About

I'm a writer, editor, proofreader and copywriter who has for many years earned a living doing other things. I'm currently working on my fourth Sam Dyke novel. I used to teach English and American literature, but for the last twenty years or so I've read almost exclusively in the field of American crime writing. I can't seem to get on with British crime writing, despite being a Brit myself, because it seems parochial and focused almost entirely on the procedural elements of police work. So that's my prejudices out of the way ...

This blog is intended to investigate how crime writing works from a writer's perspective. Most of the time I'll be writing about the books I've just read, but sometimes I'll just drop in a post about something else that has caught my eye or interested me.