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What Pembrokeshire Murders? The Pembrokeshire Murders is the title and subject of an ITV series that I've been watching this week. It's fascinating and, although a drama, is closely based on fact. Some of it is stranger than fiction. They have also shown one of...

Who says GM Police have failed the public? GM Police have made news because HM Inspector of Police has issued a report listing many failings. The police in Greater Manchester have failed to record a lot of crimes and have failed to investigate others. They have failed...

Villains are essential in crime novels. Villains present a problem to crime writers, because we want to give them credibility. Readers need to relate to all the main characters in a novel, at least to some extent. We writers draw on our own character and personality,...

I am feeling down and depressed I am seldom depressed. For almost all this year I have been feeling happy enough through all the minor ups and downs, partly because I have continued to count my blessings as I said at the start of Lockdown. I have written about various...

Nostalgia is still with us Nostalgia is part of the appeal of a lot of books. I don't mean historical novels as much as those about the recent past. People like books that remind them of their youth or of happier times. Perhaps times before the internet and mobile...

Cold cases are often in the news Cold cases such as the White House Farm Murder get a lot of publicity when someone manages to open them up again. Sometimes something reminds us they are still live, like the Maddie McCann case. I'm glad the police so often don't give...

Honour Killing : a drama Honour killings were the subject of an ITV mini series this week. It was a dramatisation of the real-life case of the murder of a Kurdish Teenager, Banaz Mahmod, by members of her family. Her offense was that she left her husband and then...

Stress affected many people in Lockdown Some of us hoped there would be less stress once it was eased and we could go out again and do more things. Alas! That is not how it has been. Now we seem to be going backwards and the rules seem to be changing all the time....

Wales is the setting for all the Accounting for Murder series Although living in Wales, my hero, Frank Hill, is a Lancastrian, like myself, who has settled in Cardiff, as I once did. All his adventures take place in the Principality, apart from some forays into...

Everyone benefits from reading a good book. The benefits which Val McDermid identifies are impressive. She says she has noticed that people who read fiction make better leaders, while citing several current examples, including her friend Nicola Sturgeon. She notes...

Apology? Why? In the preface to New Money I wrote: This book was written just as Wales was coming out of Lockdown and I have tried to make the setting as realistic as possible. Of course, things might well have changed by the time you read this, hopefully for the...

What is New Money? New Money is the latest book in my series Accounting for Murder. It was hinted at in a recent piece about me in the Warrington Guardian on how I have been spending my time during Lockdown. What is New Money About? New Money is set in the present,...