MURDER MYSTERY
HISTORICAL
EDITOR’S CHOICE
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What Will the Crime Thriller Hero Look Like in Five Years’ Time?
The journalist and author of The Khan discusses how the genre’s future will be shaped by AI, declining trust in institutions, and a new crop of morally ambiguous, diverse and increasingly female protagonists who challenge conventional notions of justice and heroism.

True Crime and Punishment
Fyodor Dostoevsky’s lifelong fascination with crime, shaped by personal tragedy, penal servitude and notorious real-life murderers, inspired one of his masterpieces.

Sunshine Is Scarier Than Fog: In Praise of the Unglamorous Crime Scene
David Cosgrove
Crime fiction, as a genre, has expensive taste in real estate. Atmosphere is free money. But I want to put in a word for the other landscape, the one nobody photographs for the book jacket: the strip mall, the office park, the boardwalk in October, the sun-bleached intersection with four gas stations and no pedestrians. The places with no dignity to lose.

The Joke Is the Knife: Why Funny Is the Hardest Way to Kill Someone
David Cosgrove
There’s a polite assumption in crime fiction that humor is garnish. The body is the meal. The detective’s one-liner is the parsley: a little color on the plate, a break in the grimness, comic relief, as if the laughter exists to let pressure out of the book. I’d like to formally object.


The Talk of the Party
Folosu Agbaje
Folosu Agbaje is a British- Nigerian author based in London, but Lagos is her home. Her stories are shaped by both cities. She has an MA from the LSE and is a graduate of the Faber writing academy. Her debut novel was The Parlour Life. Folosu’s narratives explore identity, culture and resilience and her new novel is The Talk of the Party. When I asked Foluso for a feature what I got was unexpected but is a truly fascinating writer’s meditation.

Master of Lies
Piers Blofeld
Piers Blofeld is a literary agent and a former publisher. He is a regular commentator on the mysteries of the book business and is a columnist for Writing Magazine. He is Norfolk born and bred with a surname destined to author a spy book. His debut is Master of Lies: How Anthony Blunt’s Treachery Shaped Our World. here he pays homage to the work of Anthony Glees and tells us Blunt may have been the most important of Russia’s Cambridge Spies.
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