In fact when I see the expression Golden Age Mystery in a publisher's

In fact, when I see the expression "Golden Age Mystery" in a publisher's blurb it's more or less guaranteed to have me looking for the discard pile. But I think it's my job at least to give it the opening paragraph test. With River Of Darkness, not only did I get past the first paragraph, but before I knew it I was halfway through the book and finishing it almost in one sitting. This is a golden age mystery with a very contemporary sting in its tail.Detective Inspector John Madden is a survivor of the trenches of the First World War, but even though he survived the war almost intact, he was permanently scarred by the experience both physically and mentally. So when a family is brutally murdered in a mansion in the Surrey countryside close to Guildford, and Madden is sent down from Scotland Yard with his green young assistant Billy Styles, it seems to the senior detective that he has seen the stamp of the killer's modus operandi before. It bears all the hallmarks of a soldier whose skills had been honed in the hell of the trenches.

Of course his superiors disagree, and it takes several more murders and attempted murders to prove Madden correct.Airth beautifully captures the feeling of summer life in the Home Counties between the world wars, its sleepy idyll brutally disturbed by killings of a particularly savage nature.Rivers Of Darkness is a modern psychological serial-killer novel set almost 80 years ago, when God was in His heaven and people knew their place in the scheme of things. But change was in the air: communications were improving, forensic science was crawling out of its infancy, and the days of the village bobby on his bike were numbered.If only every golden age crime novel could be as good as this.. Justin Mortimer had won the BP portrait prize in 1991, and I think the NPG suggested he did a painting of me. I was happy to sit for him at the time; I don't know quite why now. I accepted the offer to have my portrait painted as I met Justin and liked him very much - he made me laugh.

I didn't have to go to his studio; he came to paint me at home. He seemed to come a hundred times - he was really very painstaking. At the time he was very young, in his early twenties, and he was constantly asking me to keep still. I said I couldn't be stiller - he said no, you must be absolutely still. You don't understand, he said, my whole career is at stake here - he was half joking, but it was very important to him. I had never sat in this kind of intense manner; I had only sat briefly for a portrait before. I played a lot of music and we occasionally chatted; but he was concentrating very hard I am sitting in the chair I sit in all the time in my study.

I just sat back and thought about life, death and everything; I was quite relaxed.I remember when he had only done the head itself, my head, and I wondered what was going to be in the background. He said he hadn't the faintest idea - I was looking at something quite naked as the head was very small on the bare canvas. When I saw the painting of my head I said to him, I sometimes smile you know. You can't have everything, he said.One day I came into my study and Justin had left the finished painting I suddenly saw this red background and papers everywhere. There are papers like that in my study, but not a red wall.I like the composition and the way it is painted - I like it and think of it as a painting, not a portrait. It was a happy experience sitting for him.My wife likes the picture. I believe there are other aspects of me, and I find it very difficult to judge the nature of my expression in the painting I suppose it is pensive.