2015 was a momentous year for novelist Marlon James. He became the first Jamaican writer to win the Man Booker prize for his magisterial novel A Brief History of Seven Killings, about the events surrounding the attempted assassination of Bob Marley and their aftermath. He also chose to come out as gay in an article for the New York Times - a brave move for a man born in what has been called the world's most homophobic country. Alan Yentob accompanies the charismatic and provocative James back to Jamaica and finds in his three highly praised novels a complex portrait of the turbulent history of his native country.

Alan Yentob explores the enthralling world of female crime fiction in the company of some of its best-selling authors, including Patricia Cornwell, Val McDermid and Paula Hawkins - the newcomer whose The Girl on the Train was the breakout hit of 2015. While these writers stand on the shoulders of giants such as Christie, Highsmith, Rendell and PD James, their dark imaginings are more likely to have been nurtured at newsroom crime desks, in mortuaries, piecing bones of murder victims back together and in the bedrooms of modern marriages, where dark thrillers are sparked not by strangers in alleyways but by anxieties and paranoia much closer to home. Why are we so willing to be scared out of our wits, and why are women in particular so attracted to the thrills and comforts of crime fiction?