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READER, I MARRIED HIM Tamar Cohen looks at some of the most famous weddings in literature If weddings are high drama, weddings that don’t happen are the highest drama of all. Like the bride, emotions are left all dressed up with nowhere to go, and often eventually self-combust. Pity poor Miss Havisham, so cruelly jilted. Many women cringe about their choice of wedding dress a year or two later as fashions change – imagine being condemned to wear it day in, day out for the rest of your life. It's enough to drive anyone mad. Or what about Jane Eyre, whose first wedding is dramatically halted at the altar? Maybe she ought to have guessed that having a crazed woman rip her wedding veil to shreds two nights before the wedding wasn’t the greatest omen for married life, but the fact is that Jane is emotionally geared up for this wedding and when it’s snatched away from her, and her nearly-husband is revealed as a nearly-bigamist, it leaves her – and us – in emotional freefall. MORE >

RED HERRINGS Anne Zouroudi explains the relevance of food in crime fiction In 1686 Nicholas Cox published The Gentleman’s Recreation, a book on country pursuits in which he recommended a method of diverting hounds from a scent by dragging a dead cat or fox across the trail. In the absence of suitable carrion, said Cox, a red herring would make a reasonable substitute. Cox’s fish would have been a type of kipper cured in strong brine and then smoked, a process which turns the flesh red-brown. Metaphorical red herrings are happily less pungent, but they’ve always been a vital ingredient in crime fiction. Small wonder, then, that the genre seems inextricably linked with food. Certainly I’m guilty of putting food centre-stage in my Greek island mysteries. My investigator, Hermes Diaktoros, is a gourmet and occasional gourmand, whose particular weakness is for bougatsa – a flaky pastry filled with vanilla custard and cinnamon. MORE >