MattRees.net

I was on a book tour in Spain when, on a visit to a Madrid gallery, I fell for Caravaggio’s St. Catherine of Alexandria. Here I tell the story of how that encounter with Catherine drew me into the work of the great Italian artist — and to the mystery of his disappearance. The result [...]

Historical novels vie with crime and romance novels for the titles of most derided and most widely read literature. They’ve had a bad rap ever since the 19th century, when the swashbucklers of Alexandre Dumas looked pretty wooden next to Dickens, and cartoonish in comparison to the depth of Victor Hugo or George Eliot. There [...]

World Cup fans, don’t fear hours of emptiness. Take up a work by an international crime fiction author. It’s the perfect replacement for your lost fix – and it’s a lot better for your soul, too. Here’s why. As the World Cup unfolded over the last month, newspapers all over the globe were filled with [...]

The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs is organizing donations of books to libraries and schools in the Gaza Strip. I’m delighted to learn that my Palestinian crime novels are included on the list, which I should add includes works by many of my favorite Arab and Muslim writers (I’m a big fan of Tariq [...]

Sometimes people talk about crime novels as though they were all the same. The sheer number of different names for variants of the crime novel proves that isn’t true. Police procedural. Mystery novel. Thriller. Cosy. Exotic detective. Supernatural. I used to think there was little real difference, but then my UK publisher told me he [...]