Red Light, the third novel featuring Detective Katie Maguire of An Garda Síochána, the Irish police, is especially important to me because it concerns the continuing tragedy of people trafficking and sex slavery. It also deals with the highly contentious issue of legalised prostitution.

John Milton, poet and polemicist, famously found the problem of depicting good in Paradise Lost difficult. Heaven is boring.  Evil was much simpler. We can all picture Hell easily enough, fire and brimstone usually does it, or take a look at Hieronymus Bosch’s ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’ for a more psychedelic version.

There’s a killer on the road

His brain is squirming like a toad…

Jim Morrison, The Hitchiker

The Highway is the scariest book I’ve ever written.

Phew – it’s been quite a week. I’ve been writing and filming and travelling and my head is in a spin. Sorry for the Babble delay – I literally haven’t had time to stop and think, which is why I have lost the car keys twice, left my purse at home only to discover the fact at the checkout with a trolley full, and I keep making cups of coffee and placing them next to cups of coffee that I haven’t drunk yet!

For me, this week has been all about family and heroes.

Bleakness and beauty. Two elements vital to crime fiction. Sheffield does bleakness well. Walk a few miles in the footsteps of Angel, the former prostitute whose rage drives the plot of Angel Of Death, and you’ll see what I mean. Enter the city from the north east, as she does, and you pass through the industrial sprawl of Attercliffe. Much of the steel industry the city is famous for is gone, a victim of Thatcherite policies that dumped an entire generation on the dole scrapheap. What remains, though, has a kind of faded grandeur.

Head of Zeus are delighted to announce that they have entered into a partnership with bestselling thriller writer Philip Kerr to publish his new Scott Manson series

A book fair is always a good time to take stock - as a constant in an ever-changing world - and for Head of Zeus this London Book Fair marks an important moment.  Our first full calendar year of trading ended at the turn of the calendar year 13/14 and we are now in a good position to share our progress against our founding principles and where we go next in pursuit of our strategic aims.

Sometimes living in a house full of blokes gets to me.

Worse than that, I live among a regiment of gun firing Artillery, in a house with two teenage boys and a soldier husband. My bunting gets laughed at, my floral cushions hidden and my pretty white bed linen covered in pizza. The delicate poppy themed cups that I love are shoved to the back of the cupboard and in their place; we sip our tea from regimental mugs.

‘Erected in memory of S.L. Swaab Esq. His knowledge like a spring of refreshing water flowed ever during life for the relief of the suffering.’

Have you noticed that even the most difficult of days is made magnificent when topped and tailed with a bit of sunshine? Lovely.

It’s been the London Book Fair this week – lots of frenzied activity and discussion of all things booky, where those who write, print, publish, edit, sell and buy books, gather for a few days of hectic meetings, rich lunches and a glass or two of Pinot Grigio to wash away the long day…