Murder
Riots and gang warfare provide the spark for the best latest thrillers
All it takes is a spark. In her compelling new thriller, Ten Days (Canongate, £14.99), Gillian Slovo tracks the progress…
POOF... BOOM... POW! Daniel Clowes’s new graphic novel descends into magic
If you could travel back in time, would you kill Hitler’s mother, seek out your old house and play ball…
Modern Italy’s heart of darkness
Valerio Varesi, the Turin-born crime writer, displays a typically Italian interest (I would say) in conspiracy theory. The Italian term…
Who killed murder?
The mystery of violent crime’s dramatic decline
Take it from a QC – you won’t get away with murder
Technology has made murderers much easier to catch
There’s one real way to stop gang crime: legalise drugs
Brutal, needless stabbings on our city streets will never cease until drugs are legalised
Inside the mind of a murderer
For one week in July 2010, the aspiring spree killer Raoul Moat was the only news. ‘Aspiring’ because he didn’t…
Netflix's Making a Murderer is fascinating - but is it true?
On the face of it, the Netflix documentary serial Making a Murderer should only take up ten hours of your…
A morally dubious mix of Candid Camera and Fawlty Towers: Pushed to the Edge reviewed
Never a man tortured by self-doubt, Derren Brown introduced his latest special Pushed to the Edge (Channel 4, Tuesday) as…
What to expect in 2016 (less mercy from the taxman)
In with the new How the new year is being celebrated around the world. From 1 January… BRITAIN: Annual Investment…
Robert Nairac: brave to a fault
Captain Robert Nairac was a Grenadier Guards officer serving in Northern Ireland when on 14 May 1977 he was abducted…
Can this year’s Gesualdo celebrations be about the music rather than the blood and gore?
The allure of Carlo Gesualdo, eighth Count of Conza and third Prince of Venosa, has been felt by music-lovers from…
Could I have prevented a Kray murder?
Could I have prevented a Kray murder?
Life in Rio’s most infamous favela — where you have to pay the cops to arrest criminals
When Stefan Zweig first arrived in Rio de Janeiro in 1936, he was overwhelmed not only by the city’s magnificent…
Rid of their enemies, the Caesars set about murdering family and friends
According to Francis Bacon, the House of York was ‘a race often dipped in its own blood’. That being so,…
The gangs of LA are caught in an unending bloody vendetta
Ryan Gattis’s novel All Involved is set in South Central Los Angeles in 1992, during the riots that began after…
The war on drugs is stupid and counter-productive
Rosalio Reta was 13 years old when recruited by a Mexican drug cartel. He was given a loyalty test —…
The Outsider — from the viewpoint of the victim’s family
In 1975 the Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe, in a lecture at the University of Massachusetts, identified Joseph Conrad’s Heart of…
A profile of the worlds’s most famous film director — with the most famous profile
‘Do it with scissors’ was Alfred Hitchcock’s advice for prospective murderers, though a glance at these two biographies reminds us…
Life in the LA ghetto was nasty, brutish and short — until one brave detective took on the gangs
Los Angeles ghetto life — thrashed, twisted and black — is not a world that most Americans care to visit.…
Cybersex is a dangerous world (especially for novelists)
Few first novels are as successful as S.J. Watson’s Before I Go to Sleep, which married a startling and unusual…
Which great French novelist was also a crossword-setter?
One could have endless fun setting quiz questions about Georges Perec. Which French novelist had a scientific paper, ‘Experimental demonstration…
The man who was mistaken for a deer
‘And anything by Michael Connelly’ were the final words of advice from one of my best friends in discussing books…
At least South Africa has the world’s best murder trials
South Africa’s spectacular murder trials – first Oscar Pistorius, now Shrien Dewani – help take minds off other difficulties
J.K. Rowling is just too nice – and too lucky – to satirise publishing
J.K. Rowling’s second novel under the Robert Galbraith moniker is a whodunit set in the publishing industry. This isn’t a…
