Edge of Doom

Last Sunday morning at Crimefest, I moderated a panel given the tag-line ‘Edge of Doom’ – in effect, about suspense and pushing characters as far as you dare. The four panellists were authors who have published with great success, but not for that many years, and (apart from a brief chat with Caro Ramsay a year back), I’d never met them before this week-end.

When you are moderating a panel discussion, you want to make sure that everyone gets their chance to speak, and also that the conversation is both informative and informal – so that the audience feels that they like, and are interested in, the people who are talking, and might therefore be inclined to like their books. Usually, I know at least one or two of the panellists when I’m moderating, but on this occasion I wasn’t at all sure in advance how things would go. One option would have been to draw up a fairly rigid framework, but that doesn’t seem appealing to me, and the panellists expressed a similar view when we exchanged emails in advance of the week-end.

As things turned out, I needn’t have worried. Caro, Brian McGilloway (like Len Tyler and Aliya Whiteley, a product of the excellent Macmillan New Writing project), M.R.Hall and Steven Hague interacted extremely well with each other and each of them had plenty of interest to say. They were a diverse group, and I felt this added to the pleasure of the morning. A special word for Steven, who has published just one novel so far, and who had never participated in a crime panel before that Sunday (when he did it twice!). He contributed with the assurance of a seasoned performer. I was impressed.

The Herring Seller's Apprentice

It’s a long time since I’ve been amused by a detective story as much as I have been by L.C. Tyler’s debut novel, The Herring Seller’s Apprentice. It was published as part of the Macmillan New Writing programme, and I found it really good fun.

The story is told – for the most part – by Ethelred Tressider, a gloriously unsuccessful writer of detective stories featuring an uninspiring cop by the name of Fairfax. Ethelred’s marriage, to the faithless Geraldine, has long since collapsed, but the police come calling one day to say that she has gone missing – and a body has been found.

Events quickly gather momentum. Ethelred identifies the body, and is assisted (or hindered) in his quest to find out what happened to Geraldine by his literary agent, Elsie Thirkettle, who claims to enjoy neither the company of writers nor literature of any sort.

This is a clever story, and even though I spotted the main plot twist at an early stage, this did not detract from the pleasure that Tyler’s witty and intelligent writing gave me. I can thoroughly recommend this book.