Why are Nordic detective stories/films so successful?

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

Crime fiction: the new punk?

Just as the Sex Pistols invigorated a hidebound rock establishment, so contemporary noir could wake up literary novels to a wider world

The Devil and the River by RJ Ellory – review

In his first thriller since the 'sock-puppet' scandal, RJ Ellory conjures up genuine chills with voodoo, murder and gothic southern dynasties, writes Alison Flood

Lynda La Plante, screenwriter and novelist – portrait of the artist

Lynda La Plante explains why spending plenty of time with criminals and prostitutes has been essential to her career – and why cow dung isn't art

Is this the end of fiction’s genre wars?

Stuart Kelly: Has the question of genre in fiction become 'a flimsy irrelevence' or will the mores of the book trade maintain the distinctions?

Bestselling writers know that image counts

John Dugdale: Robert Langdon, Harry Potter, Lisbeth Salander – you can picture them instantly. Visually memorable characters are making a welcome comeback to crime and thriller novels

Music to murder to: crime writers on their killer soundtracks

Martyn Waites: You're more likely to see other crime writers at gigs than literary events, so what role does music have in the creation of crime fiction?

John Grisham to publish A Time to Kill sequel

Author's next thriller Sycamore Row will see heroic lawyer of Grisham's 1988 bestseller 'fight for justice' once again

John Dalton obituary

Other lives: Writer and teacher who was committed to the community arts movement in Birmingham

Have 40 years of mobile phones given literature bad lines?

John Dugdale: They may have made communication easier, but they have laid waste to many fictional devices

Jamal Mahjoub: ‘My wife says Parker Bilal is much nicer’

Jamal Mahjoub is living a double life, as a literary novelist and a crime writer. He talks to John Crace about juggling two identities, an inherited love of Alistair Maclean, and his passion for Cairo

Alex by Pierre Lemaitre – review

The race is on to rescue a young woman kidnapped by a mysterious assailant in Pierre Lemaitre's gripping, gory thriller, writes Alison Flood

The Infatuations by Javier Marías – review

Javier Marías's haunting murder mystery, embracing all the big questions about life, love and death, is an instant Spanish classic, writes Robert McCrum