Henry Treece was a poet, and a writer of historical fiction for children. In 1939 he took the job of teacher of English at Barton-upon-Humber Grammar School. When war came, he joined the RAF as an intelligence officer, and was well acquainted with the many air bases in Lincolnshire. This poem dates from that time.
All well and good, you may say, but what has this to do with crime fiction? The connection is that one of the pupils at the Grammar School was a boy called Ted Lewis. Throughout his time at the school he had excelled in art and English, and when he left, it was his ambition to go on to art school. His parents were against the idea, and it was only the intervention of Henry Treece on Ted’s behalf that persuaded them to allow him to go.
Lewis’s first novel, All The Way Home and All The Night Through, was published in 1969, but it was the 1971 novel Jack’s Return Home, later filmed as Get Carter, which was to make Lewis one of the immortals of crime fiction writing. Below, Treece and Lewis, both busy at their typewriters.
Stuart Neville (left) returns with another hard-bitten and edgy tale of life and crimes in Northern Ireland. Set in a fictional village on the edge of Belfast, we are reunited with DCI Serena Flanagan, who first appeared in Those We Left Behind. Like much of life in Ulster, fictional and real, religion and the stresses and strains it places on secular life is never far from the surface. The sacred influence in this case is provided by the Reverend Peter McKay. The clergyman is a widower, but we find that he has been taking his parochial duties above and beyond what is normally expected. The recipient of his pastoral care is Roberta, the attractive wife of Henry Garrick.
As they say, in America, “School’s Out!” On the evening of Saturday 28th June 2008, school was pretty much out for a group of teenage London boys. Their GCSE exams were finally over and, despite nor being legally old enough to drink, they were having a night out to celebrate. They went to Shillibeers (left), a popular bar and brasserie in Holloway. Among the group was Ben Kinsella, a 16 year-old pupil at Holloway School.
A FULL REVIEW of this debut novel by the Toronto writer will be coming up here before too long. In the meantime, follow 
If you are a law-abiding person who stays away from dubious places after dark, and you have a good security system in your home, Hackney is probably a safe place to live. Provided, however, you are prepared to take your chances when out shopping, or otherwise about your lawful business. If you are a writer or artist who likes the kudos of having an address in a place which is seen as rather dangerous, and ‘cutting edge’ (literally) then your aspirations will be fulfilled. If you’re an estate agent who is selling the area as a vibrant, safe and stimulating place to bring up a family, then best of luck with that one.
Ellis chose her path in adult life based on her natural vivacity and an appreciation that she could earn more from nude modelling and ‘clipping’ punters in a night club than she could by working in the typing pool or in a factory. As a child her home life had been chaotic, so she had developed the necessary survival skills to make her own way in the austere world of post-war Britain.
Ellis and Blakely became lovers, if not partners, but neither was faithful to the other. Blakely was physically violent; Ellis was violently jealous. On 10th April, 1955 – Easter Sunday – Ellis waylaid Blakely as he left a Hampstead pub, the Magdala. She shot him dead with a .38 Smith and Wesson revolver. Despite the day, there was to be no resurrection.
Hawley Harvey Crippen was never a doctor, in the accepted sense. He was at best, a purveyor of quack medicines and homepathic cures to the gullible. He may even have been a backstreet abortionist, but that has never been proved. He was born in Michigan in 1862, but emigrated to England in 1897 with his second wife Cora. Cora was a second rate music hall entertainer and Crippen, tired of her charms, took up with a young typist named Ethel Le Neve.
Crippen eventually raised the alarm, as she suspected foul play. The house was searched, and nothing was found. Crippen and Le Neve, however, were spooked, and fled to the continent, where they bought a passage on a steamer bound for Canada.
Nilsen (left) preyed on young men who were often lost and alone in London. He murdered them, so he claims, so that they would not leave him. To ensure their continuing post-mortem presence, he would wrap their bodies in polythene and conceal them beneath the floorboards, regularly spraying with with deodorant as the corpses putrified. When he tired of this game, he would dismember what was left of his young victims, and then try to dispose of the body parts via the toilet. Sometimes, when this was too difficult, the limbs were boiled to remove the flesh, thus making disposal more straightforward. When he had access to a garden space, at Melrose Avenue, many of the victims were eventually consumed by that most normal of activities – the garden bonfire.
