Lizzie Hayes and Mystery Women

The latest issue of the Mystery Women newsletter is just out, and as usual it is a good read. The tag-line is ‘Promoting Crime Fiction’, and Lizzie Hayes, Ayo Onatade and their colleagues do a wonderful job in the selfless and time-consuming work that they do to spread the news about mysteries they enjoy. Lizzie and Ayo are almost always to be found at crime festivals and they are great company.

I’ve been a member of MW for a number of years – yes, they do allow men to participate! – and I’ve enjoyed participating in a number of their events. A recent example was the panel at the Portico Library in Manchester moderated by Jennifer Palmer. And this week sees two major events associated with MW which I am really looking forward to.

On Wednesday evening, Kate Charles has organised what seems likely to be a super evening of crime talk at a fantastic venue, Ludlow Castle. Amongst those appearing are Andrew Taylor, Deborah Crombie and Laura Wilson. I’m honoured to have been invited to join them.

And then, this coming weekend, we have the annual Crime and Mystery weekend at St Hilda’s College, Oxford. I’ve attended this in the past, although not for a few years, and found it thoroughly agreeable. This year, I’m presenting a paper connected with the weekend’s theme, ‘The wages of sin’. The setting is terrific, the atmosphere is sure to be great; I only hope the rain doesn’t bucket down, for Oxford in the summer sunshine is a truly idyllic place to be.

St Hilda's

I’m really pleased to have been invited to Oxford, to speak at the St Hilda’s College Crime and Mystery week-end in August. This is an event which I’ve attended two or three times before, although not for a few years. St Hilda's was, until recently, a college exclusively for female students. Val McDermid is an alumna, and in fact she and I were contemporaries at the university, though our paths did not cross until many years later.

My previous visits to the St Hilda's week-end have been pretty memorable – I met Anne Perry and Susanna Gregory here for the first time, for instance, and remember a hugely enjoyable visit to an Inspector Morse exhibition with the likes of Colin Dexter and Andrew Taylor, as well as a delightful lunch with a retired tutor from my old college.

The two principal organisers are Kate Charles, a former chairman of the CWA and a much under-rated writer, and Eileen Roberts, who spent a good many years at St Hilda’s and retains her connection with the event, which is especially popular with American crime fans, as well as members of Mystery Women. It was at St Hilda’s that I was encouraged by those great crime enthusiasts Lizzie Hayes and Ayo Onatade to follow Andrew Taylor’s lead and become an honorary Mystery Woman. Which I remain to this day!

The topic for the week-end (at which the speakers deliver papers with a unifying theme) is ‘the wages of sin’, and in due course I’ll have to think about an interesting way of addressing the subject. Any suggestions of an angle that readers of this blog would find appealing will be gladly received!