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As the first book in his spy series, Slow Horses, is made into a TV drama, Herron talks about his slow-burn success – and the resemblance of a certain blustering villain to our PMWere it not for the packed bookshelves – everything from Len Deighton to the complete Philip Larkin – you could almost imagine the novelist Mick Herron’s flat as a safe house,...

Forbidden desires, strange obsessions and a singular talent for suspense... Carmen Maria Machado on the dark allure of the writer behind RipleyRead The World’s Champion Ball-Bouncer, an unpublished Highsmith short story There has always been something fundamentally difficult about Patricia Highsmith. And not difficult in the way that most people mean it: ironic, quirky, feminist (“Well-behaved women rarely make history”, and so on). I...

The author’s new Robert Galbraith novel, Troubled Blood, has faced accusations of transphobiaJK Rowling has said that the character of Dennis Creed, the serial killer in her new novel who has provoked accusations of transphobia because he dresses up in a woman’s coat and wig, is loosely based on two real-life murderers.Troubled Blood, in which private detectives Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott investigate the...

With her husband Per Wahloo, who died in 1975, Sjöwall’s books paved the way for the likes of Henning Mankell and Stieg LarssonMaj Sjöwall, one half of a Swedish crime-writing couple credited with inventing the “Nordic noir” genre, has died aged 84, her publisher said on Wednesday.Sjöwall, a pioneer of gritty realism and an inspiration to modern crime writers, “passed away today after an...

From Agatha Christie to Gillian Flynn, readers love an untraceable method or a villain who wins. Author Peter Swanson says there are eight examples of the perfect murderIs there such a thing as a perfect murder? In real life, the answer is probably yes, though how would we know about it? Perfection demands that the murder be unsolvable, maybe even unrecorded – a victim...

The Norwegian author of the Harry Hole detective series on Tom Jones, the ‘Nordic noir’ label and his soft spot for a crime clicheThe Norwegian crime writer Jo Nesbø, 59, has sold more than 33m books worldwide and won a host of prizes, including the prestigious Glass Key for best Nordic crime novel. Nesbø took a circuitous route to becoming a bestselling author, playing...