It was fun to join eight other authors at the Bread and Roses Theatre in Clapham, London, yesterday – one of many pub-theatres in the capital – for our National Crime Reading Month gig. ICYMI National Crime Reading Month is a joint promotion by The Crime Writers’ Association and The Reading Agency that runs through June each year. Thanks to author Anne Coates for sending this photo of my reading!

The welcome was warm, but the weather was in the low-mid 30s (°C). I read from something new, talked a little about The Fountain in the Forest and its follow-up, about the challenges and necessities of writing fiction set in a contemporary law-enforcement environment, and about the Guardian Quick Crosswords that I’d do every day in 1985 and returning to them as source-material now.

Interesting trivia: apparently the Bread and Roses is the only London pub to be owned by a trade union! Well, I guess the clue is in the name. And this beauty was blooming in a garden opposite.

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