Features

Forgotten authors No.50: John Dickson Carr

Sunday, 21 March 2010

Sometimes authors fall out of favour simply because they relentlessly pursue a single theme. Pennsylvania-born John Dickson Carr (1906-1977) hit on the ultimate mystery, the murder that takes place in a hermetically sealed room, and wrote variations that increased in ornate complexity, with cliffhanger chapter ends and solutions that still have readers slapping their foreheads.

Devil's advocate: Sophie Hannah has as much sympathy for her villainous characters as her heroes

Sunday, 21 March 2010

Sophie Hannah has been trying to invent a new kind of novel. She calls it, with tongue placed firmly in cheek, "non-judgmental" crime fiction. "Everybody, from the hero detective to the worst baddie, is doing their very best given the situation," she explains. "The crimes in my books are committed by people who can't keep it together any more. They do something to express their own pain, and that has a terrible effect on somebody else." Her new thriller, A Room Swept White, for example, revolves around three women accused of killing their newborn babies.

In the court of history: Bernhard Schlink returns in a non-fiction book to the burdens of a savage past

Friday, 19 March 2010

Boyd Tonkin meets the author of 'The Reader' in Berlin

Bloomsbury Set: Love triangles, suicide and Communism

Friday, 19 March 2010

Andy McSmith: Newly released archives from the Bloomsbury Set provide two insiders' views of the literary subversives.

Indy Choice: Best of the new books

Friday, 19 March 2010

The Diary: Ian McEwan; Home from War; The Harder They Come; John Simpson; Laurence Olivier Awards

Friday, 19 March 2010

Observations: Joseph Fiennes is the new face of Carte Noire Readers

Friday, 19 March 2010

At the moment we're used to seeing Joseph Fiennes play action man. As the star of the US television sci-fi drama FlashForward, he charges around Los Angeles waving a gun, trying to work out why everyone on the planet simultaneously lost consciousness for 137 seconds.

One Minute With: John Simpson

Friday, 19 March 2010

Boyd Tonkin: Meagre fare from the digital kitchen

Friday, 19 March 2010

The Week In Books

Observations: Chip-lit is in the bag at this year's London Word Festival

Friday, 19 March 2010

Now in its third year, the 2010 London Word Festival has been serving up the kind of verbal gastronomics we have come to expect from the east end's most collaborative literary event, with Toby Litt, Iain Sinclair and physicist Brian Cox just some of the treats on this month's menu.