The current issue of newbooks magazine included a Crime Supplement, which I’ve just got round to looking at. This is a really useful source of information on crime fiction for someone like me who has only relatively recently ventured into this genre. In the past my knowledge of crime fiction has been rather limited, although it did expanded rapidly over the last 8 months through taking part in Kerrie’s Crime Fiction Alphabet.

In this supplement a few books caught my eye, all by writers who are new to me, such as:

• Instruments of Darkness by Imogen Robertson. This is her first novel, described as an eighteenth-century manor house murder mystery. The manor house in question is Thornleigh Hall, the seat of the Earl of Sussex and the murder mystery concerns a dead man found with his throat has cut and the death of Alexander Adams killed in a London music shop.
• A Time of Mourning by Christobel Kent. This is set in a rainy Florence, a menacing and dark story of the death of  an elderly Jewish architect and the disappearance of a young English art student. As private detective Sandro Cellini investigates the cases the connections between them get increasingly complex.
• Two more historical whodunnits by Shirley McKay –  Hue and Cry and Fate and Fortune, both set in Edinburgh in the sixteenth century. These are the Hew Cullen Mysteries. In Fate and Fortune Hew is reluctant to follow in his father’s footsteps as a lawyer and ends up in the middle of a long-hidden mystery, an abduction and a brutal murder.
• No Sorrow to Die by Gillian Galbraith. Another book set in Edinburgh, this one featuring Dectective Sergeant Alice Rice investigating a murder in the course of a burglary that is complicated by the fact that the victim was terminally ill.

There are articles by and about authors such as barrister-turned-author M R Hall, and a “Biography of Agatha Raisin“, M C Beaton’s fictional sleuth. I’ve only read one Agatha Raisin book and wasn’t impressed. Maybe I should give them another chance as apparently they are very popular books – there are plenty of them!

Then there is the programme of  2010 Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate 0n 22 – 25 July with a whole host of crime fiction writers, including Ian Rankin, Val McDermid and Joanne Harris. Full details are at www.harrogate-festival.org.uk/crime. I’m not going but I’d love to be there.