Accidents Will Happen marks a big departure for me as a ‘noirish’ writer. My two most recent novels, All Down the Line (2020) and After the Bridge (2024), were based in Manchester. I lived, worked and played there for most of my adult life with my partner-in-crime, Catherine. But in Accidents, I swapped rainy city’s intense urban underworld for Northumberland’s isolated rugged cliffs and windswept coastal landscapes. Despite this dramatic shift in locations, my grim noir DNA runs throughout a short taut gritty novel that starts with a simple premise: did a talented classical violist jump or slip off a cliff? 

Did a talented classical violist jump or slip off a cliff? An inquest delivers an accidental death verdict, but two friends believe Lisa Wright leapt and want somebody to blame other than themselves. That’s my stark premise for Accidents Will Happen, the antithesis of a plot-driven suspense and resolution thriller. The book explores how we like to think we’re in control of our destinies, but we’re not. Not even close. Everything can change in an instant, individually and collectively.

All Expenses Paid is a zippy chiller inviting us into the glam world of two young female social media influencers, outsiders monetising their perfect lives with a constant flow of online product endorsement content to generate likes, comments and shares.

One of the more controversial climaxes of the publishing industry year used to be the annual Literary Review’s Bad Sex Award — which appears to have taken a permanent vacation in 2020 when the magazine claimed people had been ‘subjected to too many bad things’ during the Covid pandemic.

When I am writing crime fiction, I am inevitably faced with the precarious balancing act of trying to ensure my hard-boiled double-espresso novel doesn’t become a dreaded decaffeinated cosy crime story.

The controversy surrounding Richard Gadd’s award-winning Netflix TV show, Baby Reindeer, intensified recently when an American judge in California ruled that the show was incorrectly marketed by the streamer as a ‘true story’.

It is up to us to create our own Bridge buzz. Whether you are a crime writer, reviewer, blogger, book club organiser or a reader, sharing your feedback/reviews with your peers makes a huge difference sales!