Dead East: June 2026
News and features from the Anglian Crime Authors Collective.
Welcome to the latest Dead East newsletter: news and exclusive content from crime authors based in East Anglia, in the UK.
In this issue:
Crime News from East Anglia — Dead Events — Crime Fiction News and Events — Interview: Tony White — Reviews — New Releases by Other Hands — More from Dead East — And finally…
Crime News from East Anglia
Awards
Dead East author Julia Stone’s The Expert Witness won the silver award in the Sykehouse Film and Writers’ Festival’s Noose Awards for Best Thriller. Winner was The House At Devil’s Neck by Tom Mead.
Hot on the heels of this success, Julia has been shortlisted in the non-fiction pitch in the I Am In Print 2026 competitions. Entries are anonymous, with final results to be announced later this month.
New Releases:
Killer On The Set by PN Johnson
It’s a British TV drama with a set full of secrets, but who’s calling the shots?
A dream role in a hit TV drama is not all it seems when actor Holly Elding is warned to turn down the part and run for her life!
A missing actress, a superyacht full of stolen art, an FBI man with a hidden agenda, a chateau set to burst into flames, a love triangle and a web of deceit.
Can Holly and disgraced cop turned stuntman Josh Corton bring down the gang before they’re written out for good?
A fast-moving adventure thriller set in England, Spain, the Greek islands and France.
Extract
Killer on the Set sees actor Holly land her dream role on a successful TV crime drama only for it to turn into a nightmare when she discovers is has a set full of secrets, but who’s calling the shots? There’s a missing actress, a superyacht full of stolen paintings, an FBI man with a hidden agenda, a chateau set to burst into flames, a love triangle and a web of deceit. Can Actress Holly Elding and disgraced cop turned stuntman, Josh, bring down the gang before they’re written out for good? It’ a fast -moving adventure thriller set in London, Spain, the Greek islands and France.
In this extract, Holly and Josh are in Valencia trying to find Josh’s former girlfriend Laura Stevens, a model turned exotic dancer, who’s on the run after uncovering the gang’s secret crimes…
The flashing lights of passing stations strobed in the tunnel. Above us, I imagined bright sunlight and a seductive sky. Soon the metro glided to a halt at Angel Guimera, a major junction where lines cross and lives merge. We walked up to the surface, electric surrendering to natural light. The warm sun was waiting for us on Valencia’s streets. Oranges hung heavy on specimen trees as buildings broke the skyline. Looking briefly at each other we crossed the road joining the crowds, playing at being tourists.
It was a romantic place. We looked like the perfect couple, and for a fleeting moment I did consider grabbing Josh’s hand, but I was I really ready for a move like that? Besides, his mind was on Laura for sure. Flamenco dancers advertising a stage show busked as we passed the square by the Almoina museum: a treasure house of Roman remains, lost lives beneath the old city streets, but a life was in danger of being lost right now on the present city streets if we didn’t find Laura. Her last contact had been: Parakeets, afternoons — posted as a private message to Josh on social media. He and Laura had spent a week in Valencia in their early days. The whole place was romantic, and I guessed he was reliving their time together as we walked the same streets.
We strolled purposefully along the Turia Park, the dried-out bed of a diverted river, now a wide, leafy parkland through the backbone of the city. Josh knew where we were going but it was all new to me. ‘You seem pretty sure you know she’ll be here Josh. Has she been in touch again?’ I asked, concerned we were on a wild goose, or rather, a wild Laura chase.
‘No, she hasn’t, but yes, I’m pretty sure I know where she is. I posted that I was en route to Spain on my feed yesterday, I’m hoping she’s seen it, and she knows I’m on my way.’ I spotted a cyclist pedalling a few metres behind us, his face hidden by a buff snood. He could have easily overtaken us. I threw a glance to Josh, but he hadn’t noticed him. Heading up the steps to the new buildings, we acted like tourists, marvelling at the city of Arts and Sciences, rising like futuristic palaces before us.
Ahead of us were the specimen gardens. Exotic trees grew, semi protected inside a massive frame. Living here in the upper branches were green parakeets. It was a place Josh told me he and Laura knew well. As we walked slowly through the warm damp air with tropical trees towering above us, we spotted a young woman sitting on a bench. She was anxious, scanning left and right. This wasn’t the girl I’d seen in the photos, not the shots of the stunning blonde Laura displayed on her portfolio online. Her now dark brown hair was cut short and there was a dull fleece over her denim jeans and brown boots. I was glad Josh recognised her, as I wouldn’t have.
‘Laura!’ Josh gasped as she raised her face and lifted the large dark glasses. It took a few seconds for us to take in the full technicolour horror of an angry raised red cut running from her cheek to her neck. ‘God, Laura!’ Grabbing her arms and hauling her up, Josh hugged her close. Tears flooded her face as she slipped, dummy-like, into his embrace. I watched concern morph into anger in his eyes. His muscles tightened as he clenched his fist. I felt so sorry for her, but a little jealousy swept over me as I saw the tenderness in his face. They sat down together.
‘Who did this?’ he asked.
‘Who do you think?’ she replied in a faltering voice with an Australian accent. I stood back, surveying the scene, keen to ensure we weren’t being watched. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the cyclist we’d seen earlier. He was at the entrance to the gardens, tapping at a phone. I heard Josh cry out as Laura unzipped her top. She pulled the neck of her tee shirt down to reveal the thin angry red cut continued down into her bra. ‘They wanted to show me how they could make sure I couldn’t model or dance again,’ she sobbed. I shuddered and gasped in shock. If we’d had any doubts about what we were dealing with before, then there were no doubts now.
Killer On The Set was published by Castle Priory Press June 4th 2026 and is available from Amazon and other booksellers.
The Cello Case Killer (DI Jack Macintosh Book 9) by Michelle Kidd
A body in a cello case. A victim who shouldn’t be dead. A killer playing a deadly game.
Detective Inspector Jack MacIntosh is enjoying a rare day off and attempting a spot of DIY when the call comes in.
A passenger has made a horrifying discovery on the Edinburgh to King’s Cross train. Stuffed inside a cello case, abandoned on a luggage rack, is the body of a middle-aged woman.
Wealthy businesswoman Rhona Miller has been dead for at least two weeks.
But that’s impossible.
She spoke to her father just four days ago.
As Jack and his team dig deeper, he finds himself plunged into the most frustrating case of his career — a crime carefully staged, a timeline that makes no sense, and a killer always one step ahead.
Jack and his team come to realise this isn’t just any ordinary murder.
This is a performance.
And Jack MacIntosh himself has been cast in the lead role.
Extract
Time: 1.20 a.m.
Date: Friday 1 January 2016
Location: Abbott Road, Edinburgh
You always remember your first, isn’t that what everyone said?
She wasn’t his first, but he knew he’d remember her all the same.
A low-wattage bulb swung from the centre of the ceiling, causing her peach-white skin to glimmer in the muted light.
He’d enjoyed ending her life, just as he had all the ones that had come before. But there was something about this one, this special one, that delivered him an extra surge of joy. Watching her life slowly ebb away, her body quivering for the final time beneath his touch — it had been as beautiful as it had been ugly.
And now he was left with this strange, yet very familiar, kind of peace.
Death.
There really was nothing like it.
He was fortunate to have found a flat to rent with access to a basement; there weren’t all that many left in the city now. Old Mrs Campbell had been more than content to hand it over to him. “I haven’t been down there in years, sonny. Please help yourself.”
So, he had.
And it was perfect. Thick stone walls insulated him from the world outside, and with just the one tiny window up high, facing out onto the tangled web that was the back garden, no one could see in. Beneath the window was a narrow door, which led outside to a set of rusting metal steps.
His own private entrance.
Perfect.
The privacy of the basement meant he was able to take his time with her — soak up every delicious minute of her terror, absorb every moment of her living hell. And no one would even know they were there.
She was still strapped to the wooden stool. He didn’t want to move her — not yet. Instead, he wanted to take his time, sitting back to admire her beauty, to revel in what he’d finally managed to achieve after all these years. He would have to move her eventually, he knew that — but there was no rush.
Because no one knew she was here.
When he’d ended her life a little over an hour ago, he could hear the Hogmanay celebrations filtering in from outside. Despite the freezing temperatures, he’d opened the tiny window to a cacophony of crackles, whizzes and bangs as the city’s firework display celebrated the dawning of a new year.
A smile flickered. He hadn’t spent his evening welcoming in the new year; instead, he’d ushered in the return of the grim reaper. It seemed a fitting backdrop somehow. The smile twitched again as he let his fingers dance over her rapidly cooling skin. In his world, death should always be celebrated, maybe even more so than life. How many could remember the sensation of being born? It was a physical impossibility, the brain of a newborn too undeveloped. But death? Death could be experienced by anyone willing to embrace it.
And maybe those not so willing, too.
The smile morphed into a throaty chuckle. She certainly hadn’t welcomed the experience, trying to wrench her hands free from the restraints, to scream beneath the tape masking her mouth. It had all been in vain, but oh so delicious to witness.
He found that the more traumatic and violent their final breaths, the more exquisite the experience. He loved it when they pleaded with him, implored him to spare them their life. Once that happened, he knew he was in complete control; and control was everything. Knowing it was his choice whether they lived or died, how long it would take, how much it would hurt, was a feeling like no other.
Throughout his life he’d felt inconsequential, with decisions ripped from his control, others taking command of his destiny. But by taking the life of another by force, he became the master of their fate. The cruel smile faded a little as his gaze hardened.
They had all deserved to die in their own way, but this one had been different; it had all started with her.
Taking one last look at her lifeless body, he turned out the light and headed back upstairs. A new year meant new beginnings — for him, at least. And this was going to be the year where he was finally rid of the demons that had ruined him.
As he climbed up to his top-floor flat, he could still faintly hear the revelry wafting in from outside. Fireworks were still being lit, whisky still being drunk. It would likely go on for a few hours yet. As he entered his flat, he grabbed an open bottle of cheap whisky from a side table and held it aloft. He had his own special toast already prepared.
“Here’s to the new year,” he growled, taking a mouthful direct from the bottle. “And the new death it will bring!”
The Cello Case Killer is published on 30th June and will be available from Amazon and other booksellers.
DCI Greg Geldard series, Book 5, Revenge on the Norfolk Broads by Heather Peck
Winner of the Firebird Book Award 2023.
In a quiet Norwich suburb, Detective Greg Geldard walks into the worst scene of his career.
Salon owner Madame Trieste has been nailed to her kitchen cupboard. A grotesque crucifixion. Her eyes are gone.
This is revenge. A warning.
Even worse, there’s no sign of DI Sarah Laurence, the first officer on the scene. Her car keys sit on the kitchen table. And a spatter of blood on the wall doesn’t match the body in the room.
Revenge on the Norfolk Broads was published 8th June (please note this book was previously published as Dig Two Graves) and is available from Amazon and other booksellers.
DCI Greg Geldard series, Book 6, Lost on the Norfolk Broads by Heather Peck is published on 29th June and will be available for pre-order from Amazon and other booksellers.
The Cornish Honeymoon Murder by Fiona Leitch
Everyone always says that your honeymoon should be a holiday to remember…
Ex-Metropolitan Police sergeant Jodie Parker and her new husband, DCI Nathan Withers, are honeymooning at a luxurious eco-resort on a secluded Cornish island. But there’s a twist: they’re undercover, as the resort’s owner has hired them to investigate a series of sabotages, and Jodie’s mum Shirley and daughter Daisy – and their dog, Germaine – have somehow managed to get themselves invited along too.
The happy couple plan to make the most of the five star facilities, while discreetly questioning staff and guests. However, when a fierce storm traps everyone on the island, tragedy strikes – a guest is found dead in the wreckage of the boathouse, and it looks like murder…
With a killer among them, it’s up to Jodie and Nathan to solve the mystery before another life is lost.
The Cornish Honeymoon Murder, is published by One More Chapter on 26th June, and is available for pre-order.
Dead East Events
The Great Dunmow Bookfest
Five members of Dead East had a highly successful and enjoyable day on 13th June, staking out a room at the Great Dunmow Bookfest, as a small Essex town was transformed for a day into a vast bookshop, with authors taking over space in shops, pubs and other public spaces. The organisation was a tremendous feat, with town centre roads closed off and a festival atmosphere across the town. We were rewarded with a high turnout, and an exhausting day chatting with keen readers as they explored.
Crime Fiction News and Events
National Crime Reading Month
National Crime Reading Month is an annual initiative spearheaded and developed by the Crime Writers’ Association, promoting crime reading across the genre through bookshops, libraries, and venues such as museums and theatres, as well as online.
Events still to come in our region include:
Michelle Kidd will be appearing at Eye in Suffolk with all her books on Sunday 21st June as part of the Foreword Festival.
Heather Peck is giving a talk at Fakenham Library on Wednesday 17th June.
Rosie Sandler launches her new novel Murder in Season in Silver End, Essex, on Friday 19th June.
An Evening of Crime with Simon Marlowe takes place at Chicken and Frog, Brentwood, also on Friday 19th June.
Crime Fiction Festivals
Crime fiction festivals coming up:
18-20 June 2026 Capital Crime, London
23-26 July 2026 Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, Harrogate
August 2026 Bute Noir
More Shortlists
The Crime Writers’ Association’s Dagger Award shortlists have been announced. Winners will be announced at the Daggers Awards banquet in July.
The shortlist for the the Bloody Scotland Debut Prize has been announced, with the winner to be revealed at Bloody Scotland crime festival in September.
For writers
The CWA has provided a new article at Pen to Print telling you how to write Page Turners And Plot Twists: Unmissable Tips For Aspiring Crime Writers, full of brilliant advice from some of the authors longlisted for the CWA Daggers.
The Society of Authors is supporting the Creators’ Rights Alliance with a petition to the government, calling for regulation for AI developers to disclose the copyright-protected works they use to train generative AI models. If you want to help, please sign this petition today and force government to engage.
Fraudulent activity targeting authors has risen alarmingly. To tackle this, the Society of Authors and the Writers’ Guild have issued urgent new guidance outlining measures writers can take to protect themselves.
Interview: Tony White
Phantom at the Feast is published this month by No Exit Press – tell us about the book.
Phantom at the Feast is the standalone follow-up to The Fountain in the Forest. It marks the return of Detective Sergeant Rex King of Holborn Police Station, and it continues my exploration of the legacy today of the social transformations in the aftermath of the Miners’ Strike. When the sole witness in a trafficking case is discovered brutally murdered, a brass horseshoe forced between his teeth, DS Rex King is summoned back to London and into a labyrinth of memory, music, and political unrest. And when Rex’s boss, DCI ‘Lollo’ Lawrence, suddenly disappears, and long-buried papers from the Miners’ Strike surface, he must work alongside a country-mouse detective from deepest Sussex, a seasoned former soul boy, and the National Crime Agency’s new AI. But it turns out that AIs and algorithms are no substitute for boots on the ground – even when those boots are soaked in blood!
Did you always intend these books to be a series?
Yes, I conceived these novels as a series. I’d felt for a long time – since the mid-1990s! – that the 90 days between the end of the Miners’ Strike and the Battle of the Beanfield on 1 June 1985 was a period of great upheaval with a legacy worth exploring in fiction: how we got from Orgreave to the Beanfield so quickly. But I needed a way in. And until I found a way in, I contented myself with putting down a marker just to remind myself: all my novels and novellas from Charlieunclenorfolktango onwards, so 1999, have included some nod or homage to David Hare’s brilliant 1985 detective feature film Wetherby. It’s one of my favourite films of all time, and coincidentally was released in the UK the week the miners went back to work. No one else will have noticed these nods to Wetherby, but they were a way of saying to myself, yes I’m writing this novel right now, but I haven’t forgotten about that strange spring of 1985. I don’t know about other writers, but for me a defined period like that, ninety days that are book-ended by two seismic social and political events, is a really useful frame for a novel. And while both Fountain and Phantom range freely backwards and forwards in time, they are mapped against that strange 90-day interregnum in 1985. Originally I’d planned to write three novels of thirty-chapters each, but it didn’t quite work out that way because Phantom at the Feast took up sixty chapters. Phantom is is itself a novel in two parts, as you’ll see, but you couldn’t slip a rizla paper between them, as the saying goes.
And what was the way in?
Crosswords. Historical crosswords. While I was researching the period, reading mid-80s editions of The Guardian on the British Library’s microfiche readers, I kept finding my attention drawn to the back pages, to the Steve Bell cartoons and the Quick Crossword. I remembered that I’d used to do the Guardian Quick Crossword every day from 1984–86. I was living on the dole in Leeds, and the Guardian only cost about 20p! After a couple of days on the microfiche readers I had a bit of a headache and needed to rest my eyes, and I thought – on the spur of the moment – maybe I should print off one of these crosswords that I’d first completed 30 years earlier, and redo it now! I thought it would be a bit of fun, which of course it was, but I wasn’t prepared for this Proustian rush of memories and associations. I remembered that Italo Calvino had written a novel using the Tarot, which he’d described as a kind of visual crossword. And I thought maybe I could flip that idea, and use the crosswords as a lexical tarot, what the Oulipians call a ‘mandated vocabulary’: so thinking of those 90 days in 1985 as the framework for my novel, the idea just came to me: 90 days, 90 chapters, and each chapter would have to incorporate all of the solutions from that day’s Guardian Quick Crossword. They seemed so redolent of the period, like a kind of cultural core sample of personalities and preoccupations. I realised that this was a richly authentic seam to be mined. Then I just had to do all ninety crosswords… I couldn’t cheat because this being the Grauniad, I’ve seen typos in the given crossword solutions!
What is it about Rex King that made you want to return to him?
Well I had to return to Rex in Phantom at the Feast mainly because his story wasn’t finished. But I’m also drawn to Rex in part because he’s a complex character. He thinks he’s a good guy – and in a sense he is. The critic Sukhdev Sandhu thinks I have a love of rogues and rebels, and maybe he’s right!
Phantom at the Feast features an ‘unsettlingly brilliant’ new police AI. Obviously AI is a contentious subject among writers and artists – what’s your take on the pros and cons of this new technology?
I can see that when it comes to analysing certain kinds of medical imagery, for example, vast data sets that are only machine-readable, certain types of AI might have some diagnostic advantage. But the ‘large language models’ that dominate thinking about AI at the moment, which scrape all our books illegally so fools can kid themselves they’re writers, which generate superficially convincing copycat slop; lowest common denominator literary grey-goo – I really hate that. And I hate that policy-makers are so gullible, and so welcoming of donations and influence, and so quick to adopt the idea that you can deskill a professional workforce and restaff it with unqualified people (who will no doubt take the opportunities in good faith because they need to work) who are equipped with just their wits and access to an ingratiating collage machine that tells you what you want to hear but is fatally prone to hallucinations – all of that seems like a reckless recipe for corporate and humanitarian disaster and coverups down the line. And I also hate that datacentres are so destructive in terms of carbon emissions and water use. Phantom went to print just too late to add the ‘human authored’ logo, but if I could’ve, I would’ve.
What’s a typical writing day for you?
Typically I get up at 5.45am, have a little breakfast and coffee, then I’m at my desk by 6. I think it’s a work ethic I picked up at art school: you had to get in early to use the equipment, so I’d turn up as soon as the cleaners opened the doors. And actually for a while I was one of those cleaners myself – it’s how I was able to go to art school in the first place. But for me now, that’s how novels get written, by writing every day. And if I start writing at 6, then I know that by about 11 I’ll have done a full day’s work. Then maybe I’ll go for a walk along the Thames – I live in London. And maybe do a little more writing in the afternoon, or else life will take over in some way. I don’t set myself numerical targets, word-counts, just have a good sense of when to stop. If I’m racing to finish something, then I’ll work around the clock. Other days I might have teaching commitments or other deadlines (I’m a visting lecturer on the Creative Writing MA at Birkbeck, and two days a week I’m the RLF Fellow at Royal Holloway University of London), but writing-wise, those early starts are what work for me.
What do you like to do when you’re not writing?
Well I seldom turn down an offer of paid work, though come to think of it, that’s usually some kind of writing, too, or writing-related work at least. But for relaxation? I like to read, to go for walks, to see friends, to look at art.
For those unfamiliar with your work, tell us about your route into writing, and what’s coming next.
I was lucky enough to go to art school, and it was there I discovered I could write. At first (this would be the late ’80s) I was writing short pieces – anecdotes, autofictions, found stories of any kind – and sort of reading those aloud like spoken word on what was a fleeting performance art scene at the time, at venues like the ICA, The Leadmill in Sheffield. Testing these stories out on audiences, then rewriting and honing them, and taking them out again. Publication didn’t even cross my mind. For a while too I was writing reviews of exhibitions and books, and certainly the discipline of writing a 500-word review certainly helped with the discipline of writing short stories and learning how to ‘bring them home’, to finish them. But it wasn’t until the mid-90s that I had my first short story published, and a couple of years after that my first novel was published by a Scottish small press, Low Life Books. My first police novel per se was a satirical stream of filth called Charlieunclenorfolktango that came out in 1999, again with a small press: Codex Books. Sadly a lot of those 1990s small presses didn’t survive much into the twenty-first century, but they’re how I got my first breaks.
Right now I’m really busy with the launch of Phantom at the Feast, and I’m so excited that it’s being published by No Exit Press, alongside some of the greats like Ted Lewis and James Sallis, who sadly died earlier this year. Rex King and I feel right at home. What’s next? Well, the routine seems to be that you’re always promoting the current thing, or recent things, whether novels or short stories, while writing the next thing! So yes, I’m writing another novel, but the very next thing for me will be a reissue on No Exit Press of The Fountain in the Forest on 3 December. I can’t wait.
Anyway, thanks all. I hope you enjoy Phantom at the Feast. Hopefully I’ll get out your way at some point, and I look forward to catching up then.
Tony White can be found online at linktr.ee/author_tonywhite
Phantom at the Feast is published by No Exit Press on 18th June 2026, and can be pre-ordered at Amazon and other booksellers.
Reviews
One of the Family by Mark Edwards
Patrick’s girlfriend has invited him to spend Hogmanay with her and her family at their remote Scottish home. Nice. Only her father is a super-rich businessman with a daunting reputation, Holly has never brought a boyfriend (raising the pressure), Patrick is from a very different social background, and Holly and her siblings will be meeting Dad’s young girlfriend for the first time. Needless to say, there are lots of undercurrents and tensions, all of which deepen as dark secrets from the past raise their head. There’s an almost breathless pace to this novel that took me back to reading Alfred Hitchcock’s crime series for kids (not actually written by Hitchcock, but I didn’t know that at the time) and the Hardy Boys, but in a very grown-up version. This is meant as praise: One of the Family gave me that thrill I got from reading those books as a kid, that sense of pace and jeopardy that drags you along. Add in an almost closed-room claustrophobic atmosphere as the Scottish winter cuts the village off, and a cleverly handled ending that pulls you in different directions, and this is a thoroughly good novel.
(review by Nick Guthrie)
For more excellent crime reviews, see Barry Forshaw’s Financial Times reviews and Maxim Jakubowski’s To the Max reviews, both courtesy of Crime Time.
New Releases by Other Hands
The Nanny by Heather Burnside — “When the pressure of juggling work and motherhood becomes too much, hiring a nanny feels like the perfect solution...”
The Inheritance by Gemma Denham — “The house was free. Surviving it might cost everything.”
Valley of Death by Bill Kitson — “Detective Mike Nash thought that moving back to Yorkshire from London would give him a quieter life. Little did he know...”
My Friend’s Husband by Rupa Mahadevan — “My best friend is missing. And the police think I did it.”
More from Dead East: the Anglian Crime Authors Collective
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Contact Dead East: acacwriters@gmail.com
And finally…
“The character that lasts is an ordinary guy with some extraordinary qualities.” —Raymond Chandler