CrimeFest Programme

 

The Crimefest Programme has been announced. The full programme can be found here.

Thursday 11 May 2023

13:30 – 14:20

Police Procedurals: Getting it Right and Making it Real

14:40 – 15:30 

Protagonists Under Pressure: Putting your Characters in Danger (Panel 1)
Telling Tales: Keeping Secrets and Telling Lies (Panel 2)

15:50 – 16:40 

High Octane: A Thrills and Spills Ride (Panel 1)
Partners in Crime: When Two (or more) Heads are Better than One (Panel 2)

17:00 – 17:50 
Authors Remembered (Panel 1)

A Twist in the Tale: Turning the Plot on its Head (Panel 2)

20:00 – 21:30:

 CRIMEFEST Pub Quiz, with crime writer and critic Peter Guttridge as Inquizitor. Prizes to be won!

LOCATION: TBA.

Friday 12 May 2023

09:00 – 09:50
Keeping it Cosy: The Gifted Amateur (Panel 1)

All in the Mind: Psychological Thrillers (Panel 2)

10:10 – 11:00
Dark Times: Crime Fiction Set in and Around WWII (Panel 1)

This is a Modern World: Crime in the Digital Age (Panel 2)

11:20 – 12:10
More than One: Serial Killers and Multiple Murderers (Panel 1)
A Captive Audience: Locked Rooms and Limited Suspects (Panel 2)
The Ones You Least Expect: Keeping the Reader Guessing (Panel 3)

12:30 – 13:20 
Humanity in the Darkness: Finding Hope in Crime Fiction (Panel 1)

New Golden Age? Today’s Mystery Fiction (Panel 2)

Keeping Them Close: How Well Do You Know Your Friends? (Panel 3)

13:40 – 14:30

Unspeakable: When Bad Things Happen (Panel 1)

Science Fact and Science Fiction (Panel 2)

Guilt and Innocence (Panel 3)

14:50 – 15:40

Location, Location, Location: The Importance of Setting (Panel 1)

Job Titles: Choosing What Your Protagonist Does For a Living (Panel 2)

A Little Bit Spooky: Adding a Sprinkle of the Supernatural (Panel 3)

16:00 – 16:50

Historical Crime Fiction: Today Reflected in History? (Panel 1)

It’s Personal: The Private Lives of Police Protagonists (Panel 2)

Spying For A Living (Panel 3)

17:10 – 18:00
Cat and Mouse (Panel 1)

A Battle Between Good and Evil?: Protagonist vs Antagonist (Panel 2)

PALM COURT

18:30 – 19:30
CrimeFest hosts the Crime Writers’ Association’s Dagger Announcement Reception

Saturday 13 May 023

09:00 – 09:50

Debut Authors: An Infusion Of Fresh Blood (Panel 1)

Close to Home: Murder in the Family (Panel 2)

10:10 – 11:00
Featured Guest Interview

11:20 – 12:10
High Stakes: Risking it All (Panel 1)

Black is the Night: Cornell Woolrich (Panel 2)

Historical Crime Fiction: Choices, Research and Making It Work (Panel 3)

12:30 – 13:20 

TBC

3:40 – 14:30
A Stranger in Our Midst: The Danger of the Outsider (Panel 1)

Greed, Power, Money, Revenge…: Motives for Murder (Panel 2)

Evening All: the Enduring Allure of Police Procedurals (Panel 3)

14:50 – 15:40
FEATURED GUEST Interview

16:00 – 16:50

Humour: When Murder Makes us Laugh (Panel 1)

Society: What Crime Fiction Says About Us (Panel 2)

English Riviera: It’s not all Sunshine and Ice Cream (Panel 3)

17:30 – 18:15: 

Pre-Gala Dinner Reception (All Full Pass holders welcome)
18:15: 

CRIMEFEST Awards Dinner– ticket holders only

Sunday 13 May 2023

09:30 – 10:20
Debut Authors: An Infusion Of Fresh Blood (Panel 1)

The Indie Alternative (Panel 2)

10:40 – 11.30
TOASTMASTER INTERVIEW – PETER GUTTRIDGE (Panel 1)

Tight Knit: Where Everyone Knows Your Business (Panel 2)

11:50 – 12:40
Criminal Mastermind Quiz

A Spot of Bother with the Cops in Iceland by Michael Ridpath

 

Last summer, I had my first ever run-in with the Icelandic police, who put out an all-points alert for me and my hired car. In the end, I turned myself in.

I had spent most of lockdown writing my latest Magnus crime novel, Death in Dalvik. The problem was I had never been to Dalvík. I planned to go in May 2020 and then again in November 2020, but COVID stopped me. I had already finished the 3rd draft of the novel by the time I was eventually allowed to leave Britain for Iceland in June 2021.

Iceland is always a brilliant place to visit, but it is even more brilliant without tourists, as it was last summer. The COVID tests involved a certain amount of high-stakes form filling and app downloading and deleting, but I got there in the end. 

Valley just to the south of Dalvik

The nearest big town to Dalvík is Akureyri, in the north of Iceland. Akureyri is the regional police headquarters from where Magnus would be operating to solve his crime in Dalvík. So I took a photograph. Among some stiff competition, Akureyri is Iceland’s drabbest police station.

I took the picture before breakfast. Around lunchtime, I thought I would drop in for a chat. I was a little nervous about this. Policemen are almost always helpful in these situations, but you never know: in Qaqortoq in Greenland they refused to talk to me and booted me out of the station.

Akureyri police station

I introduced myself to the receptionist, whose eyebrows rose. She scurried off. After several minutes a chief inspector showed up and led me outside the station to talk (for COVID reasons, I think). I said I was a British crime writer and was writing a novel set in Dalvík. The chief inspector smiled and said he knew. Apparently, the desk sergeant had seen me taking a photograph that morning and had come outside to speak to me. I remember seeing him emerge from the station – I assumed he was sneaking a quick cigarette – so without waiting for him, I drove off. He noted my rental car number and put out an all-points alert.

The Akureyri police in action

Fortunately, I had parked my car on a side street all morning, so the police hadn’t found it. But they had contacted Avis who gave them my email address. From which they deduced my website and my Twitter feed. From which they learned I had just been in Dalvík, researching a crime novel.

I was impressed by their detection skills. I spoke to the Avis guy as I left Akureyri who was less impressed: he thought there just wasn’t enough crime in Akureyri to keep them properly occupied. Which is probably a good thing.

I returned to England without a criminal record or an Interpol red notice, and finished my book. The result, Death in Dalvik, is out on 20 April. Dísa is an intelligent 16-year-old schoolgirl who is given five Bitcoin by her father in 2017 and through astute trading turns it into enough money to bail out her grandparents’ bankrupt farm. Her mother is so impressed, that she too catches the cryptocurrency bug. She persuades the wealthier inhabitants of Dalvík to invest in a new cryptocurrency, Thomocoin, with predictable results. The poor woman is found dead on a mountainside, and my detective Magnus investigates.

Death in Dalvik by Michael Ridpath (Yarmer Head) Out Now

When sixteen-year-old Dísa is given five bitcoin by her divorced father she is unimpressed: she hasn't heard of the cryptocurrency, and five of anything can't be worth very much. But a year later, when her grandparents are about to lose the farm near the Icelandic village of Dalvik where their family has lived for centuries, quiet, unassuming Dísa is able to rescue it with the profits from her astute trading of her father's gift. Unknown to Dísa, her mother Helga catches the cryptocurrency bug. Not only does Helga invest in Thomocoin, a new cryptocurrency sweeping Iceland, but she persuades many of her neighbours in Dalvík to invest too, taking a cut for herself. Helga is found murdered on the hillside above the farm and Inspector Magnus Jonson investigates. Magnus realizes that Dísa, now a nineteen-year-old student, can help him unveil the shadowy forces behind Thomocoin. But torn between loyalty to her family and fear for her life, Dísa has other ideas.

More information about Michael Ridpath and his books can be found on his website. He can also be found on Facebook and you can follow him on Twitter @MichaelRidpath and on Instagram @michaelridpathauthor

Writing in Ice: A Crime Writer’s Guide to Iceland by Michael Ridpath

 

Over the last twelve years I have written five crime novels set in Iceland. I have visited the country many times, I have spoken to dozens of Icelanders, taken loads of photographs and mumbled for hours into a tape recorder in the wind and rain.

 I have taken notes.  Boy, have I taken notes.  I’m quite proud of the way I have organized them. I have a massive Word file of 450 pages (over 200,000) words, all split into sections and subsections for easy reference.  So, if I want to describe the café Mokka in Reykjavík, for example, or the effect of the sunlight and clouds on Mount Esja, I can look it up right away.

 Of course, I only use a small fraction of all this work in each book. 

After I finished my last Magnus novel (Magnus is my detective) I looked at this research file and thought – how can I make this information more widely available?  There is plenty of good stuff in there for anyone interested in Iceland and for the tourist.

 I love Iceland, but it is in many ways a profoundly strange place.  Here are a dozen odd facts from my files:                                                                                                                                          

1.    The only country ever to invade Iceland was Britain in May 1940, on the same day Germany was invading Belgium.  The British went the wrong way.

2.    When an Icelander gets a piece of extraordinary luck he shouts “Hvalreki!”, which means “Beached whale!”

3.    Iceland has had three Miss Worlds, not bad for a country with the same population as Coventry, which has had none (yet).

4.    Iceland is the only country in medieval Europe to be governed without a ruler.  Between its settlement in 874 and 1264 Iceland was governed at an annual open-air meeting of the chieftains called the Althing, held on the floor of the rift valley at Thingvellir

5.    An analysis of Icelanders’ DNA shows that 75% of their male ancestors were mostly Norwegian, but 62% of their female ancestors were British or Irish.  That’s what a couple of centuries of raping and pillaging will do for the bloodstock.

6.    An Icelandic family of four can have four different last names.  For example: Jón Gunnarsson (father), Björk Ragnarsdóttir (mother), Magnús Jónsson (son) and Anna Jónsdóttir (daughter).

7.    Until 1987 there was no television in Iceland on Thursday nights.  The TV guys needed a day off like everyone else.

8.    Despite being so far north, the temperature doesn’t vary very much.  The mean temperature is 2 degrees Celsius in January and 13 degrees Celsius in June.  Basically, the weather is pretty bad all year round.

9.    Iceland is teeming with “hidden people” who live in rocks.  Roads have been diverted to avoid these dwellings.  A higher proportion of supporters of the Progressive Party believe in hidden people than supporters of other political parties.  Everyone’s granny has spoken to one.

10.    Icelandic still uses two letters from old English, thorn (þ) and eth (đ).  These were introduced to Iceland by English monks in the eleventh century.

11.    89% of houses in Reykjavík are heated using steam bubbling up from the earth’s core.  The hot water in Reykjavík smells vaguely of sulphur.

12.    An Icelander was the first European to discover America (Leifur Eiríksson)

There are many, many more.

 At heart, I’m not a non-fiction writer, I’m a storyteller.  So I decided to tell the story of how and why I set a detective series in Iceland.  The stakes, for me at least, were high.  After writing eight financial thrillers, I was looking for a new setting for my novels.  I knew nothing about Iceland, and I wasn’t entirely certain I would be able to discover enough about the country to write crime novels set there.  It was a risk.

In Writing in Ice, I describe all that I did discover: Iceland’s people, its culture, its breath taking landscape, its history, its literature, its myths and its music.  I also show how I put together a detective series in a foreign country: creating Magnus my detective, researching characters, how to describe a setting and an atmosphere.  

When I wrote my first Magnus novel, Where the Shadows Lie, there was only one internationally known Icelandic crime writer – Arnaldur Indridason.  Now there are many more: Yrsa Sigurdardóttir, Lilja Sigurdardóttir (no relation), Ragnar Jónasson, Quentin Bates (who is British like me, but knows Iceland much better than I do) and more emerging every year.  Which isn’t surprising, really, since it’s brilliant place to write about.

By this point you may be asking yourself, what is the point of a foreigner writing about Iceland when there are so many Icelanders who do it so well? 

 There is an Icelandic expression: “Glöggt er gests augad”, which roughly translates to “Clear is a guest’s eye.”  There are some things a foreigner can see and describe, which a native won’t.  There is so much extraordinary in Iceland, that it all seems ordinary to an Icelander.  But I can point it out.

That’s why I made my detective, Magnus, an Icelandic-American.  He moved to Boston when he was twelve and became a Boston homicide detective.  So when he returns to Iceland, he sees his own country through the eyes of a guest.  Through my eyes.

Writing in Ice is the story of how I learned to see Iceland.  More than that, it’s the story of how I fell in love with the country.

Michael Ridpath is the author of the Magnus Iceland Mysteries.  His book Writing in Ice: A Crime Writer’s Guide to Iceland is published 1 July 2021. 

If you had to choose a new location for a crime series, where would you look? Michael Ridpath had to do just that. He chose Iceland, a country of fjords, glaciers and volcanoes, of long, manic summer days and long, sinister winter evenings, a place where everyone is on Facebook and everyone's grandmother has spoken to an elf. This is his account of researching the country: the breathtaking landscape, its vigorous if occasionally odd people, the great heroes and heroines of its sagas, and (of course) those troublesome elves; with a little bit thrown in about how to put together a good detective story.

All pictures © Michael Ridpath

1. Michael Ridpath

2. Jökulsárlón Lagoon   

3.  The Berserker’s Lava Field, West Iceland

Books To Look Forward To From Atlantic Books and Corvus Books

 July 2021

The Case of the Vanishing Blonde is by Mark Bowden Six captivating true-crime stories, spanning Mark Bowden's long and illustrious career, cover a variety of crimes complicated by extraordinary circumstances. In The Case of the Vanishing Blonde, the veteran reporter revisits some of his most riveting stories and examines the effects of modern technology on the journalistic process. From a story of a campus rape in 1983, to three cold cases solved by the inimitable private detective Ken Brennan, an LAPD investigation that unearths a murderer within its own ranks and the darkest corners of internet chatrooms, this collection contains all the best the genre has to offer. Gripping true crime from 'an old pro'.

When a scream shatters the summer night outside their country house, reformed literary forger Will and his wife Meghan find their daughter Maisie shaken and bloodied, holding a parcel her attacker demanded she present to her father. Inside is a literary rarity the likes of which few have ever handled, and a letter laying out impossible demands regarding its future. After twenty years of living life on the straight and narrow, Will finds himself drawn back to forgery, ensnared in a plot to counterfeit the rarest book in American literature: Edgar Allan Poe's first publication, Tamerlane. Facing threats to his life and family, coerced by his former nemesis and fellow forger Henry Slader, Will must rely on the artistic skills of his other daughter Nicole to help create a flawless forgery of this 1827 publication regarded as the Holy Grail of American letters. Part mystery, part case study of the shadowy side of the book trade, and part homage to the writer who invented the detective tale,  The Forger's Daughter is by Bradford Morrow portrays the world of literary forgery as diabolically clever, genuinely dangerous and inescapable, it would seem, to those who have ever embraced it.

She already has your looks. Now she wants your life... Beautiful twin sisters Iris and Summer are startlingly alike, but beneath the surface lies a darkness that sets them apart. Cynical and insecure, Iris has long been envious of open-hearted Summer's seemingly never-ending good fortune, including her perfect husband Adam. Called to Thailand to help sail the beloved family yacht to the Seychelles, Iris nurtures her own secret hopes for what might happen on the journey. But when she unexpectedly finds herself alone in the middle of the Indian Ocean, everything changes. Now is her chance to take what she's always wanted - the idyllic life she's coveted from afar. But just how far will she go to get the life she's dreamed about? And how far will she go to ensure no one discovers the truth? Filled with chilling suspense, The Girl in the Mirror is by Rose Carlyle and is an addictive thriller about greed, lust, secrets and deadly lies.

Such a quiet Place is by Megan Miranda. We had no warning that she would come back...Welcome to Hollow's Edge - a picture-perfect neighbourhood where everyone has each other's backs. At least, that's how it used to be, until the night Brandon and Fiona Truett were found dead... Two years ago, branded a grifter, thief and sociopath by her friends and neighbours, Ruby Fletcher was convicted of murdering the Truetts. Now, freed by mistrial, Ruby has returned to Hollow's Edge. But why would she come back? No one wants her there, least of all her old housemate, Harper Nash. As Ruby's return sends shockwaves through the community, terrified residents turn on each other, and it soon becomes clear that not everyone was honest about the night the Truetts died. When Harper begins to receive threatening, anonymous notes, she realizes she has to uncover the truth before someone else gets hurt... Someone like her.

The Viper is by Christobel Kent. Sandro Cellini faces his demons... Sandro Cellini hasn't set foot in La Vipera, a derelict farmhouse just outside Florence that was once home to a free-living commune, for forty years - until the discovery of two bodies nearby leads him back there. At the start of his career, Cellini investigated an accusation that minors were being corrupted at La Vipera, but no charges were ever brought. Now, tasked with tracking down former members of the community, he has a chance to finally discover what really went on all those years ago. But in order to learn the true nature of the commune's mission, he must face his own traumatic memories. As he sifts through the lies, those closest to him are placed in danger. Only Cellini can unravel the final mystery of La Vipera, and so protect those he loves.

August 2021

How to Kill Your Best Friend is by Lexie Elliott. The perfect getaway - to get away with murder... Georgie, Lissa and Bronwyn have been best friends since they met on their college swimming team. Now Lissa is dead - drowned off the coast of the remote island where her second husband owns a luxury resort. But could a star open-water swimmer really have drowned? Or is something more sinister going on? Brought together for Lissa's memorial, Georgie, Bron, Lissa's grieving husband and their friends find themselves questioning the circumstances around Lissa's death - and each other. As the weather turns ominous, trapping the guests on the island, it slowly dawns on them that Lissa's death was only the beginning. Nobody knows who they can trust. Or if they'll make it off the island alive...

September 2021

No one even knew they were together. Now one of them is dead. 56 days ago.Ciara and Oliver meet in a supermarket queue in Dublin and start dating the same week COVID-19 reaches Irish shores. 35 dys ago. When lockdown threatens to keep them apart, Oliver suggests they move in together. Ciara sees a unique opportunity for a relationship to flourish without the scrutiny of family and friends. Oliver sees a chance to hide who - and what - he really is. Today, Detectives arrive at Oliver's apartment to discover a decomposing body inside. Can they determine what really happened, or has lockdown created an opportunity for someone to commit the perfect crime? 56 Days is by Catherine Ryan Howard.

October 2021

The Diplomat's Wife is by Michael Ridpath 1936: Devastated by the death of her beloved brother Hugh, Emma seeks to keep his memory alive by wholeheartedly embracing his dreams of a communist revolution. But when she marries an ambitious diplomat, she must leave her ideals behind and live within the confines of embassy life in Paris and Nazi Berlin. Then one of Hugh's old comrades reappears, asking her to report on her philandering husband, and her loyalties are torn. 1979: Emma's grandson, Phil, dreams of a gap-year tour of Cold War Europe, but is nowhere near being able to fund it. So when his beloved grandmother determines to make one last trip to the places she lived as a young diplomatic wife, and to try to solve a mystery that has haunted her since the war, he jumps at the chance to accompany her. But their journey takes them to darker, more dangerous places than either of them could ever have imagined...

November 2021

A Memory for Murder is by Anne Holt. When high-powered lawyer Selma Falck is shot and her oldest friend, a junior MP, is killed in a sniper attack, everyone - including the police - assume that Selma was the prime target. But when two other people with connections to the MP are also found murdered, it becomes clear that there is a wider conspiracy at play. As Selma sets out to avenge her friend's death, and discover the truth behind the conspiracy, her own life is threatened once again. Only this time, the danger may be closer to home than she could possibly have realised...

Nights of the Lingering Ghosts is by Phil Rickman. ''I called on Darkness-but before the word. Was uttered, midnight darkness seemed to take. All objects from my sight...'William Wordsworth. England's most famous poet once thought of himself as a modern druid and found his deepest inspiration on the banks of the River Wye, where Celtic magic can still be found and an old darkness lingers. Now, as the world is at the mercy of the coronavirus pandemic, diocesan exorcist Merrily Watkins learns that the ghosts of the lower Wye Valley still need some attention...

Books to Look Forward to From Corvus and Atlantic Press

 January 2021

The Dark Room is by Sam Blake. Hare's Landing, West Cork. A house full of mystery... Rachel Lambert leaves London afraid for her personal safety and determined to uncover the truth behind the sudden death of a homeless man with links to a country house hotel called Hare's Landing. New York-based crime reporter Caroline Kelly's career is threatened by a lawsuit and she needs some thinking space away from her job. But almost as soon as she arrives, Hare's Landing begins to reveal its own stories - a 30-year-old missing person's case and the mysterious death of the hotel's former owner. As Rachel and Caroline join forces, it becomes clear that their investigations are intertwined - and that there is nothing more dangerous than the truth...

February 2021

What secrets are hidden within the walls of a desolate farmhouse in a forgotten corner of Lapland? Early spring has its icy grip on OEdesmark, a small village in northernmost Sweden, abandoned by many of its inhabitants. But Liv Bjoernlund never left. She lives in a derelict house together with her teenage son, Simon, and her ageing father, Vidar. They make for a peculiar family, and Liv knows that they are cause for gossip among their few remaining neighbours. Just why has Liv stayed by her domineering father's side all these years? And is it true that Vidar is sitting on a small fortune? His questionable business decisions have made him many enemies over the years, and in OEdesmark everyone knows everyone, and no one ever forgets. Now someone wants back what is rightfully theirs. And they will stop at nothing to get it, no matter who stands in their way... The Last Snow is by Stina Jackson.

The Diplomat's Wife is by Michael Ridpath. 1936: Devastated by the death of her beloved brother Hugh, Emma seeks to keep his memory alive by wholeheartedly embracing his dreams of a communist revolution. But when she marries an ambitious diplomat, she must leave her ideals behind and live within the confines of embassy life in Paris and Nazi Berlin. Then one of Hugh's old comrades reappears, asking her to report on her philandering husband, and her loyalties are torn. 1979: Emma's grandson, Phil, dreams of a gap-year tour of Cold War Europe, but is nowhere near being able to fund it. So when his beloved grandmother determines to make one last trip to the places she lived as a young diplomatic wife, and to try to solve a mystery that has haunted her since the war, he jumps at the chance to accompany her. But their journey takes them to darker, more dangerous places than either of them could ever have imagined...

March 2021

The Favour is by Laura Vaughan. Fortune favours the fraud... When she was thirteen years old, Ada Howell lost not just her father, but the life she felt she was destined to lead. Now, at eighteen, Ada is given a second chance when her wealthy godmother gifts her with an extravagant art history trip to Italy. In the palazzos of Venice, the cathedrals of Florence and the villas of Rome, she finally finds herself among the kind of people she aspires to be: sophisticated, cultured, privileged. Ada does everything in her power to prove she is one of them. And when a member of the group dies in suspicious circumstances, she seizes the opportunity to permanently bind herself to this gilded set. But everything hidden must eventually surface, and when it does, Ada discovers she's been keeping a far darker secret than she could ever have imagined...

April 2021

The Girl in the Mirror is by Rose Carlyle. She already has your looks. Now she wants your life... Beautiful twin sisters Iris and Summer are startlingly alike, but beneath the surface lies a darkness that sets them apart. Cynical and insecure, Iris has long been envious of open-hearted Summer's seemingly never-ending good fortune, including her perfect husband Adam. Called to Thailand to help sail the beloved family yacht to the Seychelles, Iris nurtures her own secret hopes for what might happen on the journey. But when she unexpectedly finds herself alone in the middle of the Indian Ocean, everything changes. Now is her chance to take what she's always wanted - the idyllic life she's coveted from afar. But just how far will she go to get the life she's dreamed about? And how far will she go to ensure no one discovers the truth?

The Elizabethan world is in flux. Radical new ideas are challenging the old. But the quest for knowledge can lead down dangerous paths... London, 1594. The Queen's physician has been executed for treason, and conspiracy theories flood the streets. When Nicholas Shelby, unorthodox physician and unwilling associate of spymaster Robert Cecil, is accused of being part of the plot, he and his new wife Bianca must flee for their lives. With agents of the Crown on their tail, they make for Padua, following the ancient pilgrimage route, the Via Francigena. But the pursuing English aren't the only threat Nicholas and Bianca face. Hella, a strange and fervently religious young woman, has joined them on their journey. When the trio finally reach relative safety, they become embroiled in a radical and dangerous scheme to shatter the old world's limits of knowledge. But Hella's dire predictions of an impending apocalypse, and the brutal murder of a friend of Bianca's forces them to wonder: who is this troublingly pious woman? And what does she want? The Heretics Mark is by S W Perry.

June 2021

The Legacy is by Caroline Bond. A death in the family rarely brings out the best in people - even the deceased. Jonathan Coulter planned for his death meticulously, leaving nothing to chance. His will states that his three adult children must decide between them how to dispose of his estate. If they cannot come together over their inheritance, then they risk losing it. But Liv, Noah and Chloe never agree on anything. And now, with only one weekend to overcome their rivalry, tensions begin to rise. Why has Jonathan left the decision to them? And why has he made no mention of his new partner, Megan, or the children's mother, Eloise? If he wanted to teach them a lesson from beyond the grave, what is it? And can the siblings put their differences aside for long enough to learn it?

Reviews in January 2016

It was a big start for 2016 with 28 reviews appearing online. Many thanks to the reviewers themselves.

Antonio Manzini	Black Run	28 January, 2016
Eva Dolan	Tell No Tales	28 January, 2016
Stuart Prebble	The Insect Farm	28 January, 2016
Neely Tucker	Murder, D.C.	27 January, 2016
Acorn Media	And Then There Were None (DVD)	27 January, 2016
David Mark	Dead Pretty	27 January, 2016
James Donovan	Strangers on a Bridge	21 January, 2016
Keith Jacobsen	Sisters of Fury	20 January, 2016
Susanna Gregory	The Chelsea Strangler	20 January, 2016
Elizabeth Haynes	Behind Closed Doors	19 January, 2016
Jason Matthews	Palace of Treason	18 January, 2016
David Young	Stasi Child	18 January, 2016
Martin Hill	The Last Refuge	18 January, 2016
Eva Dolan	After You Die	17 January, 2016
John Lescroart	The Fall	17 January, 2016
Aga Lesiewicz	Rebound	14 January, 2016
Claudia Piñeiro	Betty Boo	12 January, 2016
Hester Young	The Gates of Evangeline	12 January, 2016
Michael Ridpath	Shadows of War	12 January, 2016
Johnathan Moore	The Poison Artist	11 January, 2016
Arrow Films	Arne Dahl: The Complete Second Season.	11 January, 2016
Haken Nesser	A Summer with Kim Novak	11 January, 2016
Kevin Wignall	A Death in Sweden	03 January, 2016
David McCallum	Once a Crooked Man	03 January, 2016
Joseph Finder	The Fixer	03 January, 2016
Gerald Seymour	No Mortal Thing	03 January, 2016
Peter May	Coffin Road	03 January, 2016
Michael Connelly	The Crossing	03 January, 2016