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.

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

Fear and loathing

Figures out this week show that while Britain's crime rate is falling, women's anxiety is rising. Crime writer Val McDermid knows why

Patricia Moyes

A New York Times book reviewer once noted that the detective writer Patricia Moyes, who has died aged 77, "made drug dealing look like bad manners rather than bad morals".

The long shadow of the Falcon

Dashiell Hammett's creation Sam Spade is father to every gumshoe that ever walked down a mean street, says crime-writer Sara Paretsky