Fiona Cummins is an award-winning former journalist and the internationally bestselling author of seven crime thriller novels, all of which have received widespread critical acclaim from household names including Val McDermid, Lee Child, David Baldacci, Martina Cole and Ian Rankin. Her books, which include Rattle (Pan Macmillan, 2023) and When I Was Ten (Pan Macmillan, 2021), have been translated into several languages and three have been optioned for television. Her fifth novel, Into the Dark (Pan Macmillan, 2023), the first in a series featuring DC Saul Anguish, was described by the Daily Mail as “breathtakingly good” and was shortlisted for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2023. Her sixth book, All of Us Are Broken (Pan Macmillan, 2023), was a spring 2024 Richard and Judy Book Club pick. Last year, Fiona was invited by the Reading Agency to write a novella for the Quick Reads/World Book Night campaign, and A Boy Called Saul (Pan Macmillan, 2025) was the result. When Fiona is not writing, she can be found on Twitter (or should that be X?), eating biscuits or walking her dogs. She lives in Essex with her family.
Crafting Compelling Crime Fiction
Crime and thriller fiction continues to be one of the most popular genres for readers. Join bestselling and critically acclaimed crime authors, Fiona Cummins and Olivia Kiernan as they share with you their secrets to writing compelling crime fiction and creating heart-stopping novels that readers won’t be able to put down.
Whether you’re already working on a crime novel or are seeking inspiration, this course will help you hone the skills required to stand out in today’s competitive crime fiction market.
How do you find an idea? Where is the best place to start your story? How do you build unforgettable characters that captivate from the first page? What are the literary devices employed by successful crime authors to generate nail-biting suspense? How can you use setting to create tone and atmosphere? To reveal or not to reveal: how do you create exciting twists? How do you approach research and weave it into your plot? And finally, when and how do you submit to a literary agent?
Through a series of workshops, writing exercises and one-to-one tutorials, your tutors will help you discover your confidence in writing crime fiction and ignite your passion. At the end of the week, you’ll walk away with all the tools in your toolkit to build a bestselling crime novel.
Tutors
Fiona Cummins
Olivia Kiernan
Olivia Kiernan is a writer of crime thrillers and suspense fiction. She holds an MA in Creative Writing, and her novels have been published in multiple territories. The End of Us (Quercus, 2024) is her latest novel and first standalone thriller after the critically acclaimed Detective Frankie Sheehan series. The End of Us was listed in The Telegraph’s Best of Books for 2023 and Best of Crime Fiction by The Irish Times. Olivia’s work has been longlisted for the Bath and Fish Short Story Awards, shortlisted for the BBC Writersroom, An Post Irish Short Story Award and the Bryan MacMahon Short Story Award. Her Frankie Sheehan series has been optioned for TV by LA based Freedom Films and actor/producer Victoria Smurfit.
Guest Reader
Fflur Dafydd (Digital)
Fflur Dafydd is a bilingual author and screenwriter, working in both Welsh and English. She’s created over 50 hours of drama for S4C and BBC iPlayer, and co-wrote and produced the award-winning feature film Y Llyfrgell / The Library Suicides (based on her own novel), which picked up Best Performance at the Edinburgh Film Festival and a BAFTA Cymru for Best Director. As a novelist, she’s published several works in both languages, including The Library Suicides (Hodder & Stoughton, 2023) and her latest psychological thriller, The House of Water (Hodder & Stoughton, 2025). Her art-world crime drama Yr Amgueddfa (The Museum) ran for two hit seasons, was dubbed “the Welsh Lupin” by the Radio Times, and travelled as far afield as Japan and North America. More recently, she’s joined the writing team for the third series of Trigger Point (ITV). When she’s not writing novels or scripts, she’s off on creative side quests—composing music, writing radio dramas (Mothercover was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2025), or staging the occasional futuristic musical.