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
The Murder Mile by Paul Collicutt – review
Rachel Cooke enjoys a beautifully illustrated detective story that unfolds alongside the race to break the four-minute mile
Light Shining in the Forest by Paul Torday – review
A comically named serial killer is the least of the problems with Paul Torday's crime thriller, writes Alex Preston
The truth about crime fiction
Realism would be 1,000 pages long and crushingly dull, admits top writer. By John Dugdale
Joaquin Phoenix set to star in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice
Actor and director will reunite on Los Angeles noir film based on novel by Thomas Pynchon
Jakob Arjouni obituary
German crime writer whose private eye Kemal Kayankaya operated in Frankfurt's seedy underworld
Back from the Dead by Peter Leonard – review
Elmore Leonard's son proves himself a chip off the old block – again, writes Christopher Bray
The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter by Malcolm Mackay – review
Malcolm Mackay's remarkably original thriller shines a light on Glasgow's criminal underworld, writes Alison Flood