Monthly archive - October 2023

McDorman's West Heart Kill was signed by Raven Books in a six-figure, two-book deal

TV producer Dann McDorman's debut novel, West Heart Kill, is published today (24 October) by Raven Books. The novel takes place at a prestigious country club over a Fourth of July weekend in the 1970s. There's a body, a private detective, and a mystery to solve - and the reader has a role to play too.  Read more

"Speed kills" has always been identified with fast-moving cars and drugs. But today it best describes the crime novel genre, which combines murder with a quickened pace to compete for the conscious mind of an Attention Deficit Disorder society.

Commercial book publishing was (and is) unbearably white. In 1971, when Toni Morrison became a trade editor, about 95 percent of the fiction published by the big commercial houses was by white authors. By 2018, that number dropped only to 89 percent. One of the only other black women working as an editor, Marie Brown, started the same year at Doubleday.  Read more

As a reader and writer of detective fiction, I've taken great pleasure in seeing the resurgence of interest in "Golden Age" mysteries over the last few years.