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The most successful drama series of the year in the UK offers us a number of insights into the variety of means writers have at their disposal whenever they need to raise the stakes, heighten the [...]

Crime is all the rage – not only in our inner cities, our suburbs, and the halls of government, but also, less scarily, in our bookshops. Crime stories have never been more popular. So we thought [...]

I’ve been watching Dark, the fabulously complex story of time travel and alternate universes, on Netflix – and am currently drowning in that very complexity midway through the third season. Time [...]

Suspense, in fiction, is created when we pose questions and then delay giving the answers. The reader, eager to find out those answers, will read on. But how about life? Life, after all, is full [...]

Of course, we’re all members of the box-set society. No social gathering passes these days without someone asking for recommendations about the latest, or the best, or the overlooked gems of [...]

Authenticity matters a great deal to some writers. Take Gregg Hurwitz, for instance, author of the Orphan X sequence of thrillers. He’s really good on lethal hardware. Here’s a paragraph on the [...]

We come upon our character lying in bed (or in a restorative bath, for that matter). She sighs, overcome by the dramatic events which have lately overtaken her. Events which she then remembers. [...]