St Hilda's Crime and Mystery Week-end

St Hilda's Crime and Mystery Week-end is a crime conference with a distinctive and delightful personality which makes it very different from other crime-related events. The setting is St Hilda's College, Oxford, and I'm just back from the twentieth conference, which was, if anything, even more enjoyable than usual. The fact that this week-end is not advertised, has no promotional website, and yet has flourished for two decades, speaks for itself. When people do find out about it, and attend, they tend to love it, and go back year after year. There's no clearer sign of success than that.

The theme this year was "The Present and Future of Crime Fiction" and when I was asked to deliver a paper, I thought I would be very crafty and find a neat way to weave a talk about the Golden Age into the over-arching theme. What I hadn't anticipated was that some other writers would have the same idea - and my talk was on Saturday afternoon, while just before lunch P.D. James herself would be speaking about....the Golden Age.

P.D. James was aptly described by Natasha Cooper, the chair of the conference, as the true Queen of Crime and it was wonderful to see that her audience regarded it as a true privilege to be able to listen to her. And so it was. Fortunately for me, there was no overlap between her topics of mine, and one of the more daunting experiences of my public speaking career (yet a real honour) was to see Baroness James herself sitting in the front row to listen to my paper. I did feel a bit nervous, having foolishly said the previous evening that I feel more confident about speaking in public nowadays than I used to, but I managed to get through to the end without drying up completely. The papers are delivered in pairs, so P.D. James spoke along with Frances Fyfield, while I was paired with Peter Robinson - and it was very good to catch up with him again over the week-end.

The other speakers included Andrew Taylor (talking about C.S. Forester), and Val McDermid, while two after dinner speeches were given by Bernard Knight on the Friday, and Cilla Masters on the Saturday. There was also an extremely interesting panel chaired by Ayo Onatade on the future of crime publishing. The attendees included quite a number of notable writers who weren't actually speaking - a few examples include Frances Brody, Ann Granger, Marjorie Eccles, Kate Ellis, and AK Benedict - while I met several writers whose first books are due to appear shortly. As ever with these events, the combination of catching up with old friends and meeting new people was very pleasurable.

Much of the success of St Hilda's is down to continuity and the sterling efforts of the organisers, Kate Charles and Eileen Roberts, and Natasha Cooper, who chairs quite brilliantly in a calm, efficient and extremely generous style that few if any could match. This trio put a huge amount of work into the event, and their reward is simply that they give a lot of people a great time.If you've never attended St Hilda's, I do recommend it very strongly. The dates for next year are 15-17 August 2014.

Specific Gravity

Round-robin mysteries have featured several times on this blog, and I’ve mentioned that I find them rather fascinating. I shall have more news before long of an interesting reprint that I’m involved with, but in the meantime, I’m delighted to say that the first collaborative mystery that I’ve been involved with is now available.

It came into existence through an initiative of the lovely people who run the  Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Fiction Festival at Harrogate each year. This has become a major event for fans, and regularly features a host of international best-sellers. So I was extremely gratified when the organisers invited me to take part in writing a chapter of Specific Gravity, a mystery broadly (and in many ways, distantly) in the tradition of The Floating Admiral.

The story was to be started and finished by Stuart MacBride, who has become a superstar of the contemporary crime novel. Other contributors were to be Laura Wilson, Natasha Cooper, Martyn Waites, Allan Guthrie, Ann Cleeves, Charlie Williams, Zoe Sharp and Dreda Say Mitchell. Very good company to be in!

This joint enterprise was all about having fun, and I approached it in that spirit. There was no advance planning – each writer did their own thing. I wrote in a different style from usual, and really enjoyed writing my chapter. But then the project went very quiet for a long time, as consideration was given as to how to promote it. Now, at last, it’s emerged – and at long last, when I get a spare moment, I shall finally find out what happened in the story after I did my bit!  

If you fancy seeing what we all made of the project, take a look at Specific Gravity . Incidentally, having enjoyed contributing this one, I’m now involved with another round-robin project, though this one will be very different. More about that in the fullness of time...

Back from Oxford

On a sunny summer day, Oxford is a truly idyllic place, and the St Hilda’s conference was blessed with wonderful weather from Friday to Sunday. I’ve been to the conference(which has been running now for 16 years) a couple of times before, but this was definitely the best yet in my experience. Everything about it seemed right.

I’ll be blogging about it in more detail shortly, but first I want to pay tribute to some of the people who made it such a great event. Eileen Roberts, from St Hilda’s, works closely with Kate Charles to make sure that everyone, from regular attendees to newcomers, feels welcome. And Natasha Cooper (or N.J. Cooper – she assures us that the ‘J’ stands for Jezebel…) was a terrific chairman, who also delivered a marvellous paper, ‘Behind the Mask’, which had a genuine element of poignancy.

Cilla Masters gave a very good after dinner speech on Friday, while the legendary Colin Dexter spoke, again with poignancy, on Saturday evening, a memorable occasion.

I also had a chance to look round the city. Hence the photos of the dreaming spires among other scenes.

Ludlow Castle

Wednesday evening was a lot of fun. The Mystery Women event was organised by Kate Charles, of whom more another day, and the setting, Ludlow Castle in Shropshire, was quite idyllic – especially as the weather was very kind to us.

I was a member of a panel of eight writers. My colleagues, in addition to Kate, were Andrew Taylor, Marcia Talley (an American writer who deserves to be better known in the UK), Suzette Hill, Laura Wilson, Natasha Cooper and Phil Rickman. It proved to be a good mix. The one person in the group I hadn’t met in person before was Phil Rickman, although he has interviewed me on the radio a couple of times. So it was good to make his acquaintance, and to hear him tell the audience that there is serious television interest in his books featuring Merrily Watkins.

We had a capacity audience – selling 100 tickets for a literary event is quite an achievement, and a tribute to the organising skills of Kate, and those working with her. A special mention for the Castle Bookshop, which supported the event admirably. Each of us spent a few minutes talking about our books, and then there were questions from a group of readers who were very well-informed. The event lasted for close on two and a half hours in all, and even then it seemed too short – a sign of the enjoyable time we had.

I can’t think of many venues for writing panels that I’ve found as delightful as Ludlow Castle. It really does reek of history. Prince Arthur (the first husband of Catherine of Aragon, and brother of Henry VIII) spent time there, for instance. A truly memorable occasion. I’m very grateful to Kate for having invited me to be part of it.

The Thriller Technique

I mentioned a few days ago that I’m becoming increasingly interested in thrillers, and so I was keen to attend one of the main events of the Harrogate Festival, an interview of Lee Child by Natasha Cooper. A special guest was Lee Child’s brother, Andrew Grant, who has just published his own debut novel, Even.

Interviews at conferences vary in quality, but Natasha is very experienced and accomplished at drawing her interviewees out, and the result was very thought-provoking as far as I was concerned. Anyone with an interest in writing thrillers would have learned quite a bit, I feel.

I was impressed, above all, by two crucial qualities that Lee Child brings to his craft, which I’d summarise as focus and simplicity. I’d guess he’s always been very focused, but it seems that being made redundant from Granada TV in the 90s kick-started his career as a novelist – the injustice of his treatment clearly still burns. As an employment lawyer, I’ve known many people who have had similarly harsh experiences, but none have responded by forging careers which were both financially successful and earned them worldwide fame.

Allying simplicity to quality, it seems to me, is one of the hardest tricks for any creative artist to pull off. Simplicity is one of the reasons why Agatha Christie’s books have lasted so well. It is one of the reasons why Hal David’s lyrics have entered the consciousness of people the world over who would not recognise his name. I once heard Hal David say in an interview that it’s too easy to make things complicated, and the more I’ve reflected on this, the more I realise, he is right. And hearing Lee Child (one of whose books is sold every second, apparently – blimey!) explain his approach to the Jack Reacher books gave me a real insight into the secrets of his success. Not easy to emulate, though if anyone can do it, it may just be Andrew Grant.

Who Killed Mark Billingham?

The second event at the Harrogate Festival with which I was directly involved was a murder mystery dinner on Saturday evening. organised by Ann Cleeves. I was one of a number of authors (including Tom Cain and James Twining, two very successful thriller writers I hadn’t met before) to host a table of readers. The challenge was to solve the mystery of who had killed Mark Billingham (by atropine poisoning). The suspects were Natasha Cooper, Martyn Waites, Cath Staincliffe, and Stuart MacBride.

The puzzle prompted lively debate on our table and we guessed the solution correctly, as did several other tables (prompting a lucky dip to select the winner – not us). I thought this was a really good entertainment, and the readers really seemed to love it. Last year I was involved in the Saturday night dinner, but there was no mystery to solve. I hope something similar is done next year to build on the success of Ann’s event.

Later that evening came the quiz, a fave Festival event hosted by Val McDermid and (just to prove he wasn’t really dead after all) Mark Billingham. I was on a team of genuinely delightful people: Ali Karim, Rhian of the It's a Crime blog, Joni Langevoort (whom I first met a few years back, attending Malice Domestic in Washington DC), publisher Selina Walker and the recent CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger winner Andrew Taylor. We came a respectable third, but ended up gnashing our teeth that we didn’t figure out the right answer to the question which asked which novel by Perez-Reverte shares a title with a Scottish football team. I said to Val the following day that I still can’t believe I didn’t get that one!

Off to Harrogate

I’m heading off to Harrogate this morning to take part in the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival (for those of you unfamiliar with it, Theakstons Old Peculier is a type of beer; Theakstons the brewers sponsor the Festival.)

Today is ‘Creative Thursday’, when there are writing workshops given by a variety of authors including Mark Billingham, Zoe Sharp and me My topic is ‘Legalese’ (typecasting, I’m afraid.) On Saturday, I’ve been asked to host a table at the Readers’ Dinner; the entertainment will be a murder mystery event written by Ann Cleeves and featuring a cast of suspects including Natasha Cooper. It should be fun. There is also to be a quiz, and Ali Karim has already invited me to join his team, which includes fellow blogger Rhian from ‘It’s a Crime’.

Harrogate is a splendid town, and one of the great pleasures of the Festival is simply the socialising, the chance to meet old friends and make new ones. I’m really looking forward to it.

For my loyal and much appreciated readers, blog posts will continue while I am away, but I shall probably leave discussion of the Festival until it’s over and I’ve had time to reflect on what will, I hope, be a memorable few days.

Conventions - for and against

Various bloggers have been reflecting on the pros and cons of crime conventions in the wake of Crimefest, and this debate mirrors many of the conversations that go on in the book rooms and bars wherever conventions are held. Two of the main reservations from the perspective of writers and readers are these. For authors, arguably, conventions sell very few books for the panellists attending (other than the star names.) For readers, once you have heard a writer a couple of times, and attended a panel of theirs on a certain topic (‘the importance of setting’ is an example), future panels on such themes can turn out to be samey.

There is truth in both these points, but there are also strong reasons why I really enjoy conventions, long after my first visit to the 1990 Bouchercon in London (when I wasn’t even a published writer.) As a mid-list novelist, attending a convention may not work out on a strict cost-benefit analysis, but I think there are hidden benefits in terms of profile-building – all the more important at a time when market conditions are so dire. From a fan’s point of view – and I’m still very much a fan, as I hope this blog illustrates – there is much fun to be had from attending panels, even on familiar topics. Though I think it makes sense to be selective. Back in 1990, I attended every panel I could. Now, short as a convention is, I tend to take breaks. This does mean I miss some treats – for instance, at Crimefest 2009, I made a mistake by missing the translators’ panel, which everyone seemed to like. However, I did enjoy, among others, the Hakan Nesser interview, and the panel chaired by Maxim featuring the likes of Paul Johnston (a terrific writer, who deserves to be better known) and the witty Declan Burke.

I’ve mentioned before the pleasure of meeting old friends, and of getting to know others for the first time. In the breaks I take, very often away from the melee of the convention hotel, I enjoy having the chance to get to know one or two people better. For instance, from last year’s Crimefest, I recall a thoroughly agreeable lunch with Natasha Cooper. This year, I had a long chat with Chris Ewan, a fellow lawyer and highly promising author, and also got together with Russell James, who wasn’t involved in the convention, but lives close to Bristol and had travelled in for the day. Russell is an interesting writer, whose fiction is very dark, and who has recently diversified into non-fiction with much success – Great British Fictional Detectives is his latest title, and it’s packed with tons of information. I’ve known Russell for years, but we’ve never talked at such length before, and I found him fascinating and informative on the life of a full-time writer after years as a self-employed business consultant.

So are conventions worth it? In my experience, the answer is an unequivocal yes. I’ve never been to one, either here or in the US, that that didn’t teach me a good deal and wasn’t great fun.