Paper Thistle Author Insights

Author Insight: Natalie Jayne Clark and the quiet reinvention of tartan noir without the tourist glaze

Tartan noir keeps misting Scotland into a moodboard: rain, stone, noble ruin. Clark won’t sell[...]

Author Insight: Elisabeth Gifford’s faith-adjacent imagination and the lie of tidy redemption

Tidy redemption is the market’s favourite sedative: it turns history into a conscience cleanse. Gifford’s[...]

Author Insight: Why Fran Dorricott’s thrillers make small towns feel like sealed rooms and call it community

Cosy crime calls it community. Dorricott calls it a sealed room with fresh paint. Everyone[...]

Author Insight: How Angie Spoto turns “healing” narratives inside out and leaves the stitches showing

Healing is a clean lie with a soundtrack. Angie Spoto writes the invoice. In her[...]

Author Insight: Why Hania Allen’s Dundee noir treats immigrant identity as evidence not window dressing

Crime fiction loves immigrant identity as garnish: an accent, a quirk, then back to the[...]

Author Insight: C S Robertson, Craig Robertson’s alter ego, and the crime fiction that keeps the newsroom stink

Robertson writes crime with the stale coffee of the newsroom still on it: tragedy as[...]

Author Insight: The evolution of Lorraine Wilson from dystopian urgency to dark folkloric menace

Wilson doesn’t “switch genres”; she changes the mask menace wears. The early books put collapse[...]

Author Insight: Why Liza North’s psychological thrillers cut through the cosy-crime cosplay and leave bruises

Cosy crime is a costume party: tasteful corpse, charming setting, danger you can sip. Liza[...]

Author Insight: Peter May the Glasgow-born screenwriter turned crime novelist making landscape feel like an accomplice

Crime fiction loves scenery as comfort: drizzle, ruin, a corpse as local colour. Peter May[...]

Author Insight: The evolution of Susanna Kearsley from romantic suspense beats to full-bodied historical unease

Kearsley smuggles dread into the comfort aisle. The early romantic-suspense beats were training: pacing fear[...]