Better the Blood: A Crime Fiction Book set in New Zealand

The surface question of this book is "Who is killing these people?" but as a book of layers, readers who choose to dig down further find other questions, many of which will be uncomfortable. Like it's antipodean counterpart, Dust off the Bones, we are seeing an emergence in crime fiction of narrative which deeply engages with crime. Not just the crime that propels a reader to turn the page to find out who dun it. Rather crime that is rooted in great injustices, crimes of nations and states, crimes for which no one person can be jailed, so we can easily say justice is done and move on. Crimes which are so large, that they ripple throughout history, and on the level of time are still present, happening and, ongoing, before our very eyes.

London in Black: A Crime Fiction novel by Jack Lutz

Science Fiction and crime fiction make extremely potent mix, best exemplified in China Mieville's The City and The City. The combination of working out what has happened in the crime, and also unravelling world building to understand the culture and history of a future or different universe, means that a readers synapses will be firing more than normal, and the satisfaction of finding the solution to the crime, while understanding the implications of the sometimes extremely unusual context means the dopamine hit at the end is higher.

Father Wants Us Dead: A True Crime Podcast about John List

For those who enjoy delving into the aberrant psychologies behind some of the worst true crime, you will soon come to notice that it reflects the same biases and inadequacies as the rest of society. It's serious nature does not lead it to be immune from the fact that humans are inherently flawed no matter …

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Bingo Hall Detectives: A Crime Fiction Book set in Penrith

To support independent bookshops and the podcast you can buy The Bingo Hall Detectives at the TCF shop. Cosy crime is a genre that is often spoken about with a sneer, exactly the same kind of snobbish tone that is used with terms like "chic lit," or "domestic drama." It presupposes that there is a …

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Bodies in the Garden: The Wycherly Murders – A True Crime Podcast

In Britain however the crimes that we are often most gripped by tends to be those that happen to ordinary people, who live quiet lives. Perhapse that is to do with the fact that despite seeing ourselves as a modern state, in the UK we still live with the hangovers of the feudal system, with such regressive concepts as the "deserving poor," and moralisitic phrases like "hard working people," still finidng currancy in our politics, which has been overrun recently with those for whom even their privilage comes gold plated. We've never admired our rich and powerful as much as tolerate them, and get on with our own lives.

Pride month bonus: The best crime podcasts and books with an LGBTIQ+ flavour

For LGBTIQ+ communties crime is too much of a reality. Across the globe queer people are more likely to be victims of crime, historically they have been more likely to be criminalised, and in many places the fear of imprisonment for being nothing more than who you really are is far, far too present. So in this post we are going to pinpoint some of the best podcasts and books TCF has reviewed over the last seventeen months which whether fiction or non-fiction have an LGBTIQ+ element.

The House That Vanished: A True Crime Podcast About the Disappearance of Neville Presho’s house.

In life things are seldom as permanent as we think they will be when we are children. The art of accepting and living with change is one of the secrets of life, and one that all of us will struggle with at some point, whether it is the end of a relationship, a job, or …

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