thriller

The publication of Bruce Holsinger’s stunning debut novel is now just two days away, and the Killer Reads team are getting extremely excited! Bruce has very kindly taken the time to answer a few of our BURNING questions (sorry, awful pun), for this exclusive Q&A. Read on… Read More

As you may know, to celebrate the paperback release of the final instalment in the fantastic SANCTUS trilogy we built a towering tower, using numerous copies of The Tower. Five days and sixty-five guesses later, we can reveal that the number of books used to construct our… Read More

So THE TOWER published in paperback today. A bittersweet moment, because it’s the final book in the fantastically amazing SANCTUS trilogy. It’s been such an exciting journey publishing Simon’s first series. We hope you’ve all enjoyed the ride, and thanks so much to the loyal fans who have supported… Read More

I’m often asked where I get my inspiration from, and the truth is that I honestly don’t know. When it comes to thrillers, it can only stem from my own experiences as a copper, but also my fascination with the modern urban jungle – especially when viewed through rain, dirt and dereliction (the way I always perceive it) – as one of the most perilous backdrops against which to imagine high octane adventures.   But I’m well aware that I live in a curious place when it comes to writing. In addition to thrillers, I’ve also written horror, occasionally even diverting into sci-fi, fantasy and historical adventure.   So where does all that fit into the picture? Well, it’s a question I can’t answer easily. Read More

Breaking news from the Killer Reads team! Cold Killing has been optioned for a multi-part TV drama by none other than Carnival Film and Television, the award-winning production company behind Downton Abbey, Whitechapel and Any Human Heart. We’ve had a fantastic response… Read More

Goodreads Book Giveaway Someone to Watch Over Me by Madeleine Reiss Giveaway ends May 10, 2013. See the giveaway details at Goodreads. Enter to win Madeleine Reiss is the winner of The People’s Novelist competition… Read More

“These people have plotted and schemed, lived and died, loved and lost, and suddenly they have gone, out into the wide world, leaving me alone with a silence I’ve not experienced since I began writing my thriller trilogy…”       As The Tower is released, Simon… Read More

  Luke Delaney isn't just an ex-Police Detective, he's also our brand new crime author, and he's about to release a book, Cold Killing, that we're all unbelievably excited about. Below, you can read what he told us about how he became a writer, and beneath that there's an opportunity to read the first two chapters from Cold Killing. In case the title doesn't already give it away, this isn't a book to read before bedtime...   "My senior school was a huge inner city affair. I often thought we were sent there to keep us off the streets rather than to be educated, the teachers having long since given up on us, but even then I loved to write stories. Unfortunately, if the school itself wasn’t a big enough obstacle to any literary ambitions, I was also slightly dyslexic and found my inability to spell and lack of grammar defeated me. I left school, as did most of us, with almost no qualifications. Read More

 My first two novels, The Istanbul Puzzle and The Jerusalem Puzzle are set mainly in the cities of their titles. I decided to write them because I’ve always enjoyed travelling, seeing other cultures and trying to understand what make them tick. The Istanbul Puzzle was easier to write because I have been there about a dozen times. What struck me most about the city was how different it was from my preconceptions. We don’t see much in the media about Istanbul, even these days. Whatever we do see is usually about football hooligans or bomb attacks, and it’s usually quite negative. I had never, for instance, heard anything about Hagia Sophia, the symbol of Istanbul and one of the greatest buildings in the world. What attracted me to Hagia Sopia were the mysteries that still surround it. One mystery I explore in The Istanbul Puzzle is what is underneath it. There have been few underground excavations at Hagia Sophia. Read More

Ever wondered how you make the leap to become a writer? This month sees Paul Finch recall the transition from his days in the Police to his time as a scriptwriter for The Bill in his fourth blog piece for Killer Reads.   The first time I ever put pen to paper to write a serious thriller, it was just after I'd finished serving as an actual police officer. The piece of work in question was a speculative teleplay entitled Knock Off Job. It concerned a murder inside a suburban police station, and presented every member of the shift, both uniform and CID, as potential suspects, none of them knowing who to trust. Now that I look back on it, it was very talkie: lots of tense conversations in dim corridors and cramped offices, lots of frank, fraught interviews, lots of suspicions being cast in every direction. It wouldn't work today simply because modern police stations are filled with CCTV, and the comings and goings of staff and non-staff are more carefully monitored. But the concept was of sufficient interest to the production team at The Bill to make them ask me to come in and see them. I accepted the invitation, and though I didn't realise it at the time, my life changed as a result. Read More

Happy Publication Day to Will Adams, whose fifth novel, Newton’s Fire, is out now. Will was kind enough to share the inspiration behind his new novel in the following piece, sent to us from a remote outpost in the Canary Islands, where he is currently hard at work on his next book…   Back in 2003, a Canadian academic called Stephen Snobelen gave an interview to the Daily Telegraph to promote a new BBC documentary on Sir Isaac Newton. The interview was about a prediction Newton had made, gleaned from his study of the Bible, that the world would come to an end in the year 2060. The story made the Telegraph’s front page, and immediately caused something of a stir. This was Newton, after all, Britain’s most iconic mathematician and scientist. So maybe there was something to it. Other papers and news organisations around the world quickly picked it up, and for a few days Newton’s 2060 prophecy became a global sensation, a hint of Armageddon in the air. But, as is the way of such things, people quickly forgot about it again. Read More

After winning the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for Best Thriller this year AND being awarded the Scottish Crime Book of the Year award at Bloody Scotland, we are thrilled to say that Charles Cumming’s A Foreign Country has been selected as the Sunday Times… Read More