It's a crime by Keren David

Anne Cassidy's fingerprints are all over this plan

Crime pays – if you’re writing for adults, that is. Take a glance at any list of bestsellers and you’ll find it’s dominated by murders, kidnaps, blackmail and assaults. Crime is international, time-travelling and ever popular.

But somehow crime writing for children doesn’t get the same attention. Look around any children’s bookshop and you might find sections dedicated to dark romance and action adventure...but you’d need a very large magnifying glass to identify a shelf of teen crime novels.  It seems that the publishing industry doesn't quite realise the value of crime writing for younger readers -  male and female - the satisfaction in unravelling a whodunnit, the fascination with extreme situations and emotions, the variety of ways in which stories about crime can be told.

So, the Godmother of the British teen crime mafia has come up with a cunning plan. Anne Cassidy - mastermind of this blog and author of many great crime novels for teen readers, including Looking for JJ and,most recently, Guilt Trip  - has pulled together the usual suspects (Scottish bruisers Gillian Philip, Linda Strachan and me, the new wet-behind-the-ears recruit) to create a blog, somewhere to shine a light on crime books new and old, and discuss news, clues and criminal connections. We’ve already recruited some hardened criminal writers as contributors, and now we’re looking to widen our network.

The blog is set up and will be going live some time in the next month. You can find it here. Contact us if you’re a writer who wants to have their say - and please sign up as a follower if you enjoy reading crime novels. The plot - we hope - is about to thicken.

(Apologies - this post is shorter and later than planned. This is because the police knocked at my door while I was writing it.)