Hill’s first published novel, A Clubbable Woman, appeared more than 40 years ago, and a couple of years ago, it earned the belated honour of a place in the long-list for the Lost Man Booker Prize. Strikingly, his most recent published novel, The Woodcutter, was one of his finest stories, with no hint of any diminution of powers.

The Woodcutter is a stand-alone thriller, showcasing many of Hill’s strengths. He had a strong sense of place, coupled with the ability to evoke that sense powerfully yet succinctly. Much of the action occurs in Cumbria, a part of the world that Hill loved, and knew intimately, and it is significant that Fell of Dark, the novel he wrote before A Clubbable Woman (although it was published afterwards) was also set there. Another strength is his characterisation – Wolf Hadda, the charismatic protagonist, is a memorable figure, as powerful in his way as “Fat Andy” Dalziel. The story charts his fall from grace, and subsequent quest for retribution. Hill was also notable for his erudition – his work is peppered with cultural references, not all of them easy to spot, and here the template is (or seems to be) The Count of Monte Cristo. Finally, the book demonstrates his command of plot – he delighted in startling yet credible plot twists, as in this book, with a dramatic late revelation about one of the central figures.

These strengths, as well as his sheer versatility, were displayed in abundance in the mid-Yorkshire series. Over the years, he explored the characters of Dalziel and Pascoe, and their relationship, with sensitivity as well as skill, and during his career he went back in time to record their very first meeting (“The Last National Serviceman”, a longish story) as well as their future lives (in One Small Step).

In one of the books – I refuse to disclose which! – there is a very clear pointer to the identity of the culprit in the very first paragraph, but so cleverly does Hill pull the wool over the reader’s eyes that it would take an extremely astute person to spot it. In another, a series of anonymous notes sent to Dalziel from someone threatening to commit suicide results in a sub-plot so mystifying that most writers would be content to treat it as the heart of the whole story – but for Hill, it forms only a single strand in a complex web. Hill was determined to give his readers excellent value, and he delivered this in many different ways. For instance, he delighted in including in his books at least one extremely obscure word – and readers delighted equally in spotting them, and finding out the definition.

Among his many non-series books, The Only Game, originally published under the pen-name Patrick Ruell (his wife’s maiden name was Patricia Ruell) is an exceptional thriller, with another of those jaw-dropping twists mid-way through the story.  And his flair and originality were demonstrated time and again in his short stories. Among contemporary crime writers, he had few if any superiors when it came to the short form.

I was lucky enough to have been the first reader of several of his stories, which he submitted for anthologies that I edited. “On the Psychiatrist’s Couch”, which appeared in Whydunit?, deservedly won the CWA Short Story Dagger in 1997, and I’d rate “The Rio de Janeiro Paper”, and “Game of Dog” as equally brilliant.  “Where Are All the Naughty People?”, from Original Sins, the last short story he wrote in response to a request from me, which may possibly have been the last of all, showed him on top form. It is rare for a writer whose career has lasted so long to maintain such consistency of quality in his output, from start to finish. That he did so is one among many of the gifts that made Reginald Hill a giant of the genre.

• Visit Reginald Hill’s Wikipedia entry
• Read more of Martin’s memory of Reginald Hill on his own blog

Yet for two writers to collaborate is a doddle in comparison to, say, a dozen people trying to write a book together. Yet, over the decades, a number of “round robin” mysteries have been published. And 2011 has seen the reappearance of perhaps the most famous of them all – The Floating Admiral, originally produced by members of the Detection Club in 1932.

What is more, The Floating Admiral earned a good deal of praise on its republication by Harper Collins and has sold very well – a pleasing reward for an enterprising piece of publishing. But how do collaborative mysteries work?

The answer is that much depends not just on the expertise of the writers, but also on the approach they take to the task. The story may be a piece of entertainment, but its construction needs to be thought about with some care. Without thought, and a bit of planning, the results may become chaotic.

In her Introduction to The Floating Admiral, Dorothy L. Sayers explained the conditions under which the book was written:

‘Here, the problem was made to approach as closely as possible to a problem of real detection. Except in the case of Mr. Chestertons’s picturesque Prologue, which was written last, each contributor tackled the mystery presented to him in the preceding chapters without having slightest idea what solution or solutions the previous authors had in mind. Tow rules only were imposed. Each writer must construct his instalment with a definite solution in view: that is, he must not introduce new complications merely ‘to make it more difficult’….Secondly, each writer was bound to deal faithfully with all the difficulties or his consideration by his predecessors.’

The story was written by Canon Victor L. Whitechurch, G.D.H. and M. Cole, Henry Wade, Agatha Christie, John Rhode, Milward Kennedy, Sayers, Ronald A. Knoz, Freeman Wills Crofts, Edgar Jepson, Clemence Dane, and Anthony Berkeley. Many of these names are forgotten today, but in the Golden Age, they were market leaders.

Berkeley’s lengthy concluding chapter was appropriately titled ‘Clearing Up The Mess’. Certainly, tying up all the various strands is the toughest part of the creation of any collaborative mystery. Appealingly, the book contained the solutions proffered by the earlier contributors (apart from the authors of the first two chapters.)

The new edition contains an interesting foreword by Simon Brett, the current President of the Detection Club, who has himself been involved in some round-robin writing – one of the books concerned rejoiced in the title The Sunken Sailor – a pleasing nod, of course, to The Floating Admiral.

The Detection Club had previously turned out two collaborative mysteries for BBC Radio serialisation – Behind the Screen and The Scoop. The stories appeared also in weekly instalments in “The Listener”, but were only published together in book form about half a century later. And the Club followed up the success of The Floating Admiral a year later with another group effort of distinction.

This was Ask a Policeman, an agreeable story enlivened by a pleasing gimmick. Four authors exchanged detectives with each other. Anthony Berkeley, for instance, wrote a chapter featuring Sayers’ hero Lord Peter Wimsey What is more, the result was one of the most entertaining parodies of classic detective fiction that has been produced.

The complexities of writing a collaborative mystery can’t be under-estimated. I enjoyed writing a chapter of one such book myself a couple of years back. Sadly, the finished story has never seen the light of day. I’m not sure why – but I suspect that the plot convolutions became too much for later contributors. Whatever the truth of it, I do hope that one day the story will be completed. Or alternatively, that I have another chance to work on a round-robin mystery. They may be tricky, but they are fun to write as well as to read.

A British cop was found shot to death in a sealed “panic room” in the opulent house owned by a dodgy millionaire and his glamorous wife. The question was not only whodunit, but how the crime could have been committed. Sure enough, Ben Miller’s character came up with the solution, which was in fact a variation of an often-used plot. But it was interesting to see that the locked room mystery can still have a prominent place in contemporary entertainment.

Famously, the very first detective story, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, by Edgar Allan Poe, was a locked room puzzle. But a few years earlier, Sheridan Le Fanu, the gifted Irish writer, had written a thriller featuring a murder in a locked room, and he used the same concept a couple of times afterwards, most notably in his classic novel Uncle Silas.

Wilkie Collins and Arthur Conan Doyle were among the Victorians who dabbled in impossible crime stories, and later G.K. Chesterton contrived several to be solved by his unassuming sleuth Father Brown. However, the sub-genre really enjoyed its heyday in the Golden Age of detective fiction between the two world wars. Countless writers – Agatha Christie among them – tried their hand at constructing locked room puzzles, but the undoubted master of the form was John Dickson Carr, an American who fell in love with England (as well as an Englishwoman who became his wife) and set most of his ingenious mysteries on this side of the Atlantic.

Robert Adey, the world’s foremost expert on locked room mysteries, has pointed out in his book on the subject that Dickson Carr’s success derived not only from his ability to ring new changes on a familiar theme but also from his sense of the dramatic, his humour, his ability to create atmosphere, and his flair for the macabre. His finest achievements, including the novel The Crooked Hinge and the short story The House in Goblin Wood, are memorable not just because of their cleverness but also because Carr excels at conveying sinister and sustained suspense.

The difficulty with locked room mysteries is that, if they become over-dependent on far-fetched contrivance, the reader’s patience, as well as credulity, becomes strained. From the 1950s onwards, the sub-genre began to fall out of fashion, and its inherent lack of realism seemed out of tune with the times. A few writers, notably the short story king Edward D.  Hoch, produced excellent and original examples of impossible crime story, but the consensus was that they were swimming against the tide.

The arrival on the television screens of Jonathan Creek changed perceptions. Thanks to the skill of writer David Renwick, several series of impossible crime stories enjoyed enviable viewing figures. Renwick combined clever plotting with agreeable characterisation and sharp wit to splendid effect. And this success prompted a new generation of crime writers to tackle the locked room challenge. I’ve written a few impossible crime stories myself, and although the plotting can be tricky, when it works, it’s highly satisfying.

So although I had some reservations about the opening episode of Death in Paradise, I was delighted to see that the locked room is still in vogue. Of course, not everyone is an impossible crime mystery fan. The most churlish response came from A.A. Gill in The Sunday Times, whose review was savage in the extreme. But since Gill admits that he does not like TV mysteries, perhaps his opinions don’t count for much. My view, for what it is worth, is that a well-crafted locked room story can offer readers – and viewers – a great deal of pleasure. So what is the secret of success?  Simple. It’s not really about elaborate mechanics – as the comedian Frank Carson used to say, “It’s the way you tell ‘em.”

Readers have embraced ebooks more quickly than many of us would have expected. You might assume that older readers might be averse to Kindles and so on, but the ability to increase font size means no need for large and cumbersome large print books, and some of the most enthusiastic ebook fans I know are over 60.

So it’s largely a consumer-led revolution, but the implications of ebooks for every author, as well as the publishing industry, are fiercely debated. The chief executive of Harper Collins, interviewed on the BBC recently, thought that half the company’s sales in a couple of years’ time would be of e-books; the current figure is around 15%.  And Ewan Morrison wrote a much-discussed article for The Guardian in August which took a rather apocalyptic view:

“Within 25 years the digital revolution will bring about the end of paper books. But more importantly, ebooks and e-publishing will mean the end of “the writer” as a profession. Ebooks, in the future, will be written by first-timers, by teams, by speciality subject enthusiasts and by those who were already established in the era of the paper book. The digital revolution will not emancipate writers or open up a new era of creativity, it will mean that writers offer up their work for next to nothing or for free. Writing, as a profession, will cease to exist.”

Morrison’s piece was fascinating and thought-provoking, but although ebooks are sure to transform the landscape, there is good reason to hope that – as with so many innovations over the years – the damaging effects will be outweighed by the benefits, not only for consumers, but for writers too.

The reality is that only a very small proportion of all published authors have made a good living out of writing during the past thirty years or so, and probably over a much longer period than that.  Speaking for myself, whilst I’ve always fancied the idea of being a full-time writer, so far I have kept my day job going, and that’s quite common. Mid-list writers have received very modest advances for years, and the position is getting worse rather than better. But there are upsides from the digital revolution – and it’s heartening to note the experience of three quite different crime writers.

Geraldine Evans, for example, wrote this on her interesting blog in the same month that Morrison was predicting doom:

“I am at last earning a living income from my writing. And I have Kindle – and my readers – to thank for that. My ebook sales have increased, month on month. My income arrives month on month, unlike when I was with traditional publishers, when I’d get paid every ten months for each book.”

Allan Guthrie, who very successfully combines writing with work as an agent, has achieved great sales with e-book versions of his novellas, while Zoe Sharp has created a splendid e-thology (great word!) of five of her enjoyable short stories, one of them brand new and written especially for the project. Fox Five also contains excerpts from her nine novels, thus helping to promote interest in Zoe’s principal work.

The innovative and forward-looking approach of people like Geraldine, Allan and Zoe makes me optimistic about the future. As for my own fiction, e-publishing offers the chance of a new life for my earliest books – the first seven novels featuring Liverpool lawyer Harry Devlin. They have been out of print for years, but I’m often asked where copies can be found. Soon, I’m hoping that there will downloadable versions, accompanied with a variety of significant and newly created special features, including a fresh introduction to each book by a leading crime novelist.  So I believe that, for writers who are not best-sellers, and don’t have vast publicity budgets, technology offers a wide range of ways of connecting with our readers that were not previously available. An exciting prospect.

In this day and age, crime writers need to devote a good deal of time to promotion. It wasn’t always thus. The great Golden Age writer, Anthony Berkeley, published his first two mysteries anonymously at first, and when he produced Malice Aforethought under the name of Francis Iles, there was a debate that lasted a year as to the author’s true identity. He regularly declined to provide his publishers and readers with a photograph or biographical information. According to legend, he used to charge anyone who wanted him to autograph one of his books!

You couldn’t get away with that now. Even authors who are retiring by nature find themselves having to attend festivals and conventions, as well as giving talks in libraries and bookshops. Fortunately, most of them find that this is enjoyable, rather than a chore, and that’s certainly true in my own case.

There’s also a good deal to be said for having an active online presence, with not only a website, but perhaps a blog, and maybe making good use of Facebook and Twitter. At least the advent of social networking online has a democratic nature – anyone can get in on the act.

Do book-signings and launch parties really help to raise an author’s public profile? Opinions vary. Many publishers, for instance, are sceptical as to the value of signing sessions. When, in the 1990s, I was first published in paperback by Transworld, one of the senior editors advised me not to get too excited about bookshop events – in his view, they seldom led to substantial sales. But of course, signings and launches can be good for morale – assuming enough people turn up! – and afford good networking opportunities.

I was lucky enough to earn an unexpected bonus when I launched my fourth Lake District Mystery, The Serpent Pool, at Gladstone’s Library in North Wales. I was so taken by the venue – Britain’s only residential library, a wonderfully atmospheric place – that it gave me the idea for my next book. As a result, its fictitious equivalent in the Lakes, St Herbert’s Residential Library near Keswick, features prominently in The Hanging Wood. To complete a virtuous circle, I had the pleasure of launching that book, too, at Gladstone’s Library at the end of July.

Often, events to market a book or an author work best if set up in a manner distinctive enough to capture the imagination of potential readers – and, ideally, the media. One of the most striking examples in the crime fiction field over the past few years was the bizarre celebration of the UK publication of Thomas Harris’s Hannibal Rising on 5 December 2006. Harris is almost as famous for being shy of personal publicity as he is for creating legendary serial killer Hannibal Lecter. But when Heinemann launched the book at Waterstone’s in Oxford Street, London, they made the most of the occasion. In fact, they made a meal of it….

For just 90 minutes, the shop was turned into ‘Doctor Hannibal’s Brasserie’, with the good doctor hosting a party for his admirers, with body parts and blood products on the menu. After the party, each guest was able to buy one of the 200 first editions containing a bookplate signed by the legendary Mr Harris. And there was more: a chart of human body parts, a Hannibal napkin bearing the publication date, a limited edition Hannibal plate, and a Brasserie menu featuring such delicacies as ‘Slither of Liver’. All in the best possible taste…

These thoughts have been much on my mind lately, as I look ahead to the imminent launch of my own new novel. The Hanging Wood is the fifth of my Lake District Mysteries, and my fifteenth crime novel in all – the sixteenth, if I count The Lazarus Widow, which I co-wrote the late Bill Knox. I’ve also published eight non-fiction books, and edited twenty anthologies, so I am no stranger to the experience of publication. But it remains, for me, an enormously exciting time.

There is a reason why writers are so often asked the question “where do you find your ideas?” Almost everyone is fascinated by the mysterious process by which stories come into being. And because it is mysterious, that question is hard to answer in a satisfactory way. But perhaps it is easier in the case of genre fiction, where series are relatively common. A series gives a writer a very useful framework – the real challenge, after a few books, is to ensure that each new story remains fresh and that there is no lazy reliance on formula or repetition. It is surely part of the contract between writers of series and their readers that a new instalment in the series retains the elements that attracted readers in the first place, while offering something extra and worthwhile.

Trying to rise to that challenge is a pleasure rather than an ordeal. All authors worth their salt want to stretch their talents, and there are plenty of ways of keeping even the long-running series vibrant and appealing. Look at how Lee Child varies the narrative viewpoint of his thrillers about Jack Reacher, at how Peter Lovesey rings the changes in his Peter Diamond series, and at how the likes of Ian Rankin, Peter Robinson and Kate Ellis have developed the lives and inter-relationships of their cast of characters over the past decade or so.

Sometimes a single idea sparks a novel – when Arthur Conan Doyle was told about the legend of a spectral hound, the result was The Hound of the Baskervilles. Often, though, the genesis of the story has multiple strands. With my current series, I switch from one location in the Lake District to another – the region is small, but rich in variety, and each different place (Keswick and Derwent Water in The Hanging Wood) offers fresh possibilities.

The idea I had for the central plot was based around the complications of sibling relationships, and this provided the foundation for many of the characters in the book. I wanted a dramatic setting and incident to get the book off to a flying start, and a strange and shocking occurrence at a farm gave me the perfect platform for the story. A great deal of the action takes place at a residential library close to the farm, and the real-life inspiration for the fictional library came, oddly enough, when I launched the previous book in the series, The Serpent Pool.

The launch took place last year, at Gladstone’s Library in North Wales. The unique setting and remarkable atmosphere made a great impression on me, and I decided to create a similar library in the Lake District. Having had the idea for an important element of the novel at my last launch, I was delighted to have the chance to return to Gladstone’s Library to launch The Hanging Wood – it seems very fitting to come full circle like that!

Launches are great fun for an author, and I’ve been lucky enough to have enjoyed several memorable launch events over the years. But in looking back at the eighteen months or so and it took to produce the book, I’m mindful that an author can never stand still. The book needs to be promoted, of course, and even more important, it’s time to get cracking with the next story – another part of that all-important contract between the writer and the reader.

For many people, the classic detective series on television remains Inspector Morse. Excellent scripts by writers of high-calibre were matched by first-rate production values and superb acting. Good as Colin Dexter’s original novels were – and I am a long-time fan – most people would, I think, agree that the best of the TV episodes were even more memorable. And remarkably, despite the demise of both Inspector Morse and the fine actor who played him, John Thaw, the franchise continues to this day with Lewis, which maintains the high standards of the original series.

Within the past year, we have been treated to successful television adaptations of books featuring three very different cops created by three highly accomplished crime novelists. The darkest of these was Thorne, based on the twisty serial killer thrillers from the pen of Mark Billingham. So far, the adaptation of each book has been spread over three episodes. In contrast, when Peter Robinson’s popular detective was brought to the small screen in DCI Banks, starring Stephen Tompkinson as the Yorkshire-based detective, the bestselling novel Aftermath was split into two episodes.

A different approach was taken by the team which adapted Ann Cleeves’ stories about the distinctly unglamorous Vera Stanhope. Each episode of Vera lasts for two hours, in the tradition of Inspector Morse, and just as the earlier series took full advantage of the Oxford setting, so Vera features the landscape of the north-east very effectively. The lead scriptwriter is Paul Rutman, whose previous credits include episodes of Lewis, as well as a couple of contributions to Agatha Christie’s Marple.

It is fascinating to compare these series with a new series not based on books, but conceived specifically for television. Scott and Bailey is, on the evidence of the opening episode, a lively drama, the construction of which probably owes as much to the soap opera model as to detective fiction. The mystery plot in the first episode is straightforward, and much of the interest lies in the characters of the eponymous detectives. In a nod, perhaps, to realism, those detectives are constables rather more senior officers, and urban setting is much less glamorous than the locations which predominate in Lewis or Vera. And DC Scott in particular does not seem to possess remarkable powers of deduction. As the story opens, she has been in a relationship with a successful barrister for two years without managing to detect the fact that he is married with children. Inspector Morse, too, had endless problems with his love life, but I simply can’t bring myself to believe that he would ever been conned for so long.

The complaint is sometimes made that there are too many crime series on television. And it is certainly true that for every Inspector Morse there are several series which fail to hit the mark. A number of highly capable crime writers – Tim Heald, Liza Cody and Marjorie Eccles are among the names that spring to mind – have had the pleasure of seeing their books adapted for television only for the results to prove to be relatively disappointing. From an author’s point of view, it is down to luck of the draw whether one has on one’s hands a hit – or a turkey. And the success of a TV cop show does not depend on whether it was based on books or written specifically for television. Murder in Suburbia was, like Scott and Bailey, a story about female cops devised for television, but failed to earn a second series. As did Zen, based on the excellent books by the late Michael Dibdin. Happily, DCI Banks and Vera have avoided a similar fate. Whether they can match the longevity of Inspector Morse, we’ll have to wait and see.

In the recent past, I have enthused about the publications of Ostara Publishing, which has revived a number of interesting academic and clerical mysteries, and of Langtail Press, which has reprinted a clutch of novels by such excellent writers as Anthony Berkeley, John Dickson Carr and Ellery Queen. Both Ostara and Langtail are small businesses run by dedicated enthusiasts. But a famous name in publishing is also getting in on the act, and with equally splendid results.

Faber Finds have, in a relatively short space of time, developed a very interesting list and in this column I’d like to focus on a couple of writers whose work they have brought back to life. Both men shared the same initials, but could scarcely have been more different, and wrote books that really have nothing in common – except that they remain of interest to modern reader.

Colin Watson is a writer whose name will be familiar to many crime fans. He wrote an entertaining study of the eccentricities of Golden Age mysteries, and was the author of a long series of humorous detective novels set in the fictional town of Flaxborough. His work was much admired by no less an authority than Julian Symons, who said that in Watson’s hands “fireworks of comedy go up as they’re meant to do in a dazzling show of stars, instead of spluttering miserably into darkness. All of his books are genuine mysteries.” He singled out for special praise Hopjoy Was Here, published in 1962 and a nice skit on Secret Service agents, as well as a neatly plotted puzzle. There is a good deal of enjoyment to be had from the other books set in Flaxborough, justifying Symons’ claim that Watson was “the rarest of comic crime writers, one with the gift of originality”.

In 1977, four of Watson’s novels were adapted for television, in a total of seven episodes, the series being called Murder Most English. It starred Anton Rodgers and Christopher Timothy, two reliable actors, as an amiable detective duo, and the shows are now available on DVD as a boxed set. Unfortunately, the series was not a great success and the production values seem dated to a modern viewer. Five years after the TV series aired, Watson died, relatively young, and his novels have long since disappeared from the bookshop shelves. It is therefore good to see that Faber Finds have reissued all the Watson titles. They are well worth seeking out, because oddly, they do not today seem as old-fashioned as the television adaptations.

Charles Williams is remembered today as one of the Inklings, that group of Oxford-based writers and intellectuals which included C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. His novels have sometimes been described as “metaphysical thrillers”, and Many Dimensions appeared in the old green Penguin crime series. My preliminary skirmishes with the five Williams novels which have now been revised by Faber Finds suggest that Williams did not, in fact, see himself primarily as a crime writer; his interests were more philosophical. He did, however, detective fiction enthusiastically for a number of years, and I’m looking forward to reading his work in more depth, having searched in vain for his books in countless second-hand shops. The extraordinarily wide variety of uncommon books that are now available from Faber Finds underlines the increasing significance of print on demand publishing. And it is a phenomenon that is great news for avid readers.

But Gilbert did much more than write novels and a large number of short stories. He wrote plays for the stage, and also for radio and television. All this in addition to his day job as a partner in a prominent London law firm. Now, posthumously, Robert Hale have published The Man Who Could Not Sleep, edited and introduced by John Cooper, who co-wrote with Barry Pike a superb book about collecting detective fiction which ran to a couple of editions some years back.

What is so admirable about this new book is that it contains two radio plays, and two synopses for radio plays that were never made. It’s a brave publishing venture that all Gilbert fans will welcome. But I think it has a wider relevance, because it’s a reminder that radio is a terrific medium for crime fiction. The enormous popularity of the revival on radio and CD of old radio serials written by Francis Durbridge and featuring his suave sleuth Paul Temple is evidence of the appeal of pacy crime fiction with twists and cliff-hangers aplenty, to a new generation of radio listeners.

And then there is the stage play. Cooper mentions in introducing the book that Gilbert wrote four stage plays, including A Clean Kill, which derived one plot element from The White Crow, a Golden Age mystery by the wayward but brilliant Philip Macdonald. Gilbert enjoyed some success in the theatre, but of course the definitive mystery stage play (actually based on a short story) is Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap, which seems likely to run forever in London.

Christie wrote several other stage plays – Black Coffee, for instance, was turned into a novel by Charles Osborne, as was Spider’s Web, which was also filmed quite successfully. When she adapted her extraordinary novel And Then There Were None for the stage, she was even brave enough to change the ending, a lead followed when the story was filmed. But there are many other crime writers who have enjoyed success with original work for the stage.

Anthony Shaffer’s Sleuth, later turned into a movie starring Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine, is an acknowledged tour de force. Almost as good is Ira Levin’s Deathtrap. Late in his career, Francis Durbridge wrote a number of plays that enjoyed runs in the West End, although none of them is especially striking in comparison to the classics by Shaffer and Levin. Unfortunately, neither Shaffer, with Murderer, nor Levin, with the macabre and rather under-estimated Veronica’s Room, was able to repeat the extraordinary success of the plays for which they remain renowned.

Some of the best crime plays remain staples of local theatre groups for many years. Take, for example, Trap for a Lonely Man by the French writer Robert Thomas. This marvellously ingenious story, which has been filmed more than once, is frequently performed and remains an object lesson in how to pull the wool over the audience’s eyes. I first saw it performed in Chester in the1960s, and I can still recall the mounting excitement created by the twists and turns of the plot.

It takes great skill, I think, to write a truly gripping crime stage play. Radio plays, television scripts and film screenplays are easier, because tricky camera work and other effects can help to build suspense. The theatre is very demanding. But the best crime plays, like Trap for a Lonely Man, stay in the memory for a very long time.

Just how enduring is shown by a fascinating new book, The Invention of Murder, by Judith Flanders (HarperCollins). The subtitle is self-explanatory: “How the Victorians revelled in death than detection and created modern crime”. The history of murder in the 19th century is described through short but pithy accounts of cases both famous and little-known, ranging from the body-snatchers Burke and Hare to Jack the Ripper. Judith Flanders traces the development of police investigation and forensic science, as well as recording how the British public reacted to major crimes – people panicked, for instance, when there was an outbreak of arsenic poisoning.

The main focus of public reaction, however, was to seize upon murder as a source of endless entertainment. Theatre-goers used to enjoy a good murder and those waxworks which could boast a chamber of horrors did a roaring trade. Above all, though, murder cases intrigued and inspired writers of popular fiction. Flanders opens and concludes her book by referring to Thomas de Quincey, author of that classic work of prose “On Murder Considered As One of the Fine Arts “. His satire highlighted the first time how murder might amuse, as well as terrify.

The early “penny bloods” (later known as “penny dreadfuls”) fictionalised crimes and trials in a very crude fashion, but gradually a more sophisticated type of writing developed. Wilkie Collins was especially accomplished at taking factual material (for instance, elements of the Constance Kent case) and transforming them into outstanding works of fiction. The Moonstone and The Woman in White are famous examples, but it was a method he used on a number of other occasions, as in the under-estimated Armadale.

The huge popular success that Collins enjoyed paved the way for the explosion of public interest in detective fiction, and Judith Flanders draws neat analogies between the work of real-life investigators and their fictional counterparts, most notably Sherlock Holmes. “An apparatus has developed around murder, a scaffolding: there was a police force now; there were detectives… Crime fiction took this new scaffolding, and covered it with an attractive surface… Detection – in fiction, at any rate – made the world safe… Most people in Britain had never had to worry about murder: by the nineteenth century it was vanishingly rare; by the start of the new century therefore, a love of blood could be indulged in safely and securely, without any fear of an ugly reality bursting in.”

I enjoyed Judith Flanders’ book immensely, and thanks to her admirably diligent research, learned a great deal. And one special thing fascinates me about what she has done. In The Serpent Pool, my character, Daniel Kind, is researching Thomas de Quincey, with a view to writing a history of murder. Judith Flanders has written precisely the sort of book that I had in mind, and I’m very glad she has. Daniel, certainly, would be proud to have produced it!