Slaughter in Southwold - and Suffolk

I've just returned from my first proper visit to Suffolk - a county I've only passed through briefly in the past, en route to somewhere else. What a lovely place I've missed... Suffolk was beloved of Ruth Rendell and P.D. James, and features in some of their books, as well as in plenty of other good crime novels. Rendell even published a glossy illustrated guide to the county. Suffice to say that when I was invited to take part in the Slaughter in Southwold Crime Fiction Festival, I accepted very quickly indeed.

And what a successful festival it was - a huge credit to Charlotte Clark and her willing team, and to Suffolk Libraries, for whom Charlotte works as an executive library manager. She told me that the festival originally began in conjunction with the CWA, a great example of collaboration. Everything was very well-organised, and I bumped into old friends such as Val McDermid, Kate Ellis, Felix Francis, and Mick Herron, as well as having the pleasure of meeting Nicci French (that is, the husband and wife team of Nicci Gerrard and Sean French) for the first time. The attendance was excellent and Beccles Books also did a grand job of selling Gallows Court among other titles.

Southwold is a very long way from where I live - roughly a 500 mile return trip that involves some of the most depressingly clogged motorway routes in Europe, so I was determined to make the most of my trip. Suffolk boasts some delightful market towns, several of them with second hand bookshops, and on the way down I stopped off at Bungay, and wandered round the old castle ruins (above) as well as just about resisting the temptation to add to my book collection.

I really enjoyed my first visit to Southwold, a very upmarket little resort, with an inland lighthouse and pretty little beach huts - you can buy one too, if you have £75,000 to spare! I travelled to the equally smart Aldeburgh (above photos of Moot Hall, Martello Tower and marina), just down the coast. Both towns are home to lovely, high calibre independent bookshops which I enjoyed visiting very much. I also made a point of going to Dunwich (above photos of boat on beach and priory gateway), site of a once great port, now lost to the waves; a ruined priory still remains inland. The notion of a lost village, let alone a lost port, has always fascinated me. There was also a chance to take a look at Leiston Abbey (above, lower photos), a very impressive ruin.

Making my way up the coast, I spent one night at a hotel on the edge of Oulton Broad - I hadn't realised that the Norfolk Broads actually extend into Suffolk. As I was very lucky with the weather, I couldn't resist the lure of a boat trip along the broad, Oulton Dyke, and the River Waveney - a truly delightful experience. I also continued to explore the towns and villages of the area - the likes of Thorpeness (rather close to the nuclear reactor at Sizewell, but very attractive), Burgh St Peter, and Beccles, where I finally succumbed to temptation, having managed to find a couple of inscribed crime novels at yet another second hand bookshop.

And then it was on to Sutton Hoo, legendary as the site of Anglo-Saxon burials, and pleasantly situated above the River Deben. After that, on to Bury St Edmunds, a cathedral city as charming as Wells which I visited the other week, and dinner with Kate and her husband Roger, who were also doing the tourist thing, having had a similarly long journey.

 On my last day in Suffolk, I explored the lovely village of Long Melford and then the gorgeous town of Lavenham. They say that Lavenham is England's best-preserved medieval town, and I don't doubt it. The Guildhall in the market place is a National Trust property, well worth visiting. And I decided to fit in one more National Trust visit before returning home. This was to Ickworth, a hugely impressive property. To my astonishment, as I was looking round the rooms, one of the guides addressed me by name. It turned out she's read all my Lake District and Liverpool novels. Believe me, that's not an everyday occurrence! It's hard for me to put into word how gratifying such encounters are. What a marvellous time I had. I'm so grateful to those who helped to make it possible, and to make it so special.

Windermere and Wray

The Crime Writers' Association held its annual conference for members at the Belsfield Hotel, overlooking Windermere, last week-end. Brilliantly organised by Diane Janes, it ranks as one of the best I've ever attended, and I've been to most of the CWA conferences that have been held in the past twenty-five years. There was a definite feelgood factor about the whole experience. The conference is open to members and their guests, rather than the general reading public, as with Crimefest. If you are eligible to join the CWA, whether or not based in Britain, and whether as a writer or associate member, then I do hope you'll consider it. Apart from the conference, the CWA offers many benefits, and that helps to explain why membership numbers are rising sharply - something that is, I think, very good news.

We began on Friday afternoon with a boat trip on the lake, which was great fun. Three speakers were lined up for Saturday morning, and in fact I was the first of them, with a talk on Golden Age detective fiction. I wasn't quite sure how a group of 21st century writers would react to this particular subject, but the feedback was very positive - a big relief, to put it mildly. It is much harder in my experience to give a talk to friends and colleagues rather than a group of strangers, because you really don't want to feel you have disappointed people you know and like. Sometimes this kind of anxiety, needless or otherwise, can mean that the talk goes less well as a result. But anyway, I was glad to hand over to those who came after me, and over the week-end as a whole we had some stand-out talks, including two by former senior police officers.

There were various organised events scheduled for Saturday afternoon, but I was keen to do some research of locations for my next Lakes book, and fulfilled a long-held ambition by visiting Wray Castle, a 19th century Gothic folly which has long been owned by the National Trust, but only recently opened to the general public. The setting is fantastic, overlooking Windermere, and since the weather was excellent there was a chance to walk around Wray Bay, a peaceful and lovely part of the area that I'd never encountered before.

The Saturday evening banquet was as enjoyable as it always is, and I was on a table with Peter James and Felix Francis, two best-sellers - but, and this is the great thing about the CWA in my experience, there is no differentiation between best-sellers, mid-listers, and those who are not currently published. The companionship that you always find at CWA events - again, I'm speaking personally, but I know many others agree - is the great strength of the organisation. I'm on the committee now, and the new chair is Alison Joseph. Under her leadership, I'm confident that, even in testing times for authors, the CWA will continue to flourish.

Dick Francis R.I.P.

I was very sorry to learn today of the death of Dick Francis. Among his many accomplishments was the ability to make novels with a horse racing background appealing to people who, like me, had no interest whatsoever in that particular sport. He managed it with a combination of pacy, no-nonsense writing and careful attention to the detail of his backgrounds. There was always an authentic tang about a Dick Francis novel, and this attracted the approval of reviewers and commentators on crime fiction, as well as the devotion of the countless readers who turned his books into best-sellers. Because, as a jockey, he knew what it was to experience pain, when his heroes got hurt, they felt it. But in the end they triumphed nonetheless.

After previously sampling one or two of his early novels in a casual way, I finally became hooked on Dick Francis in the1980s. Titles such as Banker (a special favourite of mine), Reflex, Proof, Twice Shy and Hot Money were first class examples of the action thriller. His stories often benefited from providing an interesting insight into a world other than horse racing (the title of Banker speaks for itself; Reflex was about photography, and so on.) Of his later books, I particularly enjoyed Come to Grief, which marked the return of his occasional protagonist Sid Halley, and which was rather darker in tone than the typical Francis novel.

His wife Mary, who died some years ago, evidently contributed to the books’ merits; in recent years his son Felix has been acknowledged as a co-author. The Francis brand was impressive; many other sportsmen and women have written thrillers, trying to emulate his success. But none of them, I think it’s safe to say, have quite equalled his achievements.

Quite apart from his novels, Dick Francis also wrote a number of twisty short stories, and when I was putting together an anthology to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of the Crime Writers’ Association, Mysterious Pleasures, he was generous enough to contribute to the book. His story, ‘The Gift’, is a very good one.

The sustained excellence of his writing career was marked by various honours, notably the CWA Diamond Dagger. There was a lack of pretension about Francis’s writing that, I gather from those who knew him well, was matched by a very likeable personality. Some time ago, I had the chance to meet him in person at long last, but reluctantly had to forego it because of other commitments. I did entertain the hope that, as a member of the Detection Club, one day I might have the chance to chat with him over dinner. Sadly, it wasn’t to be, but like so many others, I appreciated his ability to intrigue and entertain and mourn his passing.