The Impossible Dead by Ian Rankin – review

The second Inspector Malcolm Fox book proves that Ian Rankin has created a complex, worthy rival to Rebus, writes Alison Flood

George Baker obituary

Versatile actor and writer best known as Wexford in the TV detective stories

Stieg Larsson’s ghost | No 18

Among the legacies of the author's chart-busting Millennium trilogy is a continuing boom in Nordic crime fiction

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo looks promising – but why so many Brits?

Ben Child: David Fincher's remake of Stieg Larsson's bestseller is shot in Sweden but, oddly, appears to have a distinctly British flavour

The artists’ artist: Crime writers

Five crime writers nominate their favourite living author in their field

Once upon a life: Margie Orford

In 1985, the crime writer Margie Orford was thrown in jail by South Africa's apartheid police. Here she tells of the brutal experience that turned her from an idealistic student into a traumatised young woman

Mark Billingham: my greatest mistake

It was actually his fictional hero who dissed Phil Collins, but the best-selling crime writer got the blame

Anders Breivik massacre will change crime writing, says author

Jo Nesbø says his country's reaction to the killings made him proud to be Norwegian

Neil Cross: ‘I don’t get on with novelists’

The creator of TV's top cop show Luther, Neil Cross has written a spin-off novel. He tells Euan Ferguson about his odd childhood, and why he is mistaken for a psychopath

When writers are confronted by a national trauma…

Nordic crime writers have long occupied a critical role in the national debate on extremism, writes Brian Oliver. How will they respond to the Utøya massacre?

Elizabeth Mackintosh: woman of mystery who deserves to be rediscovered

Writing as Josephine Tey or Gordon Daviot, this all but forgotten novelist has influenced writers from Stephen King to Sarah Waters and was a friend of John Gielgud, writes Robert McCrum