Athol Dickson's Blog

SOME RULES ARE MADE TO BE BROKEN. Others are broken at our peril. And still others are made to create peril, delicious, lovely peril for the victim in a good old fashioned murder mystery. With that goal in mind, for ...

FOR ALL YOU HARD BOILED DETECTIVE FANS… The quote in this image is a little taste from the opening paragraph of Free Fall In February, the next installment in The Malcolm Cutter Memoirs. For a millionaire chauffeur and part time private ...

EVERY MURDER MYSTERY AUTHOR GETS THE QUESTION ALL THE TIME: Where do your ideas come from? It’s not our favorite question (that comes later) but to answer it, we often turn to the headlines. Today for example, there’s this sad ...

THE OTHER DAY I mentioned that I’m writing The Malcolm Cutter Memoirs in part because I think the murder mystery genre is perfect for exploring big ideas like death and justice. Someone asked what makes me think I’m qualified to ...

Recently I read a fascinating article in The New York Times about what may well be the first true murder mystery novel ever written. Conventional wisdom holds that the honor belongs to Wilkie Collins, who published The Moonstone in 1868, ...

Here’s a taste of what’s to come in Malcolm’s second memoir, Free Fall In February: There had been no time to put on my flippers and no chance to take a deep breath, but it would be suicide to surface, ...

I can tell you from the volume of reading I do in hard or soft copy there are many more typos in recent years than there ever used to be in books of old. I’ve heard all the excuses for ...

I think I might have a crush on Malcolm Cutter. He is a strong character but with a soft, hurt side. He’s not sure what is even real anymore after what’s happened. As soon as the book starts Malcolm hits ...