Mason argues that while genre novels tell specific kinds of story, literary novels open onto the universal

Sophie Hannah: ‘It’s surprising how many poems turn out to be about sex’

The crime writer and poet talks to Kate Kellaway about contrasting literary disciplines, the poetry of sex and the genius of Agatha Christie

Books set in Hull can be as gritty as any Nordic noir. So why the snobbery?

Novelist David Mark was told by a London bookstore his Hull-set crime tales were 'too Northern'. Here he explains why he hopes attitudes to 2017's City of Culture are changing