CWA Gold Dagger winner #47: Minette Walters, “Fox Evil” (2003). Fox fox fox fox fox fox fox fox. www.nickwiltsher.com/cwa-reviews/... 💙📚

Double reading request: --FUN. Not just play: actual fun. Anything, any context. --Translation. But, like, from an aesthetic perspective, not philosophy of language. Ta! #philsky

CWA Gold Dagger winner #46: José Carlos Somoza, “The Athenian Murders” (2002) www.nickwiltsher.com/cwa-reviews/... Too clever by half, or maybe three quarters. 💙📚

Nature, Creativity, and Philosophy skill-share workshop for Art & Nature Collective 10.00-13.00 Saturday 6 June 2026 Patterson Centre, Dundee Botanic Garden Members Free, Non-Members £5 Ensure your place sign up now via [email protected]

INBOX ZEROh hang on INBOX ONE.

CWA Gold Dagger winner #45: Henning Mankell, “Sidetracked” (2001) www.nickwiltsher.com/cwa-reviews/2026/6/1/henning-mankell-sidetracked-2001 Satisfying Swedish serial killer stuff. 💙📚

CWA Gold Dagger winner #44: Jonathan Lethem, “Motherless Brooklyn” (2000). Pastiche so subtle that it might actually be the real thing. www.nickwiltsher.com/cwa-reviews/2026/5/31/jonathan-lethem-motherless-brooklyn-2000 💙📚

CWA Gold Dagger winner #43: Robert Wilson, “A Small Death in Lisbon” (1999). Why write one story when you could write two? Ummm. www.nickwiltsher.com/cwa-reviews/2026/5/10/robert-wilson-a-small-death-in-lisbon-1999 💙📚

my paper "Canonic Counterpoint as a Philosophical Practice: Mind, Meaning, and Metaphysics in Renaissance and Baroque Musical Composition", is now published in Philosophical Psychology! this particular paper means a lot to me for a couple of reasons ... (1/4) www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

CWA Gold Dagger winner #42: James Lee Burke, “Sunset Limited” (1998). A thoroughly confusing read. www.nickwiltsher.com/cwa-reviews/2026/4/5/james-lee-burke-sunset-limited-1998 💙📚

Apparently we're hiring another two-year postdoc, for Aaron Cotnoir's Unity Project. AOS in Metaphysics, Social Ontology, or Formal Ontology. Apply here: www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DRA671/r... #philsky

CWA Gold Dagger winner #41: Ian Rankin, “Black and Blue” (1997). An excellent Rebus novel. www.nickwiltsher.com/cwa-reviews/2026/4/4/ian-rankin-black-and-blue-1997 💙📚

Read this on the bus into work. Arrived hungry, with a faint desire to visit Wigan. dispatch-media.com/the-men-who-... (yes, you have to register and log in to read the whole thing. Yes, it's worth it. In fact it's worth paying and subscribing) @dispatchmedia.bsky.social

Bought myself a dishwasher. No coffee percolator. Spouse did briefly aspire to a career as a figure skater.

British Society of Aesthetics Postdoctoral Award open for applications. If you're qualified, and you fancy a couple of years in St Andrews, maybe drop me a line. british-aesthetics.org/portfolio/po...

Scottish Aesthetics Forum online talk on March 20th: John Dyck!

CWA Gold Dagger winner #40: Ben Elton, “Popcorn” (1996). I didn't expect to like it, and guess what? I didn't! www.nickwiltsher.com/cwa-reviews/2026/3/2/ben-elton-popcorn-1996 💙📚

LAST CHANCE, PEOPLE!

"The 1.9% won by [the Conservative] candidate, Charlotte Cadden, is the party’s worst byelection result in history, and marks only the second time the party has lost its deposit in a vote by polling under 5% since 1962." I'll take my positives wherever I can find them.

CWA Gold Dagger winner #39: Val McDermid, “The Mermaids Singing” (1995). Tense and nasty in a good way, with one clanging piece of plotting. www.nickwiltsher.com/cwa-reviews/2026/2/19/val-mcdermid-the-mermaids-singing-1995 💙📚

CWA Gold Dagger winner #38: Minette Walters, “The Scold’s Bridle” (1994). Dorset Gothic? I guess that could be a thing. www.nickwiltsher.com/cwa-reviews/2026/2/8/minette-walters-the-scolds-bridle-1994 💙📚

People sometimes seem baffled that I left Sweden for the UK. I'm not sure those people understand quite how hostile Sweden is for immigrants right now.

Why does every student email these days start with vague good wishes concerning my wellbeing? Are they trying to tell me something?

CWA Gold Dagger winners #37: Patricia Cornwell, “Cruel and Unusual” (1993). A fairly satisfying mix of concrete realism and magic happening. www.nickwiltsher.com/cwa-reviews/2026/2/2/patricia-cornwell-cruel-and-unusual-1993 💙📚

2 year Postdoctoral Research Fellow opportunity at the University of St Andrews on my project "Aesthetic Values and the Social Dimensions of Science" www.vacancies.st-andrews.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/... #philosophy #philsci

One of the best things I've read this year. Particular congratulations to the author for resisting all the dreadful punning opportunities presented by "shell company". www.londoncentric.media/p/terry-ball...

CWA Gold Dagger winner #36: Colin Dexter, “The Way Through the Woods” (1992). A Morse that is good and irritating in all the ways that Morses apparently are. www.nickwiltsher.com/cwa-reviews/... 💙📚

Fancy a post-Christmas Regency and sapphic chill reading sesh in your pjs? Like and repost this skeet (is that really what we call them?) for a chance to win one of 3 signed copies of THE UNLIKELY PURSUIT OF MARY BENNET! Open worldwide until midnight 23rd Dec, winners drawn on Christmas Eve.

oh yes look I will change to another horrible platform at some point but in the meantime this is good and will make you feel good

My reviewing got behind my reading. Here are three CWA Gold Dagger reviews (links in comments): #33: Colin Dexter, “The Wench Is Dead” (1989). A good Morse. #34: Reginald Hill, “Bones and Silence” (1990). A decent Dalziel. #35: Barbara Vine, “King Solomon’s Carpet” (1991) A terrible Rendell. 💙📚

🎶 I love gulls, gulls, gulls, gulls, gulls I do adore 🎶

But what if I want a whole freddo, Italy?

Would a ban on Christmas advertisements, promotions, municipal decorations etc before the first day Advent be woke or fascist? Whichever. Sign me up.

Remember when we thought Wikipedia was the big problem for academia? Wikipedia. The problem. Those were fun innocent times eh.

What the hell is a speech act, though? I mean, really, what?

CWA Gold Dagger winner #33: Michael Dibdin, “Ratking” (1988). I have nothing much to say about this and probably ought to have turned that fact into a pun on the name of the detective. But I didn't. www.nickwiltsher.com/cwa-reviews/2025/11/18/michael-dibdin-ratking-1988 💙📚

Keep getting emails from an unrecognised address asking me to click a link as part of the university's cyber-security training programme. Of course we all know you shouldn't click links in such emails, so I just delete the emails.

Wasn't the primary motivation for moving to Scotland, but this damp climate is doing wonders for my hair.

I hoyed some coins in the pot to help make this book happen. Maybe you'd like to do the same? After all, supporting actual artists and writers making actual art is a good thing. www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/we-eat-the...

CWA Gold Dagger winner CWA Gold Dagger winner #32: Barbara Vine, “A Fatal Inversion” (1987). No idea what's up with that title. Otherwise quite good. www.nickwiltsher.com/cwa-reviews/2025/10/21/barbara-vine-a-fatal-inversion-1987 💙📚

Oh and ALSO I'm offering a short story critique of up to 5k to help Apex reach their goal! Not only that, but I'll give you advice on where to send it once you're done (and answer your industry questions along the way)! Spread the word!

"Is it a long way to the golf course?" "Well, it depends on what you mean by a long way." THAT'S WHAT YOU GET FOR ASKING DIRECTIONS OUTSIDE THE PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT PAL.

CWA Gold Dagger winner #31: Ruth Rendell, “Live Flesh” (1986). All the hallmarks of good Rendell, but too much psychological "explanation", and thus bad Rendell. www.nickwiltsher.com/cwa-reviews/2025/9/30/ruth-rendell-live-flesh-1986 💙📚

If you've sent email to my Uppsala address in the last couple of months, I won't have got it and you should resend it to my St Andrews one if you want a reply. The auto-response from Uppsala unhelpfully says "out of office" where it should say "this address doesn't work any more" or something.

Moving office: a time to contemplate your books, thin a few out, rationalise and downsize. Or just hoy them all in boxes and make your future self deal with it. Man my past self was a knob.

First day in new job. How do you make a cup of tea around here?

Dispatch does good, thoughtful journalism—actual stories written by actual people going to actual places. Couple of articles a week by email. They're offering a 57% discount on a subscription via the links in this article. That's about £3.20 a month. Worth it. dispatch-media.com/margaux-blan...

CWA Gold Dagger winner #30: Paula Gosling, “Monkey Puzzle” (1985). Dense academic business, enjoyable provided you can overlook the homophobia. www.nickwiltsher.com/cwa-reviews/2025/8/26/paula-gosling-monkey-puzzle-1985 💙📚

Let's be generous, here, and assume that by the solar system Altman wants to put the sphere outside the orbit of Neptune, and we'll just exclude the kuiper belt entirely. That would be a sphere with a diameter of 6 billion miles. Let's assume that it has the thickness of an eggshell: .3mm thick.

"What's this philosophy thing about then?", the removal man casually asks during a break from carrying boxes of books. He ends up leaving with a copy of the Nicomachean Ethics to read on his way home. Corrupting the youth and the middle-aged alike.