Behind the Crimes with Robert Murphy

Subscribe for FREE: robertmurphy.substack.com Mark Billingham has just been received the Crime Writers Association’s Diamond Dagger - perhaps the biggest prize in the genre. In this wide-ranging interview he tells me about his a near-attack whoel walking his dog inspired his latest DS Declan Miller novel, The Shadow Step . Mark describes why he believes humour and serious storytelling belong toget...

Subscribe for FREE: robertmurphy.substack.com John Marrs is the award-winning author who has sold more than five million books, including What Lies Between Us and You Killed Me First. In this fascinating interview, John reveals how he went from rejected, self-published author to being a global best-seller. Dead in the Water is his latest best-seller, about a man who when resuscitated after drownin...

Subscribe for FREE: www.robertmurphy.substack.com Bestselling crime writer T.M. Logan joins the show to discuss his gripping thriller The Weekend — a tense moral drama about six friends who discover a hidden stash of cash in a cave on the North Yorkshire moors. What begins as an ordinary New Year’s getaway spirals into suspicion, secrets and betrayal, as the group wrestles with the impossible ques...

Val McDermid is one of the world’s most celebrated crime writers. She’s sold more than 20 million books with her series which include Karen Pirie , Tony Hill and Kate Brannigan . But before becoming a literary powerhouse, she spent years as a newspaper journalist covering some of Britain’s most notorious cases. Subscribe for FREE: robertmurphy.substack.com In this episode of Behind the Crimes , Va...

Subscribe for free: robertmurphy.substack.com Anthony Horowitz may be best-known for his Alex Rider hit novels. But as a writer of adult crime fiction he has a unique and distinguished career. He was the first author entrusted by the estate of Arthur Conan Doyle to reimagine Sherlock Holmes for a new book. And then he wrote three official James Bond novels. But his own inventions as an author and...

Subscribe for free: Robertmurphy.substack.com David Baldacci was born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1960. What was it like growing up amidst the legacy of the Jim Crow laws? How did becoming a Washington lawyer finesse his storytelling skills? And how did he write his breakout debut Absolute Power while working 90-hour weeks as a litigator? David has written more than 60 books in the last three decade...

Subscribe for FREE: robertmurphy.substack.comRichard Laxton discusses how he directed the ITV drama Gone .Why did he want to tackle the subjects of male repression and coercive control? What strengths did the lead actors Eve Myles and David Morrissey bring to the show? And how did his experience as a young gay man who didn’t come out until he was 21 inform this drama about an institution which has...

Subscribe for free: robertmurphy.substack.com How - and why - did celebrated screenwriter George Kay take a true crime story and create a tense, claustrophobic thriller set in an English private school? ‘Gone’ stars Eve Myles as overlooked detective sergeant Annie Cassidy brought in to investigate the disappearance of the wife of domineering headmaster Michael Polly (David Morrissey.) In this inte...

Julie Mackay is the former detective superintendent who led the inquiry into the cold case of Melanie Road. For more than three decades, the killer of the 17-year-old schoolgirl evaded justice. For the final seven years, this inquiry was led by Julie Mackay at Avon & Somerset Police. Julie and I wrote To Hunt a Killer - an award-winning book about her tireless hunt for the murderer. The book was o...

Subscribe for free: robertmurphy.substack.com Doctor Who, Spooks, Luther : some of Britain’s best-loved TV crime dramas have scripts written by Neil Cross. The Bristolian who now lives in New Zealand created Idris Elba’s beloved London detective on a spur-of-the-moment during a meeting with BBC managers. And, more recently, he devised the fast-paced, twisty, laugh-out-loud thriller The Iris Affair...

Subscribe for free: www.robertmurphy.substack.com Imagine you are a woman in 1659 Papal Rome. You can’t choose your husband, your job, your home. If your family had no money, you’d most likely end up in a convent or on the streets. And what if your life was ruled by a brutal husband, father or brother? Divorce? No chance. Anna Mazzola discovered the true case of Gironima Spana who supplied women w...

#Subscribe for free: robertmurphy.substack.com # Journalist and crime author Andrew Wilson spent half a decade researching and writing Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith. When she died, aged 74 in 1995, Highsmith left one of the world’s largest literary estates. Inside her notebooks, or cahiers , Andrew found never-before-seen reminiscences of her many (and I mean many ) love affairs,...

Subscribe for FREE: robertmurphy.substack.com The creator of The Snowdonia Killings talks true crime, pivoting from screenplays to novels (via teaching) and how his own publishing company has proved far more lucrative than being traditionally published. When, in 2020, Simon couldn’t get an agent or a publisher, he decided to self-publish his first novel, expecting just a few friends to buy it. But...

Mark Gatiss’s new crime drama is set in 1946 London: a city recovering from the Blitz, when gangs ran wild and gun crime was rife. Bookish is inspired by both true crimes and the Golden Age of Detective Fiction which preceded the Second World War. But what were the true crimes of this period? And how does Mark, who works across so many genres (comedy, horror, sci-fi, action, period-drama) and plat...

The Detection Club, established in 1930, is the world’s first social network for crime writers. It’s founder fathers and mothers included Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers and Anthony Berkeley. Its current membership includes Ian Rankin, Val McDermid and Richard Osman. The current (and only the eighth) President, Martin Edwards, has released an updated edition of his book ‘The Golden Age of Murder...

How do you take on one of the biggest literature legacies of the past half-century? That’s what Nick Harkaway was asked to do after his father, David Cornwell (aka John Le Carré) died in 2020. Karla’s Choice, Nick’s latest in the George Smiley world puts us in a sinister world of subterfuge, Hungarian agents and 1960s London. In this interview, Nick tells us how he approached the writing of Karla’...

# Subscribe for free: robertmurphy.substack.com # Recorded at CrimeFest in Bristol, England, May 2025 Lee Child on how his TV career helped him write, his favourite authors, how he ‘writes the fast stuff slow and the slow stuff fast’ and handing the Jack Reacher baton to his brother Andrew. Links mentioned in the show: https://www.jackreacher.com/us/ https://www.crimefest.com/ Decoy book: https://...

Neil Woods spent fourteen years as an undercover police officer, helping dismantle some of Britain’s most notorious drug gangs. Yet after his biggest victory he came to the conclusion: was it worth it? He started to feel that the problem was helped by repeated failures of governments to tackle the cause of Britain and America’s drugs epidemic. In fact by handing control of drugs supply to criminal...

On November 7th 1974, a children’s nanny Sandra Rivett was murdered at the home of the family in which she was in service. It was the Lucan family. Lord Lucan - her suspected killer - may have been targeting his estranged wife. But a man who had squandered his family fortune at Belgravia’s gaming tables proved to be as inept at murder as he was at gambling. And he killed poor Sandra. This is the p...

Neil Woods spent years as an undercover police officer. He says his techniques in included ‘weaponising empathy’ - using the good nature of society’s most vulnerable. And as Britain was being hit by a wave of cheap drugs and a rise in heroin and crack cocaine addicts, Neil had the most staggering results. In just one operation against Britain’s most notorious gang - The Burger Bar Boys - his work...

Subscribe for free: robertmurphy.substack.com In Cold Blood started as a study in how a heartbreaking killing impacted a Mid-West community. But Truman Capote got sucked into the story. At first, the folk of Holcomb, Kansas, distrusted the flamboyant writer. But slowly, he won the small city round. And when the killers were caught, he built an unbelievable and controversial bond with them. In this...

Subscribe for free at Robertmurphy.substack.com Maxim Jakobowski has sold millions of books. But you may not have heard of him. After releasing a book aged 16, he moved into publishing and worked with Patricia Highsmith (‘an incredible talent… a very difficult lady…’) he then turned to crime writing. When ‘50 Shades of Grey’ was released, he was drafted into writing a series of erotica - which sol...

Billie-Jo Jenkins was a talented 13-year-old schoolgirl who had found what appeared to be the perfect foster family: four daughters, a mum who was a social worker and a dad who was a deputy headteacher. Sion Jenkins was an upstanding member of an affluent town’s community. But he had secrets. Like the lies about his academic qualifications and the affair with a teenage girl who looked a lot like B...

#Subscribe for free: robertmurphy.substack.com # Jackie Kabler met one of Britain’s most notorious killers for her job as a breakfast TV correspondent. Years later, she used her experience covering crime for her fictional thrillers. Her psychological drama The Perfect Couple has sold over 400,000 copies and she has sold nearly a million books in total. Her latest story, The Life Sentence , is base...

SUBSCRIBE FOR FREE: ROBERTMURPHY.SUBSTACK.COM By the late 1980s, Jackie Malton seemed to have it all. She was one of only three female detective chief inspectors in the Metropolitan Police. She had worked on major inquiries and was a noted leader. But she had also stood up against the force’s grey male authority, against corruption, misogyny and freemasonry. Bruising encounters which left her unli...