reading
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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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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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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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NielsenIQ BookData and GfK Entertainment have released their international data for book sales in the first eight months of 2025, and it reveals a mixed picture. Eleven out of 19 territories reported revenue growth, often accompanied by significant price increases, with crime fiction performing particularly well. The authors of the report say that international book
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No Age to Die’s Kindle version has been given a new cover as part of the relaunch of John Dean’s popular DCI Blizzard series of crime novels by Joffe Books after it recently took over the publisher The Book Folks. In the novel, number nine in the series, a dangerous felon is released from prison
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Here’s a salutary lesson for all those writers who, like me, would ideally prefer to use plenty of description to describe places in their writing. Think of a tree in a park. Done it? I am pretty confident that you will have and that, even though you were only asked a millisecond ago, you can
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The Secrets Man has become the fourth in the DCI John Blizzard crime novel series written by John Dean to be given the Joffe Books relaunch treatment complete with striking new cover for the ebook. The relaunches follow Joffe Books’ acquiring of the publisher The Book Folks and the novels can be purchased in various
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As work progresses on producing a final draft of my latest DCI Jack Harris crime novel, that means going back to the opening pages, so it’s a good time to recap on some of the rules of beginnings. One of the key things that a crime writer, indeed any writer, must bear in mind is
John Dean - Crime Writer 