This is an extended version of a talk given at the Crime, Thriller and Mystery Books event, Hawkesbury Upton Literary Festival, 30 April 2022.    This is a "long read" and if you prefer to download and read it, there is a pdf version on my website here .      “How are you this morning, Betteredge?” asked Franklin Blake.   “Very poorly, sir,” answered Gabriel Betteredge.   “Sorry to hear it. What do you complain of?”   “I complain of a new disease, Mr. Franklin, of my own inventing. I don’t want to alarm you, but you’re certain to catch it before the morning is out.”   “The devil I am!”   “Do you feel an uncomfortable heat at the pit of your stomach, sir? and a nasty thumping at the top of your head? Ah! not yet? It will lay hold of you…, Mr. Franklin. I call it the detective-fever; and I first caught it in the company of Sergeant Cuff.” Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone   The new disease of Detective Fev...

I’ve just read Square Haunting: Five Women, Freedom and London Between the Wars by Francesca Wade. I loved this book. It’s about a group of women whose lives and work I find really inspiring though I don’t know much about some of them, and nothing at all about one (HD). The other women are Dorothy L Sayers (I’m a huge fan), Virginia Woolf, Eileen Power and Jane Ellen Harrison. I’m moved and encouraged by their passion for and dedication to their work. I love the way they just kept going through all the discouragements and disappointments. I’m fascinated by their lives between the wars. I’m infuriated by the attitudes they faced – which still ring oh-too-true today. I eagerly devour these stories of women who were not just seeking but creating their own space. Of course, space here doesn’t just mean their physical space, but how and where they chose to live is a huge part of it. Hence the book’s brilliant focus on place, on a place: Mecklenburgh Square in London. The book gives a vivi...