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The shortlist for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2026 has been announced. And I’ve read all of them! I’d already read 10 of the 18 books on the longlist, so it’s no great surprise. There are a couple of excellent books which I’d have included, but more of that later.

It’s a great list, and I’d happily recommend any of them. You’ve got dark and gritty american noir, psychological thriller, spies, spy-adjacent thriller, time-jumping murder mystery, something for everyone!

Let’s have a quick whiz through the list.

I flipping loved The Midnight King by Tariq Ashkanani.

A layered, complex exploration of a dark mind and the impact on family and community. One wise blogger (ok yes, it was me) said it was:

a book where all of the sentences just fit perfectly together, where nothing is wasted, nothing is quite as it appears on the surface, and which will leave you thinking about it for a long, long time.

Yes, I liked it. I liked it a lot.

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The Death of Us by Abigail Dean is one which I’d heard so much about then finally picked up a copy (last one in the bookshop!) at Stockport Noir where I also had a brief chance to say hello and get it signed.

I’d heard a lot of good things about this book from a lot of people. They were not wrong. It’s a tough read and doesn’t hold back at all. It’s the story of Edward and Isabel, and how their world changed when a serial killer entered their home. The aftermath is just crushing. Beautifully written, this will live with you for a long, long time.

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Beautiful Ugly by Alice Feeney was one I read back in January.

Absolute page turner, the story drew me in, and the writing and plot was great. Unfortunately the twist didn’t land for me but I know loads of others who absolutely loved it. I’ll definitely be picking up some more of Alice’s books though!

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I really enjoyed The Frozen People by Elly Griffiths.

Ali Dawson works cold cases. So cold they’re frozen, she jokes. She works for a specialist unit who go back in time to solve crimes, and ends up in 1850 looking into a relative of wannabe PM Isaac Templeton. Except when she arrives in 1850 there’s a dead body at her feet, and she can’t seem to find her way back to the present day…

A cracking time-hop mystery! I really liked Ali Dawson, and loved the way she had to find her feet in 1850 – a modern woman dealing with a very unmodern society. Great plot and a fantastic start to a new series. Book 2 can’t come soon enough.

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Clown Town by Mick Herron is the ninth in his fabulous Slough House series.

Whilst I love this series and adore Mick Herron’s turn of phrase (you’ll regularly find me cackling with laughter while reading) and utterly brilliant characters, I’m going to be a bit churlish here and ask whether the ninth book in a series by a hugely successful author is really one of the books of the year? Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great book and I’ll happily read and recommend Mick Herron to any and everyone!

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I adored Quantum of Menace by Vaseem Khan.

Featuring everyone’s favourite Quartermaster, Quantum of Menace delves into what happens after Q is unceremoniously let go from MI6 and finds himself back in his small hometown of Wickstone-on-Water where his old friend Peter Napier turns up dead. Quantum computers, shady goings-on and a cameo from a certain super spy. I loved it. Very very much looking forward to the further adventures of Q!

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So, what’s missing for me from the longlist? I’d love to have seen Alan Parks’ Gunner on there. I’m not usually a historical fiction kinda guy, but absolutely loved this one. Joseph Gunner is back from the war, discharged due to his (horrific) injuries on the front line in France, and now back in Glasgow. Fresh off the train he’s approached by his old boss Drummond, who wants him to look into something odd involving a body that turned up after a bombing raid. What exactly is a mutilated German doing there? Conspiracies abound. Joe Gunner is a brilliant character and I absolutely cannot wait to find out what happens next. 

I also really enjoyed Sarah Pinborough’s We Live Here Now, which was delightfully creepy and weird and interesting, as all of Sarah’s books are!

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Have you read any on the shortlist? Any catch your eye? Who will you be voting for? It’s a tricky choice!

NEW ACHIEVEMENT! You have just finished the audiobook of The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook! Congratulations. That’s fourteen hours of your life you’re not getting back! Reward: You don’t need to worry about how the Iron Tangle works any more!

Ah, Dungeon Crawler Carl. It appears to be everywhere on the socials these days. I’ve been listening to the audiobooks via my Audible subscription and have just finished book 3, The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook.

I have thoughts. There will be some mild spoilers for those who haven’t experienced the adventures of Carl and Princess Donut.

Firstly, the narrator Jeff Hays is fabulous, injecting a huge amount of personality and wit to the narration. He flips from the gruff, grumpy Carl to the delightfully bouncy Princess Donut with ease. He’s great, and probably the best thing about this.

The first two books were interesting – the first did a huge amount of info dumping/world building in the first third/half of the book, then really started to ease into the actual story after that. I quite enjoyed it, and happily loaded up the audiobook of book 2 (Carl’s Doomsday Scenario) and settled in for more monster stomping adventures.

Then we get to book 3. Carl and Princess Donut find themselves in the fourth level of the world dungeon, a level filled with The Iron Tangle, an impossibly complicated series of subway and railway lines, filled with monsters and things out to kill our heroes in the most gruesome way possible. Directions mean nothing. Trains go everywhere.

And that for me was the problem. It’s ridiculously complicated and we spend half our time trying to figure out what all the stations and lines actually mean, where do they go, what flavour of monster is waiting for them at each stop.

It turns out that the physical book has this little bit from the author:

“Hey, Matt the author guy here. A quick note about this particular book. The fourth floor of the dungeon is set up as a massive, deliberately-confusing puzzle. Carl, Donut, and the rest of the team have to work really hard to figure out the dungeon’s layout. You, the super awesome reader, do not need to understand the floor’s intricacies in order to understand or fully enjoy what is happening. Platform names and numbers and colors are gonna be flying by. It’s okay not to remember them. It only becomes important at the end. There will be a map* near the end of the book to help you understand the endgame. Until then, enjoy the ride and mind the gap. And, yes, “zomp” is really a color.”

Except I really wanted to understand so that I could picture it. All the mentions of the various stations and train yards and platforms clearly had an internal logic, and I struggled to keep track.

I think at least part of this is down to listening to it on audio – it’s hard to flick back and check something from earlier in the book. So I ended up just sitting back, lightly confused, listening to Carl and Donut make their way through and around and back around and around again, stomping monsters, getting covered in gore, and trying to keep track.

Sorry, unintentional pun there.

It also felt a bit repetitive – stomp some monsters, have a minor revelation, level up some skills, have a plan, have the plan sort of work, stomp some more monsters, rinse and repeat.

It was… fine? Fun in places, baffling in others. I’ll probably get book 4 with my next Audible credit, but looking at that, it’s eighteen hours long.

Maybe I should try the physical books.

Have you read The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook? What did you think?

A Hollywood idol. The Virgin Mary. An everyday girl from Hull.

Three women, three eras, surprising things in common…

On 4th August 1962, the night she should have died, Marilyn Monroe – the biggest star in the world – receives a visitor who changes the course of her destiny. The Virgin Mary appears in her kitchen with a curious message. Inspired, Marilyn abandons her home, her life, her fame, and disappears into the night…

Fifty-four years later, in a Hull kitchen, Flora Baker finds Mary, bathed in light. She has a similar message for the working class woman who is on the poverty line and dreaming of a better life. Flora begins to make changes that impact not only her life but the lives of those around her…

Do Marilyn and Flora have more in common than just Mary’s visit? Are they somehow linked across time? And is Mary’s message for all the women of the world?

I know very little about Marilyn Monroe, other than the surface level stuff – glamorous movie star, the ‘blonde bombshell’, “happy birthday mister president”. And that she died in 1962, far too young.

Wonderful is the story about what might have happened if Marilyn Monroe didn’t die in August 1962. And how her story links to Flora, a working class woman from Hull, a million miles away from the glitz and glamour of Hollywood.

And how a visitor to both of them changed both their lives.

On the face of it, this is a story that I thought might not be for me. But I’ve read a lot of Louise Beech’s books now, and trust her implicitly that she’s going to tell a great story.

And reader, this is a great story. Full of life and hope and wonder, a story about celebrity and how we treat them. A glorious ‘what if’ from someone who clearly adores Marilyn. And by the end of this book, you will too.

Wonderful is exactly what it says on the cover – a truly wonderful story which might just have brought a tear to my eye. I’m denying everything. Damnit, Beech, you made me cry. Again.

Published on what would have been Marilyn Monroe’s 100th birthday. It’s a (looks up another word for wonderful, gives up) wonderful tribute to a lost star.

As you might have guessed, I loved this book. Hugely, highly recommended.

Wonderful by Louise Beech is published by Pick Lock Publishing and is out now. Enormous thanks to Louise Beech for sending me an advance ebook copy for review. Opinions remain, as ever, my own.

Ah, it’s that time of year again. The Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Longlist 2026 is out.

I’ve read half of the 18 books on the list so far this year, and enjoyed them all. I bought 8 out of the nine myself, and only one was a proof copy.

Here’s the ones I’ve read:

The Midnight King by Tariq Ashkanani is a strong contender for me.

A layered, complex exploration of a dark mind and the impact on family and community. One wise blogger (ok yes, it was me) said it was:

a book where all of the sentences just fit perfectly together, where nothing is wasted, nothing is quite as it appears on the surface, and which will leave you thinking about it for a long, long time.

Yes, I liked it. I liked it a lot.

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Human Remains by Jo Callaghan is the third in her series featuring the AI hologram detective AIDE Lock.

I was on a bit of a reading slump when I got to this last July and powered through it. For some reason I thought I’d listened to them all in audiobook, but it seems I read this one on my Kindle. It’s a great series, and I’m very much looking forward to book 4, which is sadly to be the last!

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The Death of Us by Abigail Dean is one which I’d heard so much about then finally picked up a copy (last one in the bookshop!) at Stockport Noir where I also had a brief chance to say hello and get it signed.

Blimey. I’d heard a lot of good things about this book from Adam Simcox and Louise Beech, amongst others. They were not wrong. It’s a tough read and doesn’t really hold back at all. It’s the story of Edward and Isabel, and how their world changed when a serial killer entered their home. The aftermath is just crushing. Beautifully written, this will live with you for a long, long time.

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Beautiful Ugly by Alice Feeney was one I read back in January.

I’ve seen several of my bookblogger chums raving about Alice Feeney’s books and I’d been meaning to pick one up for ages. Absolute page turner, the story drew me in, and the writing and plot was great. Until it wasn’t. Unfortunately the twist didn’t land for me but I know tons of others absolutely loved it. I’ll be picking up some more of Alice’s books though as I saw her at Stockport too.

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I read The Frozen People by Elly Griffiths whilst on holiday earlier this month.

Ali Dawson works cold cases. So cold they’re frozen, she jokes. She works for a specialist unit who go back in time to solve crimes, and ends up in 1850 looking into a relative of wannabe PM Isaac Templeton. Except when she arrives in 1850 there’s a dead body at her feet, and she can’t seem to find her way back to the present day…

A cracking time-hop mystery! I really liked Ali Dawson, and loved the way she had to find her feet in 1850 – a modern woman dealing with a very unmodern society. Great plot and a fantastic start to a new series. Book 2 can’t come soon enough.

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I really enjoyed The Examiner by Janice Hallett.

I’ve loved all of Janice’s books to be fair. They’re cleverly constructed of emails, text messages, snippets of documents, all coming together to tell a story in an entirely unconventional way. Absolutely gripping!

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Clown Town by Mick Herron is the ninth in his fabulous Slough House series.

Whilst I love this series and adore Mick Herron’s turn of phrase (you’ll regularly find me cackling with laughter while reading) and utterly brilliant characters, I’m going to be a bit churlish here and ask whether the ninth book in a series by a hugely successful author is really one of the books of the year? Similarly with Mark Billingham’s latest which is also on the list and the 19th in his best-selling series. Again, I love Mark’s writing and it might well be his best Thorne novel yet, but is it up amongst the very best books of the year?

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I adored Quantum of Menace by Vaseem Khan.

Featuring everyone’s favourite Quartermaster, Quantum of Menace delves into what happens after Q is unceremoniously let go from MI6 and finds himself back in his small hometown of Wickstone-on-Water where his old friend Peter Napier turns up dead. Quantum computers, shady goings-on and a cameo from a certain super spy. I loved it. Very very much looking forward to the further adventures of Q!

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Last up, and a recent read is Gunner, by Alan Parks.

This was very kindly sent to me as a proof by the lovely folk at Baskerville and was sat on a shelf waiting to be read for far too long. I swear I am a good book blogger, honest. I get to them eventually.

Flippin’ brilliant. I’m gutted that I put this off for so long. I’m not usually a historical fiction kinda guy, but absolutely loved this one. Joseph Gunner is back from the war, discharged due to his (horrific) injuries on the front line in France, and now back in Glasgow. Fresh off the train he’s approached by his old boss Drummond, who wants him to look into something odd involving a body that turned up after a bombing raid. What exactly is a mutilated German doing there? Conspiracies abound. Joe Gunner is a brilliant character and I absolutely cannot wait to find out what happens next. Book 2 will NOT even get close to the bookshelf before being read immediately.

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I’ve got my eye on a few others from the list too. Big fan of AA Dhand so I’ll read The Chemist, I will pick up the Mark Billingham book, and I really want to read Callum McSorley’s Paperboy. And I’ve been told by reputable book bloggers that I really need to read We Live Here Now by Sarah Pinborough.

I think I’ve done quite well by reading half the list. And it’s a good list (despite my minor grumbling above).

Have you read any of the long list? Which one will be getting your vote?

Ello my little book-loving nuggets!

I was on holiday last week. We went to the Yorkshire coast and it was dreadful. I mean, just look at it.

Also got a load of reading done, and I know how much you lot love a good book roundup (yes, I know I’ve still not done April’s yet, been on holiday innit).

Somehow I managed to get through six books last week.

And they were all great! Well, mostly great. One was less great than the others, but we’ll get to that (place your bets now…)

Let’s kick off with The Killer Question, by Janice Hallett.

I’d picked this up a couple of months ago and kept meaning to read it but kept getting horribly distracted so popped it in the Holiday Reading Bag. Absolutely tore through this. If you’ve read any of Janice Hallett’s books before (surely you have?), then you’ll know what to expect – a tale told via WhatsApp messages and emails, excerpts from police reports, snippets of things rather than your standard narrative. And Hallett does it so well. Rival quiz teams (and quiz masters) at local pubs find themselves in the middle of a murder mystery. But who are these mysterious quizzers who mysteriously appear and mysteriously keep getting all the answers right?

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Next up we had The Ophelia Murders by J.M. Simpson.

Now I met J.M. Simpson at Harrogate last year, and she was kind enough to press a copy of her book into my grubby little bookblogger hands (and sign it). Another book I’ve been meaning to read for ages!

It was fantastic. Great plot (murders up in a Scottish mountain resort town), fantastic characters and those pages just kept turning. So good that I DM’d Jo after I finishing going OMG BRILLIANT WHEN IS BOOK 2 OUT? and she very kindly pointed out that it was actually out now so I immediately bought a copy. You should too, it’s really dead good.

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We’re on a roll now. Two books in and both fantastic. Could book 3 keep up the winning streak? Well, it was Lisa Hall’s The Case of the Singer and the Showgirl.

This is the second in her fabulous time-hopping mystery series, following on from the events of The Mysterious Double Death of Honey Black which I read back in January. Well this one is just as fabulous as the first. Think Quantum Leap but with more feathers and sequins. Lily and the gang are back in 1950 to try and stop another murder, but this time in the glamorous world of Las Vegas. Utterly fab.

I’ve also just realised that all three of these books were signed by their lovely authors!

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I told you that one of the books was less great than the others, and book 4 is that book. Don’t get me wrong, it was still good, and I enjoyed it. It’s Bicycle Diaries, by David Byrne. Yes, that David Byrne, of Talking Heads fame.

Now I’ve been reading this book on and off for years. I’d pick it up, read a chapter and pop it back on the shelf. It’s interesting, if a little rambling. Mr Byrne travels a lot, as one would expect of a world-famous musician, and he likes to take his folding bike with him whenever possible, to explore new places. Part travelogue (he visits a range of places, from Manila to London, to San Franciso and Sydney, amongst others), part random musings, it was interesting. It just didn’t blow me away, as evidenced by the fact it’s probably taken me five years to read.

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Speaking of fives, we’re up to book five. The lovely folk at Baskerville very kindly sent me a review copy of Alan Parks’ Gunner to read and, erm, review some time ago.

Yet another book that was sat on a shelf waiting to be read. I swear I am a good book blogger, honest. I get to them eventually.

Flippin’ brilliant. I’m gutted that I put this off for so long. I’m not usually a historical fiction kinda guy, but absolutely loved this one. Joseph Gunner is back from the war, discharged due to his (horrific) injuries on the front line in France, and now back in Glasgow. Fresh off the train he’s approached by his old boss Drummond, who wants him to look into something odd involving a body that turned up after a bombing raid. What exactly is a mutilated German doing there? Conspiracies abound. Joe Gunner is a brilliant character and I absolutely cannot wait to find out what happens next. Book 2 will NOT even get close to the bookshelf before being read immediately.

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Book six feels like a bit of a cheat in that I didn’t actually read it whilst away on holiday, but I did read it before I got back to work, and I did buy it from the fabulous Whitby Bookshop. It is Ellie Griffiths’ The Frozen People.

Ali Dawson works cold cases. So cold they’re frozen, she jokes. She works for a specialist unit who go back in time to solve crimes, and ends up in 1850 looking into a relative of wannabe PM Isaac Templeton. Except when she arrives in 1850 there’s a dead body at her feet, and she can’t seem to find her way back to the present day…

Another cracking time-hop mystery! I really liked Ali Dawson, and loved the way she had to find her feet in 1850 – a modern woman dealing with a very unmodern society. Great plot and a fantastic start to a new series. Book 2 can’t come soon enough!

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Right, that was my holiday reading. Six books in and we’re only a third of the way through May. Feels like a good reading month, eh?

Have you read any of these books? Any catch your eye?

As ever, I’d love to know what you’ve been reading.

Until next time!

smooches

D xx

When Hop awakens in an ancient labyrinth, he has no memory of his life, or how he got here. He does not recognise the mysterious girl trapped with him. And he certainly cannot identify the shadowy figure stalking him, whispering terrible things…

But there is one thing he is certain of: He must escape.

The only way out of the labyrinth is through The Bone Door. But it lies behind a series of locked doors hidden across an array of strange realms. To open the way, Hop must complete impossible tasks before his time runs out.

As Hop travels deeper into the maze, he discovers that he and his companions may be more connected to the place and its horrors than he could ever imagine.

Unless Hop is able to unravel the true mystery of the labyrinth, and his own role within it, the Bone Door and any hope of escape will be lost forever.

Every now and again a book comes along which you just know from the very first page is going to be special. The Bone Door is one of those books.

The skeleton was sleeping in the snow, its tea-stained bones scattered like freckles across a pale face.

I mean, come on. As first lines go, that’s pretty great. And as I read I found myself highlighting more and more lines that just sang off the page. It’s a gorgeous book.

The mysterious yet eternally cheerful Hop finds himself in a narrow chamber with only a skeleton for company. He can’t remember who he is, doesn’t know where he is, and has no idea what he needs to do to get out of there. Hop and Skully join forces and they’re off in search of the Bone Door…

What follows is an adventure through the many rooms of the labyrinth. Each rooms offers a unique challenge which needs to be completed within a certain amount of time, or they will be stuck there forever. Along the way they meet gods and monsters, as well as some new members of the gang – I don’t want to say too much as you really need to meet them yourself along the way.

There’s so much I want to say about this book – the characters are messy and wonderful and broken and there for each other. The worldbuilding is just incredible – Frances White has woven together dreams and nightmares and come up with something entirely unique. Echoes of the movie Labyrinth (appropriate, given where Hop wakes up) lace through the story like a fine golden filigree. This book takes you on a journey, breaks you into pieces then puts you back together again.

It is, quite simply, a glorious thing, and will be very high on my books of the year list come the end of 2026, I’m quite sure.

Absolutely stunning. Buy this one as soon as it comes out. 11/10.

Whilst the book features children as the main characters, this is very much not a kid’s book. It tackles mature themes such as abuse, trauma and how we face up to it. The author has a list of content warnings on their website, should you need them. I really appreciated this way of presenting this – rather than as some books do, showing the warnings up front, the author has acknowledge that some people might need them, and gently pointed at where they can be found.

The Bone Door by Frances White is published by Michael Joseph in May 2026. Thanks to the publisher for an advance ebook copy of the book to review.

Irody Hasp is a Mortedant, a cleric tasked with reading the last thoughts of the dead—though no one thanks him for it. No Mortedant is popular, but Irody is scarcely tolerated even by the other members of his own guild, and rarely selected for anything but the lowliest of jobs.

This impoverished existence would be dismal enough—but after reading the corpse of a low-level records keeper, Irody’s troubles quickly multiply when his own apprentice is murdered, and all fingers point to him as a suspect. The only way to save his own skin is to find the real culprit himself, an investigation that quickly attracts powerful enemies with few scruples, and draws him into a plot that threatens the entire corrupt yet wondrous city he calls home.

Well now, this is exciting. A new book by RJ Barker is always a lovely, slightly odd thing. But in a delightful way. And Mortedant’s Peril (The Trials of Irody Hasp #1) is quite the most delightfully weird book.

We follow the adventures of Irody Hasp, a Mortedant. He can read the last thoughts of the deceased. But then his apprentice is murdered, he gets the blame, and has four days to identify the real culprit or face the gallows. So far, so murder mystery – who actually killed Malkin? Why do they want Irody to swing for it?

Conspiracies abound as Mortedant Hasp has to delve through the layered tiers of the city (an utterly lovely piece of worldbuilding, ruled by the goat satyr Niofa), accompanied by his new neophyte (and Malkin’s sister) Mirial and Whisper, an ‘unhuman’ Oster sea person tasked with guarding him until his execution day.

It’s a beautiful, strange world that RJ Barker has created, and I’ve been savouring it over the past couple of weeks rather than doing my usual of just inhaling the book in a couple of sittings. Some books just want you to take your time with them, to soak in the atmosphere, to feel the cobbles on the streets and listen to the shouts of the low-tier folk as they go about their day, pausing to see the harried Irody Hasp rush past, black Mortedant robes billowing behind him as he struggles to save himself from the hangman’s noose.

I loved every bit of it. If you’ve read any of RJ’s books before, you’ll no doubt already have this on your lists. If not, get your favourite pencil out and write down the words “MORTEDANT’S PERIL – BUY A COPY IN MAY” in your very best handwriting, and stick it to your fridge.

Hugely recommended. All the stars.

Mortedant’s Peril by RJ Barker is published by Tor Books in May 2026. Huge thanks to the publisher for an ebook copy of the book to review.