• Settling a debt

    Settling a debt

    Another reminder of one of my older crime novels that you may have forgotten. Strange Little Girl She is the one who DCI John Blizzard remembers with a stab of guilt. Still missing after a murderous attack on her family, she was an awkward child, difficult to know, difficult to like, everyone said, the one

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  • Festival team is announced

    Festival team is announced

    The team behind the 2026 Kirkcudbright Book Festival has been announced and the seven-strong committee, led by chair Naomi Johnson, pictured here, brings an impressive range of skills and experience to the task. Supporting them is a team of experienced and enthusiastic volunteers, who will play a key role in delivering the work that needs

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  • Festival seeks volunteers

    Festival seeks volunteers

    Excited by the information emerging about the 2026 Kirkcudbright Book Festival, whose programme will be announced on January 1? So excited, indeed, that you fancy being involved in the run up to the festival and during the event itself, when it is staged between March 5-8? Well, that’s a happy coincidence because the organisers are

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  • Book Festival build-up gathers pace

    Preparations for Kirkcudbright Book Festival 2026 are well under way with the new website having gone live ahead of publication of the programme and the recent launch of a new gift voucher scheme. The 2026 festival will take place between March 5-8 in the Dumfries and Galloway town and will build on the success of

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  • Young school librarians ready for  National Year of Reading

    Preparations are well under way for the beginning of the National Year of Reading 2026, which aims to tackle the steep decline in reading for enjoyment among readers of all ages. The campaign is being run by the National Literacy Trust and the Department for Education under the rallying call  Go All In, which was

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  • Looking forward to an excellent 2026 in our libraries

    I have always been a huge fan of libraries – my father was a chief librarian, my first summer job was in my local library and many years later, as a volunteer, I played a role in the successful campaign to save that library, and one other in the same town, which had been under

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  • “Have you been shooting people in our new kitchen again?’

    This is another of my posts reminding visitors to my website about one of my older crime novels that they may have forgotten, on this occasion Death List. (The Book Folks, a Joffe Books imprint) one of the DCI John Blizzard series – and it comes with an example of the many elements that go

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  • Accolade for author’s debut novel

    The debut novel by crime writer May Rinaldi, from South West Scotland, has been published – and it’s already an award-winner. Liar Thief, which won the Black Spring Press Crime Novel 2024, is a psychological thriller with a protagonist, whose voice buries itself into your subconscious and refuses to leave. An emotional, darkly propulsive plot,

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  • Blizzard’s big day ruined by murder

    It should be Detective Chief Inspector John Blizzard’s big day – the relaunch of an old railway station as part of efforts by the heritage group of which he is a member to restore a steam railway to the northern city of Hafton. Instead, he finds himself investigating the death of a notorious ex-boxer, whose

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