Patricia Cornwell gets tough on violent crime
Alison Flood: Despite a track record of colourfully visceral thrillers, Patricia Cornwell is upset that crime fiction is becoming increasingly graphic
New on the beat
Imogen Carter's beginner's guide to Morse
Thought crime: James Sallis
As he revisits the fractured antihero of two previous novels, James Sallis talks about writing crime fiction focusing on character rather than plot
Bosses from hell
New film Gomorrah shows the mafia's true colours - as slave drivers, toxic-waste dealers and terrorists. Clare Longrigg reports
Miss Marple’s final case: real-life crime mystery of late Oscar-winning actor
Former soprano, employed by Dame Rutherford as companion, forged will
Goodbye to Jim Crumley
I will leave it to the obituarists and the critics to judge his legacy, all I want to do now is remember the man I knew
Wire fans should visit the 87th Precinct
The gritty Baltimore crime drama is winning thousands of acolytes, too few of whom know its heritage in the police procedurals of Ed McBain
Silks
Review: Silks by Dick Francis and Felix FrancisThe pace is slowed by the hamfisted inclusion of barely digested chunks of information about the English legal system from Magna Carta to the present
The Panama mystery
Mark Lawson: Mr and Mrs Canoe's case fascinates but can't match crime fiction's satisfying motives and denouement
Charming crime
Crime: Laura Wilson on Bones in the Belfry | Death on a Branch Line | City of the Sun | Broken
Interview
Author Sara Paretsky is best known for creating the feisty female detective VI Warshawski. But in her latest book, she finds the strength to tackle her troubled childhood in rural Kansas
Populist prejudice
Crime books easier to write than 'serious' novels? That attitude is, frankly, cobblers, says Mark Lawson
‘If you don’t scare anyone, you haven’t really succeeded’
The first time Roberto Saviano stepped inside a mafia don's house, he urinated in the bath. This raw hatred - and reckless defiance - of the mob drove him to expose them in a bestselling book. Does he regret putting his life on the line? Sometimes, he tells John Hooper
OJ and that ‘weird gap’
If I Did It, OJ Simpson's 'confession', has been a bestseller in the States; but should it have been published, asks Duncan Campbell
The poet of collision
Rereading: Dashiell Hammett knew that his day job as a detective for the anti-trade union Pinkerton agency made him in large part a fascist tool - his guilt, writes James Ellroy, was the driving force of his crime fiction.