All the Fun of the Book Fair

At present, I'm hard at work on the final stages of my latest Lake District Mystery, but a welcome digression on Saturday involved my annual pilgrimage to the national crime and detection book fair in Harrogate. Fog across the Pennines delayed my journey, but I thought two hours at the fair would still be plenty. It proved to be far from long enough. This may, however, have been a good thing in one sense. Book fairs as impressive as this one can seriously damage your financial health.

As well as specialist crime fiction dealers (plus several who were selling children's books), I was delighted to bump into David Stuart Davies, the Sherlock Holmes expert, who was marketing a selection of his own books. David kindly wrote an introduction to The New Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes and is a good friend of Leslie Klinger, whose work on the Free Sherlock project we both agreed was truly admirable.

One totally unexpected, and quite heartwarming, encounter was with a very pleasant teacher who had brought a group of Year 8 schoolgirls along. She told me that the class has been studying detective fiction - lucky things. That's educational progress for you! She'd had the very good idea of bringing the girls along to the fair, and they seemed to be having a fun time. In fact one had bought a copy of John Bude's The Lake District Murder, and one of the dealers had suggested she asked me to sign it. It would be nice to think that some of those girls will retain a fondness for detective fiction throughout their lives. The teacher was doing a really great job. Very enlightened.

I enjoyed chatting to the specialist crime dealers, and admiring their stock (including a signed book in pristine dust jacket by Patricia Wentworth, for instance, and hard-to-find copies of classics by Henry Wade, John Rhode, and the Coles), as well as soliciting feedback on the proposed cover artwork for The Golden Age of Murder. One dealer told me that he'd brought along a large quantity of titles by E.C.R. Lorac, and nearly all of them had been snapped up by the end of the afternoon. Lorac's work is a good example of what one might call "late Golden Age" writing, and I have quite a few of her books, which originally I bought for my parents, both of whom were Lorac fans. Some other titles, though, are very hard to find; hence the demand for them on Saturday.

Another dealer told me that the British Library Crime Classics series is fuelling interest in the first editions of the writers chosen. Price inflation is occurring as a result, it seems, because the originals are so rare. I was also invited to consider a possible new writing project with Golden Age connections, which will be unique and fascinating to undertake if we can get it off the ground. I saw a number of wonderful first editions in dust jackets that I'll probably never see again, such is their scarcity. Did I make any purchases? Only seven, which I regard as very restrained when surrounded by so many temptations. I'll say more about them in the future, but in the meantime, I'll just mention that one of them was a cheap paperback in the Collins White Circle series with the splendid title Detectives in Gum Boots. The author was Roger East, some of whose other novels I've enjoyed. But I've never seen a copy of this one before, and I simply couldn't resist....

Free Sherlock

For several years, Leslie S. Klinger's gorgeously produced three volumes of annotated Sherlock Holmes stories have occupied a prominent place in my library. They are wonderful books, the work of someone who loves Holmes, and knows the great detective's world inside out. Recently I became aware that Leslie is not only a fellow devotee of Sherlock, but also a fellow lawyer. And he has performed a great service to detective fiction fans, which has attracted heavy coverage both in the US and now on the BBC.

I recommend detective story fans, even those who have no time for the law, to read the court judgment to which the BBC story links. It's more readable than you may expect! The court launches an extraordinarily powerful and scathing attack on the case put on behalf of the Conan Doyle estate. Conversely, Les Klinger's courageous stance is lauded, and in my opinion rightly so. In following this litigation, I've become aware of his excellent Free Sherlock site, which I strongly recommend.

It's clear to me that Les Klinger is highly and properly respectful of the rights of authors, certainly including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and indeed their heirs. Me too - in fact, I very much enjoy meeting the families of writers of the past, and I'd love to chat to members of Conan Doyle's remarkable family. I'm sure they are proud of their heritage and would wish to be seen to be doing the right thing. Copyright is hugely important - creative people deserve to be rewarded for what they have created - although applying the law in practice is complicated and confusing, even if you have legal knowledge.

But there has to be balance, common sense and a degree of fairness and decency in all this. The rights of today's authors are also very important, and the kind of tactics attacked by the court are alarming. As for the claim in a press release that the ruling "reduces the incentive for authors to create great literature by cutting short the value of copyrights protecting two of the world’s great characters",.  words fail me. Sir Arthur, a doughty campaigner against injustice, must be turning in his grave. One can only hope - without being confident - that the message of this judgment is heeded by everyone. I also hope that the power of social media - I heard Jimmy Wales of Wikpedia discussing it very interestingly on the radio yesterday - operates so as to deter inappropriate behaviour in the future.

I have a twofold interest in all this. First, as a lifelong Sherlock fan, I don't want the world to be denied new Sherlock Holmes stories for no good reason. Of course, some of those stories won't be up to much, but it's for readers to decide what is worth reading, and they shouldn't be prevented from making up their own minds Nor should the authors of those stories be subjected to unfair pressure or inappropriate financial demands. Second, my own book of new(ish) stories, plus a few essays, about Sherlock is now to be found on Amazon again. I'm rather proud of The New Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes, and of the enthusiasm with which  Sherlockians have responded to it. Thanks to Les Klinger's selfless campaigning, I am glad that readers who want to take a look at what I've done are able to do so.