Nicholas Litchfield

Nicholas Litchfield is the founding editor of the literary magazine Lowestoft Chronicle, author of the suspense novels When The Actor Inspired Chaos and Bloodshed and Swampjack Virus, and editor of twelve literary anthologies. His stories, essays, and book reviews appear in many magazines and newspapers, including BULL, Colorado Review, Daily Press, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Shotgun Honey, The Adroit Journal, The MacGuffin, The Virginian-Pilot, and Washington Square Review. He has also contributed introductions to numerous books, including twenty-two Stark House Press reprints of long-forgotten noir and mystery novels. Formerly a book critic for the Lancashire Post, syndicated to twenty-five newspapers across the U.K., he now writes for Publishers Weekly. You can find him online at nicholaslitchfield.com.

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Fading Ink

I started writing for newspapers over thirty years ago, and my byline was Nick Litchfield. Dozens of articles and thousands of copies landed on doorsteps nationwide. I kept at it for years, and the way newspapers were syndicated, articles were fed into different sister papers across neighboring towns and counties. Some were weeklies, some dailies. […]

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Featured book cover image of When The Actor Inspired Chaos and Bloodshed in The Star

The Star newspaper reviews When The Actor Inspired Chaos and Bloodshed

My second novel, When The Actor Inspired Chaos and Bloodshed, is scheduled for release on April 1st. Today, The Star, sometimes known as the Sheffield Star, carried a wonderful review of the novel. “Litchfield’s intense and topical drama sizzles like charred meat over hot coals, eventually erupting into a massive blaze of mesmerising chaos,” book critic Pam Norfolk writes. “Amidst the thrills and spills, readers encounter a cast of well-defined characters whose actions and voices manage to rise above the risible film script. Fans of edge-of-the-seat thrillers filled with exotic settings, non-stop action, and a cast of ambitious artistes battling fears, egos, insecurities, and daily disasters, will relish Nicholas Litchfield’s pulse-pounding novel, When The Actor Inspired Chaos and Bloodshed.”

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Fools Walk In / So Wicked My Love by Bruno Fischer with an introduction by Nicholas Litchfield

Bruno Fischer’s Wicked Fools

This month, Stark House Press reissued two of Fischer’s paperback originals from the Fifties—Fools Walk In, published in 1951, and So Wicked, My Love, from 1954. The novels are essentially two variations on a theme. The first is a bizarre and twisty drama wherein a college professor gets involved with a gang of thieves, and the latter is a powerful and extremely well-written love story with darkness and villainy at its core. My essay, “Fischer’s Foolish Teacher and the Wicked Redhead,” introduces the collection.

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Review of Bandit Heaven by Tom Clavin

In Bandit Heaven, published by St. Martin’s Press last month, New York Times bestselling author Tom Clavin offers an interesting analysis of three secluded hideouts nestled in Wyoming and Utah that for many decades provided a place of refuge and protection for hordes of robbers, killers, and fugitives. These hangouts—Robbers Roost, Brown’s Hole, and Hole-in-the-Wall—sufficiently

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Washington Square Review: Summer 2024

Story “Paris Pickpockets” in Washington Square Review

My short story, “Paris Pickpockets,” a wry tale of theft at the Châtelet-les-Halles metro station in Paris, was published recently in the Summer 2024 (Vol. 2, No. 3) edition of Washington Square Review, a literary journal produced by Lansing Community College in Michigan that’s been around since 1972. The story was written earlier this year,

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Silent Light by Mark Jacobs

Litchfield reviews Silent Light by Mark Jacobs for the Colorado Review

My review of Mark Jacobs’ literary fiction novel Silent Light was published this week in the Colorado Review. Here is a snippet: “In this epic journey through brutalized, fractured communities within the Democratic Republic of the Congo, award-winning writer Mark Jacobs presents an intense and poignant novel of vulnerable outsiders at the peripheries of hell navigating inter-ethnic quarrels,

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A Séance for Wicked King Death by Coy Hall

Review of A Séance for Wicked King Death by Coy Hall

Coy Hall’s largely overlooked series opener, A Séance for Wicked King Death, published by Shotgun Honey Books last November, is an engrossing 1950s crime story that flaunts scrupulously distilled prose and memorable rogues. Set in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Huntington, West Virginia, it introduces Royce Pembrook, a smart, articulate ex-con with a talent for deception. A

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Interview with Jerry Levy for Lowestoft Chronicle

The latest issue of the Lowestoft Chronicle, published today, includes my interview with Canadian short story writer Jerry Levy. Years ago, Levy contributed an excellent short story to issue #9 of the magazine (“Paris Is A Woman”). Since then, Levy has published three story collections, including his superb The Philosopher Stories. This interview with Levy focuses on his story collections, his literary influences, and the real-life inspiration behind his intelligent, socially awkward philosophy hack protagonist, Karl Pringle, the star of his newest book.

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