Crime Fiction Author Guides
Discover the crime authors and novels that define a city, a setting, or a subgenre — from Las Vegas noir to small-town stalker thrillers. Curated recommendations from Phillip Strang, author of 150+ crime novels.
The Best Crime Novels Set in Hampshire prove that England’s south coast — all tidal mudflats, cathedral cities, and shuttered market towns — hides secrets as dark as anywhere the genre has ventured.
Hampshire is not a county that announces its menace. It offers picture-postcard villages, the sweeping...
The Best Crime Novels Set in Essex prove that Britain’s most stereotyped county conceals some of the darkest, most compelling crime fiction being written today.
Essex has long been dismissed as an easy punchline — reality television, flash cars, and mock-Tudor excess. But the best crime novels...
The Best Crime Novels Set in Kent prove that England’s so-called Garden of England has always grown something darker beneath those apple blossoms — murder, secrets, and the particular menace of communities that smile too readily at strangers.
Kent has a geography tailor-made for crime fiction:...
Sussex has always kept secrets well — and the best crime novels set in Sussex have spent decades prying them loose from behind the flint walls and salt-bitten hedgerows with ruthless, literary precision.
There is something about this county — the chalk downs dropping to the sea, the Georgian terraces...
Hull has always been too interesting, too scarred, and too alive with quiet menace to be ignored by crime fiction — and the best crime novels set in Hull prove exactly that.
There is something about Hull that refuses to be prettified. Perched on the eastern edge of England, its estuary winds and post-industrial...
The best crime novels set in Dundee prove that Scotland’s fourth city — raw, post-industrial, and stubbornly itself — is one of the most compelling backdrops in British crime fiction today.
Edinburgh gets the headlines and Glasgow gets the grit, but Dundee has quietly been building a case of its...
The best crime novels set in Inverness prove that the Highland capital is far more than a scenic gateway — it is a place where secrets calcify in the cold and violence is never far beneath the surface of civility.
Inverness occupies a peculiar position in British crime fiction. It is the urban heart...
The best crime novels set in Plymouth understand that this city — with its naval heritage, battered waterfront, and working-class grit — is one of Britain’s most criminally underused backdrops for serious crime fiction.
Plymouth deserves better from crime fiction than it has historically received....
Few cities in England wear murder as naturally as York — and the best crime novels set in York prove that behind every medieval wall and cobbled alleyway, something darker has always been at work.
York is one of Britain’s most atmospheric cities, a place where Roman foundations sit beneath Viking...
The best crime novels set in Nottingham do something London noir rarely manages — they root their darkness in a city that already carries the weight of legend, outlaw mythology, and post-industrial grit, and they make it feel utterly, uncomfortably real.
Nottingham is one of Britain’s most criminally...
Sheffield has long deserved its own literary dark side — and the best crime novels set in Sheffield deliver exactly the kind of steely, atmospheric fiction that this post-industrial city demands.
Crime fiction thrives on place, and few British cities carry as much narrative weight as Sheffield. The best...
The Best Crime Novels Set in Bath prove that behind every honey-coloured facade and crescent of Georgian perfection, there lurks something far more sinister than anyone taking the waters would care to admit.
Bath is one of those rare cities that carries its own mythology — a place so visually composed,...