Behind the Crimes with Robert Murphy

<p>Julie Mackay is the former detective superintendent who led the inquiry into the cold case of Melanie Road.</p><p>For more than three decades, the killer of the 17-year-old schoolgirl evaded justice.</p><p>For the...

<p>Subscribe for free: robertmurphy.substack.com</p><p>Doctor Who, Spooks, Luther: some of Britain’s best-loved TV crime dramas have scripts written by Neil Cross.</p><p>The Bristolian who now lives in New Zealand...

<p>Subscribe for free: www.robertmurphy.substack.com</p><p>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...

<p>#Subscribe for free: robertmurphy.substack.com #</p><p>Journalist and crime author Andrew Wilson spent half a decade researching and writing Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith.</p><p>When she died, aged...

<p>Subscribe for FREE: robertmurphy.substack.com</p><p>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...

<p>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.</p><p>Bookish is inspired by both true crimes and the Golden Age of Detective Fiction...

<p>The Detection Club, established in 1930, is the world’s first social network for crime writers. </p><p>It’s founder fathers and mothers included Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers and Anthony Berkeley.</p><p>Its...

<p>How do you take on one of the biggest literature legacies of the past half-century? That’s what Nick Harkaway was asked to do after his father, David Cornwell (aka John Le Carré) died in 2020.</p><p>Karla’s Choice...

<p></p> <br/><br/>This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertmurphy.substack.com

<p>Lee Child on how, when faced with redundancy he turned to writing. Why he’s made it as a multi-million selling author and others haven’t, the secrets of his craft… and why he’s leaving Trump’s America to return to...

<p># Subscribe for free: robertmurphy.substack.com #</p><p>Recorded at CrimeFest in Bristol, England, May 2025</p><p>Lee Child on how his TV career helped him write, his favourite authors, how he ‘writes the fast stuff...

<p>Neil Woods spent fourteen years as an undercover police officer, helping dismantle some of Britain’s most notorious drug gangs.</p><p>Yet after his biggest victory he came to the conclusion: was it worth it?</p><p>He...

<p>On November 7th 1974, a children’s nanny Sandra Rivett was murdered at the home of the family in which she was in service.</p><p>It was the Lucan family.</p><p>Lord Lucan - her suspected killer - may have been...

<p>Neil Woods spent years as an undercover police officer. He says his techniques in included ‘weaponising empathy’ - using the good nature of society’s most vulnerable.</p><p>And as Britain was being hit by a wave of...

<p>Subscribe for free: robertmurphy.substack.com</p><p>In Cold Blood started as a study in how a heartbreaking killing impacted a Mid-West community. But Truman Capote got sucked into the story.</p><p>At first, the folk...