The Best Bookshop in Germany
In the town of Ruesselsheim, near Mainz, I’ve discovered the best bookshop in Germany. The Buecherhaus Jansen stands in a down-at-heel pedestrian street at the heart of an industrial town (home to Opel...
View ArticleBaksheeshed to the Bone
I’m guest-blogger today on Checkpoint Jerusalem, the excellent and delightfully varied blog by McClatchy Newspapers Middle East correspondent Dion Nissenbaum. Dion does a better job of rooting out...
View ArticleFrench mystery trove
For those who happen to read some French, Planete Polar is a wonderful source of news and reviews about crime fiction, crime writers, and movie offshoots. It’s written by Philippe Lemaire, cultural...
View ArticleScared away
Here’s my latest post on the International Crime Authors Reality Check blog: I keep finding new reasons why I write my novels about the Palestinians. Usually these reasons have nothing to do with the...
View ArticleNeon pee on the Reeperbahn, and other travels
The whole point of travel is to see Red Light districts around the world. That’s what I assume my German publisher C.H. Beck thinks. Or maybe that’s what they think I’ll like. Anyway, they keep sending...
View ArticleThose disorganized Swiss
You know the reputation. “Swiss” isn’t a nationality. It’s really an adjective meaning highly organized and perhaps even a little too punctilious. That’s a myth. The place is just like the Middle East…...
View ArticleResearching the novel
Novelists aren’t journalists. Research for a novel isn’t the same as researching a journalistic article. I’d have thought that was too obvious to need stating. But then I became a published novelist,...
View ArticleBook Tours Not Just Ego Tripping
Not long ago a friend of mine commented that my travels to promote my books must be a great pleasure to me. “You just have to talk about yourself,” he sneered. “You must like that.” I ignored the...
View ArticleWall St Journal on ‘The Fourth Assassin’
During my visit to New York this last couple of weeks, I stopped into the space-age HQ of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp on Sixth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. Once my eyes had adjusted to the superbright...
View ArticleUrinal-top video
We were on the Hessian plain somewhere outside Frankfurt when I felt as though the drugs had taken hold. Why am I paraphrasing the great Hunter S. Thompson? Because I endured an experience that...
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