‘I was guilty. I did my time’: Anne Perry, the novelist whose past caught up with her
Anne Perry is a bestselling novelist - and a convicted killer whose past caught up with her unexpectedly. Angela Neustatter meets her
Who slew the angel?
Michael Collins combines fine writing with strong storytelling in his police procedural, Lost Souls. Perhaps it takes an outsider to make sense of America's Midwest, says Jay Rayner
‘She was so full of life, spirits, energy’
Celebrated thriller writer Henning Mankell, who was born in Stockholm in 1948, gives his reaction to the murder of Foreign Minister Anna Lindh.
The unknown man
Film noir wouldn't be the same without Georges Simenon's tales of mystery, scandal and sexual misdemeanour. But how much were his stories inspired by his own life?
High priest of low-life America
Interview: Loved by Hollywood and lionised by fellow writers, Elmore Leonard still can't see what all the fuss is about.
Precious Ramotswe and me
How did a Scottish professor of medical law come to write novels about a Botswanan private eye? Alexander McCall Smith talks to Marcel Berlins.
After the Yorkshire Ripper
Maxim Jakubowski on Nineteen Eighty-Three | Sanctum | A Presumption of Death | The Ambitious Stepmother
Criminal masterminds
Anthony Bourdain, of Kitchen Confidential fame, also writes crime novels. Ian Rankin is the creator of choleric, compassionate Rebus. When two crime writers get together, what do they talk about?
Young writers on trial
The teenage winners of a short crime story competition are much possessed by death, and have a penchant for criminal animals. Stephen Moss talks to the competition judges.
Just because you’re paranoid…
Michael Dibdin's conspiratorial novel, the latest Aurelio Zen thriller And Then You Die, is unnervingly close to Italian reality, says Tobias Jones
Murders she wrote
Maxim Jakubowski on Elizabeth Sanxay Holding, the pulp writer whose rattling tales of immorality shocked America and paved the way for Highsmith and Rendell
‘I think bank robbers are fabulous’
Jeffrey Archer thinks they're rubbish, but Martina Cole's East End crime novels are bestsellers in Essex - and prisoners everywhere just can't get enough of them. Jonathan Margolis meets her.
Feel the fear and read it anyway
Rachel Cooke on what makes women keep turning the pages of crime fiction.
They’re playing our book
The simple bit was writing a thriller with her husband. The complications began when Hollywood came calling, using Joseph Fiennes and Heather Graham as the bait...
The long goodnight
Chris Petit reads the mournful, insomniac letters in The Raymond Chandler Papers