Blood Law and Thriller 2

One of the people I met at Crimefest was Steven Hague, who was a member of a panel I moderated. I felt extremely guilty because any moderator worth his or her salt should study the work of their panel members in some depth before the panel takes place. But I was moderating two panels and, although I worked painstakingly through the books of the various other members of the panels (as well as the work of the ‘forgotten authors’ who were the focus of the other panel), to my dismay, I simply ran out of time before being able to do more than quickly skim Steven’s debut novel Justice for All.

Fortunately, Steven proved to be an affable and forgiving guy, and also an articulate and easy-going panel member. The quality of his contribution to the panel was all the more striking, since he’d never been involved in a crime convention panel prior to that day.

So I’m all the more pleased to have received a copy of his new thriller Blood Law, which is published on 31 July. I’ve been reading a few thrillers in recent months, when time permits, and it’s interesting to study the way that different writers tackle the ratcheting-up of suspense. Maybe one of these days I might try my hand at a thriller myself.

This is a book featuring ex-LAPD cop Zac Hunter. Angel Cortez needs his help because her daughter has gone missing – and Zac finds himself pitched into gang warfare among other tribulations.

Steven’s book is published by Mira, an interesting company which has carved a niche in the thriller genre very quickly. They focus on paperback originals – a sign of the publishing times. Another new Mira title is Thriller 2, a bulky short story collection edited by Clive Cussler, and including stories from such notables as Jeffrey Deaver and Ridley Pearson.

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.