Behind the Crimes with Robert Murphy

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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 with a potion known as Aqua Tofana to sort the problem: to kill the men.
But the corpses didn’t decay as they should, and the authorities were alerted.
‘The Book of Secrets’ reimagines this story from three perspectives: the poisoner, a survivor of domestic abuse and the prosecutor entrusted with catching the killers.
The Book of Secrets won the 2025 Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger Award - one of the biggest accolades in crime writing.
In this interview, Anna Mazzola describes the inspiration and research for the novel, how her work as a human rights lawyer informs her work, and her new venture writing crime/political thrillers set in the modern day under her pen-name Anna Sharp.
You can find out more about Anna Mazzola here:
https://annamazzola.com/



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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, notes about the dark crimes which prompted her stories and people she had watched which inspired her characters.
Highsmith rarely sold more than 8,000 copies a year in the USA. She was far more celebrated in Europe, to where she moved in the 1970s.
But now, following the superb Netflix series ‘Ripley’ as well as the 1999 film ‘The Talented Mr Ripley,’ interest in Highsmith has never been higher.
Who was Patricia Highsmith?
A lesbian writer who wrote a queer classic yet was deeply misogynistic. A political liberal who held profoundly racist views. A writer of psychological thrillers who hated people.
And how did she manage to persuade quite so many married women into bed?
And what her fascination with snails? Why did she keep them in her bra?
Andrew Wilson describes all of this and about why he spent five years writing ‘Beautiful Shadow.’
You can find more about Andrew Wilson here: https://www.andrewwilsonauthor.co.uk/
Andrew’s Agatha Christie mysteries are available here: https://www.andrewwilsonauthor.co.uk/the-agatha-christie-mysteries
His new biography of Marilyn Monroe I Wanna Be Loved By You is here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Wanna-Be-Loved-You-Marilyn-ebook/dp/B0FB496Q27/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0
In this episode we refer to Truman Capote. You can hear more about In Cold Blood here:
And Andrew talks about Highsmith’s interest in the Lord Lucan case. You can hear more about that here:



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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 soon it was soaring up the Amazon charts.
The Snowdonia Killings, with its lead character of Det Insp Ruth Hunter, seemed to touch a nerve with fans of crime fiction.
Since then, Simon has written more than THIRTY books and has sold millions of copies.
Simon’s books are fantastic reads, with great characters, evocative settings and terrific twists.
You can find out more (and claim a free book) here:
https://www.simonmccleave.com
To WATCH this interview - click here: https://open.substack.com/pub/robertmurphy/p/simon-mccleave-the-screenwriter-turned?r=1lsdh7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertmurphy.substack.com/subscribe

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 platforms (TV, books, theatre, film) create a show which resonates? Bookish is already posting big audience numbers on U&Alibi in the UK.
You may know Mark from The League of Gentlemen, Sherlock, Doctor Who, Game of Thrones, Dracula - and MANY other shows.
But what is it that brings him back to crime?
To watch this interview, click here:
https://open.substack.com/pub/robertmurphy/p/sherlocks-mark-gatiss-true-crime?r=1lsdh7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertmurphy.substack.com/subscribe

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’ in which he talks about the true cases which inspired the literary greats of the Inter-War years.
And he describes how many of our classic crime novels riff around the subject of a ‘justified murder.’
To WATCH this interview, click here: https://open.substack.com/pub/robertmurphy/p/video-interview-martin-edwards-president?r=1lsdh7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
More about Martin Edwards : https://martinedwardsbooks.com/ and https://substack.com/@martinedwardsbooks/
This podcast mentions an earlier episode about the Thompson-Bywaters with laura thompson case. You can hear that here:


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertmurphy.substack.com/subscribe