The Christmas Clue (2025) by Nicola Upson Prior to starting my blog, back in 2015, I had read some of Upson’s series featuring Josephine Tey as an amateur sleuth. However, today’s read is a non-series title, which I picked up as the premise intrigued me: ‘A Christmas murder mystery featuring the real-life couple who invented Cluedo.’ The history of Cluedo is something that I have looked at in a little more detail, as in 2020 I reviewed Jonathan Foster’s The Story of Cluedo: How Anthony Pratt Invented the Game of Murder Mystery (2013). The opening of the story comes with a nice map, which gives the piece a traditional detective puzzle vibe, however, I think this is a bit of a red herring, which I will discuss more anon.
https://crossexaminingcrime.co....m/2025/12/04/the-chr

Why Margot Harrison Staged a Murder Mystery in Her Former Workplace Some real places cry out to be used as thriller settings. When an editor suggested I write a novel about dark doings in a magic library, the first thing that popped into my mind was a memory from my college work-study job, decades earlier. As an undergraduate at Harvard, I worked part-time in the Harry […]
https://crimereads.com/widener....-library-murder-myst

Why So Many Former Intelligence Officers Write Espionage Fiction I had spotted the man earlier on. He didn’t quite fit in the usual mid-morning crowd. I was in one of those medieval European cities full of twisty streets that are useless for cars and little alleyways that lead you to a huge gothic cathedral. The kind of place where you have every reason to […]
https://crimereads.com/spies-w....riting-spy-fiction-e

Why Washington DC is the Perfect City to Set a Psychological Thriller In December 2016, I came out of the White House Christmas party onto a strangely deserted Fifteenth Street. The night was bracing cold. The city seemed to be holding its breath. In another month, the Obamas were leaving and a new administration was coming in. You could feel change in the air, but nobody knew […]
https://crimereads.com/why-was....hington-dc-is-the-pe

The Best Books of 2025: Crime Fiction, Mysteries, and Thrillers As we approach the end of the year, it’s time to celebrate the best crime novels, mysteries, and thrillers of 2025. The works below feature quite a few old favorites at the top of their game, as well as several new voices possessed of a self-assurance at odds with their experience, and heralding great things […]
https://crimereads.com/best-bo....oks-2025-crime-ficti