The Arvon Book of Crime and Thriller Writing

The Arvon Foundation is perhaps best known for its residential writing courses, but is now building its reputation for writing books – of which this is one and others include such titles as Life Writing which covers biography and autobiography. Much of the Arvon professionalism rubs off on the books, as do some of the teaching techniques.

Their book on crime and thriller writing includes pieces from guest contributors (in much the same way that Arvon courses involve guest speakers) such as Lee Child, Ian Rankin, Jill Paton Walsh and so forth.

A large part of the book, however, is essentially how-to advice from the two successful and widely-published crime authors. They offer advice on every aspect of crime writing from the basics such as plotting and characterisation through to the important subtleties from atmosphere through to the planting of red herrings.

In this way, it is an informative and inspiring book for both would-be and already published crime writers.