Ashley Dyer

Ashley Dyer is the pseudonym for prize-winning novelist Margaret Murphy working in consultation with policing and forensics expert, Helen Pepper.

Dyer's new novel is The Cutting Room.

Recently I asked Murphy about what she was reading. Her reply:

I bought a copy of November Road by Lou Berney at the Left Coast Crime Conference in Vancouver, after numerous attendees recommended it to me. Berney was awarded the LCC ‘Lefty’ award for Best Mystery for this novel, and it’s a worthy winner (his acceptance speech was a hoot, too!). A road trip novel—even a romance of sorts—and a tense and suspenseful one, set as it is against a backdrop of mafia affiliations and political shenanigans. Berney draws you in to a terrifying world of psychopaths who own yachts and have the means to make people disappear in horrifying ways. But this clever, stylish, atmospheric and immersive novel also explores the influence of the past on our future, the redemptive power of goodness, and the possibility of second chances. November Road is masterful and filmic—a must-read for 2019.

I love researching the background to my novels, and I’m currently reading The Panama Papers, by Süddeutsche Zeitung journalists Obermayer and Obermaier. I feared it might be dry and difficult, but it had me hooked on the first page. Over the period of a year, between 2015-2016, the two journalists received texts, contracts, emails and spreadsheets from an anonymous source, detailing the ways in which prime ministers, dictators, oligarchs, sports officials, major banks, arms smugglers, mafiosi, diamond miners, art dealers—and celebrities—were flouting international law to launder money, or evade tax. The clarity of the writing makes the subject matter totally accessible, and the human stories behind the criminal activities which stretch right around the globe, reads like a fictional thriller, even though it’s very much real-life in all its ugliness.

Visit Ashley Dyer's website and Facebook page.

--Marshal Zeringue