Crime Fiction Book Bundle and a Welcome

Hello and welcome to my brand new blog.

I'll be providing book reviews and news as well as some information on what I'm up to as a freelance writer and some tips for other writers out there.

You can find out more about me here and the sort of stuff I'll be posting about. But for now, let's get straight into it.

For my first post I’m going to write about something that may make any fellow crime fiction lovers out there jealous.

Last Christmas the Orion Publishing Group had a Twitter competition to win a bundle of their latest crime books.

I love crime fiction so I entered, not expecting to actually win, but I did!

A few weeks afterwards I received a lovely box of new books.

Oh, that feeling of opening a parcel of books, it’s so exciting. They all had that lovely new book smell too. Does anybody else like that or is it just me? Then again, I like old book smell too, I just like sniffing books!

What was more exciting was that I hadn’t heard of some of the authors, so it has opened up a whole new world of reading and allowed me to discover some new favourites.

A lot of the crime fiction I like is from the ‘golden’ era; Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh etc, the time when murder was civilised and discussed over tea. But it’s nice to have a contrast and I’ve loved being introduced to modern crime authors.

This includes Mason Cross, Michel Bussi and Denise Mina.

I’m particularly interested to read Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch. It's about a Metropolitan Police Officer whose life is changed when he interviews a witness who happens to be dead. He discovers a world of wizards, vampires and other horror genre creatures. It’s tricky to pull off a mix of genres like crime and fantasy, but this has great reviews so I can’t wait to read it.

There were a few familiar names in the box too, including New York Times bestselling author Linwood Barclay and his new book Broken Promise, the first in a trilogy set in the quiet town of Promise Falls.

I was also really pleased to get the latest John Rebus book by Ian Rankin, Even Dogs in the Wild. I was a bit late to the scene with Ian Rankin, and have only recently started reading the Rebus series, but I’m loving it. I’m wondering whether to skip forwards to this one or keep reading them in order.

I haven’t read all of the books Orion sent yet, but I’m working my way through. Even though I love crime fiction, reading books about grisly rapes and murders one after another can get a bit much, so I intersperse it with something light (I actually just re-read Anne of Green Gables, ultimate sunshiny happiness book).

I will post some reviews soon. The first will be I Know Who Did It by Steve Mosby, look out for that.