In an annual tradition - here's the top ten crime novels of the year as selected by the keenest reader I know - my mum Gillie. No particular order. Stig Abell - The Burial Place Maz Evans - That'll Teach Her Rob Parker - The Troubled Deep @thestigabell.bsky.social @robparkerauthor.bsky.social

I've written an obituary of the great Daniel Woodrell www.theguardian.com/books/2025/d...

So sorry to hear about the death of Daniel Woodrell. Dan wrote one of the very finest novels of the last fifty years in Winter's Bone and another that's not far off in Tomato Red. And aside from that he was a really good guy.

Really looking forward to reading this today, seems appropriate given the weather! @johnelwilliams.bsky.social

You can hear me talking to Travis Elborough about the heatwave summer of 1976 here podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/r...

Heatwave news from June 1976

C'mon!

Thank you!

32 years ago today, Charlotte Greig did this fine piece on Moe Tucker in the Guardian (1 June 1993). #MoeTucker #MaureenTucker #VelvetUnderground @robertrotifer.bsky.social

Thanks Jo!

Really enjoyed this interview

Thank you Faber & Faber for sending me this on, um, May 29. Never too early!

Hey! Heatwave is book of the week in the Times!

HEATWAVE: The Summer of 1976 – Britain at Boiling Point by John L. Williams is out today with Octopus. 'Scorching, seething and scintillating, Heatwave conjures a slow-burning collage of a country on the brink. ' - Simon Garfield @johnelwilliams.bsky.social www.waterstones.com/book/heatwav...

Cheers Barry!

Thank you Robin Askwith for the kind words re Heatwave!

New book is out today. Heatwave: The Summer of 1976. Britain at boiling point. Captured here in the wild. 'An absolute joy' said @petepaphides.bsky.social very kindly. Also available in non- chain bookshops!

New book out next week. Will be talking to Travis Elborough in the excellent Bookseller Crow on June 5. Come on down South London folks! @booksellercrow.bsky.social @andrewmale.bsky.social @martinmillar1.bsky.social

I have a new book coming out next month. Have to say I'm very happy with the cover.

Friday afternoon popped in Lorenzo's fine record shop in Brockley and came away with a scarcely credible thre albums for two quid. The Paul Brady is of course one of the finest albums ever made. Will have to consider who to give it to...

For my CLR James biography I talked to his closest living blood relatives (as of 2019), his niece and nephew Erica and Henno James, at the daycare center in Brooklyn where Erica worked. Charming people and I was dismayed when I couldn't find the photo of them I'd taken. Well it finally turned up!

V proud obv, but quite odd to see my son interviewed in the Guardian;

My son has a new record out! It really is very good.

Belated book day post of attractive jacket art - Peter Blake's quartet of Colin MacInnes Penguins. @andrewmale.bsky.social

Saw Lyle Lovett in Cadogan Hall last night. He was clearly suffering with the flu but still a fantastic 2hr+ set. Extraordinary band (Leland Sklar & Russ Kunkel!), great songs, honest and moving chat. Opened with Flyin' Shoes, encored with North Dakota...

Just read this for first time in decades. God, George V Higgins was good. Okay, he's reliant on long swathes of dialogue, but why wouldn't you be if you did it this well? This book is basically nine long conversations and one action scene, and has so much tension, intrigue and insight. Triff.

This, from Sunjeev Sahota, is very good indeed. nonsite.org/the-inauthen...

100 excellent minutes of Euros Childs, last night at the Lexington.

My teenage bookshelf is always lying in wait when I visit my mum. Some unlikely titles amongst them. Nikki Giovanni RIP

A little while ago I wrote a piece about the ill-starred life of CLR James Jr, the talented and troubled musician son of the Trinidadian polymath - responsible for Odyssey's Our Lives Are Shaped By What We Love. It appeared in Maggot Brain but it's not online, so here it is...

Here's me talking about my CLR James biography

This was good fun. Thanks @tonywhite.bsky.social ! Looks like you can listen to it here www.mixcloud.com/Resonance/cl...

I'll be on Resonance FM this evening, talking about my last crime novel.

Went to see Anora - enjoyable enough in itself but not a patch on The Florida Project. Went with Anna and beforehand she was like 'Do we really need another movie about a lap dancer?' Turned out she had a point. Still if you fancy a contemporary Something Wild then this fits the bill.

Tune in to #ResonanceFM 8pm Thursday 28 Nov for Literature Live when I’ll be joined for readings and chat by two great crime and thriller writers: @emmacurtisauthor.bsky.social and John Lincoln aka @johnelwilliams.bsky.social! Broadcasting live from the Resonance studio in #London SE1 — join us!

White City by Dominic Nolan - best crime novel I've read in a long while. Great characters and thoroughly convincing* portrayal of London gangland and Notting Dale in the 50s. *Except for a gangster being referred to as 'CEO of the Underworld'. In 1952! How did no one pick that up? #editorstoday.

Thanks! Yes, there's so much more to CLR James life than people tend to imagine.

Four CDs (check em out, they're the new vinyl) I've been listening to this past month. The Gillian Welch & David Rawlings is straight-up wonderful. Georgia Ruth works the same seam with a Welsh inflection. Jake Fussell has has such a way with trad songs and Alex McMurray is a proper N'Awlins auteur

Was wondering who the oldest artist I've seen live was (as in the one who started their career longest ago). Came up with a few born in WW1 - John Lee Hooker, Sun Ra, Hank Snow - then remembered Alberta Hunter - born in 1895, playing in Chicago brothel by 1910. Can anyone go further back?

Thinking about Frank Auerbach's last show, the astonishing self-portraits. And after seeing Bob Dylan - how much his artistic development parallels that of a great painter more than any other musician I can think of.

Three gigs in five nights: three indelible encores/finales - beauty when it's needed. Katell Keineg and The Gulf of Araby, Myriam Gendron covering Michael Chapman's You Say and Bob Dylan with his Every Grain of Sand. youtu.be/ZlfjNgl7rc8?...

Two gigs in 3 days. The Breton-Welsh Katell Keineg in West Hampstead with an utterly sublime reading of her touchstone The Gulf of Araby. The French-Canadian Myriam Gendron in Cafe Oto, wonderfully still, considered and yet heartbreaking, performing songs from new album Mayday, for her late mother.

Saw Gillian Welch and David Rawlings last night in Birmingham, Alabama. Lovely venue, great audience and absolutely wondrously great performance from G and D, plus a v unobtrusive double bass player. Orphan Girl to start, Everything is Free final encore, most of the terrific new album in between

Great to see Euros Childs back in action with a full band for the first time in ages. Totally recommended if he's playing down your way. Back in London and Cardiff in December.

Books read on holiday. John D. MacDonald - really good revenge novel, set Mexico and Vegas. 1of 3 books he wrote in 1957! Ondaatje - woozy postwar London. Good bits, not a great novel Percival Everett - excellent, v sad with hard-won humour. David Nicholls - likable holiday read. Needed an editor.

Terrific interview with Gillian Welch and David Rawlings here - the new album is utterly the thing www.gq.com/story/gillia...

Much enjoyed watching the Congos last night in a (very extensive!) Lewisham pub garden. It has the air of a much performed act, but Cedric Myton really still has one of the great roots reggae voices.

Was wondering who the oldest artist I've seen live was (as in the one who started their career longest ago). Came up with a few born in WW1 - John Lee Hooker, Sun Ra, Hank Snow - then remembered Alberta Hunter - born in 1895, playing in Chicago brothel by 1910. Can anyone go further back?

Nice obituary for John Foreman in the Guardian today (though odd that it doesn't mention his son Chris being in Madness)