Books, Books, Books...

...and more books. So many good things to read, so little time to read them. And even less to write lengthy blog posts about them, alas, so today I'm going to round up a few among the many interesting titles that have, happily, come my way in recent months. They illustrate the variety of crime writing in a good way, and let me also mention a couple of forthcoming non-crime titles.

Let me start with Len Tyler's latest, Herring in the Smoke, another case for Ethelred Tressider, one of my favourite amateur sleuths. I've been a fan of this series since it began, even before I got to know Len personally. And I was greatly amused to come across a reference to myself in the narrative! This is a book that gets off to a brilliant start, when Roger Norton Vane turns up at his own memorial service, twenty years after he went missing and was presumed dead. I was intrigued to see what Len would make of this premise, and while I figured out one plot twist, the ending took me aback. I won't say any more; you'll have to read the book!

Frances Brody has quietly established herself as one of our leading purveyors of historical mystery fiction. When I visited New York recently, I seized - of course - the chance to pop into as many bookshops as possible, and I was pleased to see Frances' books prominently displayed in Barnes and Noble. Pleased, but not surprised, because her history-mystery series about Kate Shackleton has become as popular in the US as it is here. The latest is Death in the Stars, which I'm reading currently and very much enjoying.

Perhaps less well-known than Len and Frances, but certainly an author to watch is Sarah Williams, Not content with writing fiction and non-fiction, she also runs a small press. As S.W. Williams she published her debut novel Small Deaths recently. It's another historical mystery: a serial killer is on the loose behind the lines on the Western  Front. As Sarah Williams, she's also responsible for How to Write Crime Fiction, published under the Robinson imprint. I'm a sucker for how-to-write-crime books, I must admit. It's not so much that I want to do all the exercises etc that their authors may suggest, but I find it truly fascinating to see the different approaches that are recommended.

Now someone I've never met, but with whom I've corresponded recently, is Paul Roland. His main field is true crime writing, an area I've ventured into myself, for instance with Urge to Kill and Truly Criminal, a CWA anthology of true crime stories. Paul's work encompasses Jack the Ripper, crime scene investigation, and criminal profiling in In the Minds of Murderers. An author worth bearing in mind if this is your field of interest.

Someone else I've never met is the tireless researcher and anthologist Mike Ashley. Yet I owe Mike quite a debt, because many years ago, he took my first attempt at a Sherlock Holmes story, "The Case of the Suicidal Lawyer" (yep, a joke about the legal life is lurking in there somewhere...) This has led to a hugely enjoyable occasional sideline, culminating in my recent lecture to the Baker Street Irregulars. Anyway, back to Mike. He too has done a good deal of work with the British Library, and now he's edited two meaty anthologies of classic science fiction, Moonrise and Lost Mars, which will be the shelves soon. I enjoy quite a few sci-fi writers, and I've started dipping into these collections already. With any luck, this may be the start of an imprint to rival the Crime Classics.

Malice Domestic and the Poirot Award

After weeks of breathless globe-trotting, I'm back in sunny Cheshire for a while now, and I've a chance to reflect on some marvellous trips, most recently to Malice Domestic 29 in Bethesda, Maryland (a suburb of Washington DC). Malice is an exceptionally well-run and friendly convention which focuses on the traditional mystery. This was my fifth time at Malice, and after receiving one of their prized Agatha awards last year, I was extremely fortunate to be honoured again.

This time I was presented with the Poirot award; which is given in recognition of a significant contribution to the traditional mystery genre. It isn't awarded every year, and the contribution in question may be quite distinct from writing books - the very first recipient was David Suchet, and last year the Poirot went to Barbara Peters and Rob Rosenwald, whose Poisoned Pen Bookstore and Press have made such an impact over the past twenty-odd years.

It was a great honour, and I was delighted to share the evening of the awards banquet with some special guests, including Doug Greene (a past recipient of the Poirot), Steve Steinbock, and British writers Ann Cleeves and Frances Brody. Also on my table was Cathy Ace, originally from Wales but now Chair of the Crime Writers of Canada, who interviewed me about my career and did a fantastic job. I also enjoyed being part of a panel including other honorees such as Charlaine Harris and Elaine Viets, and signing copies of the Malice anthology, Mystery Most Historical, which includes a story of mine. To my delight, Crippen & Landru produced a specially published edition for convention delegates of my short story "Acknowledgments". .

As ever with conventions, I tried to fit in some sightseeing, and I can certainly recommend a river cruise on the Potomac. One of these days I'll make it as far as Mount Vernon....The weather was gorgeous, so I spent as much time as I could outside, visiting various monuments as well as the botanical garden. Washington is a great city. As for the convention, it passed all too quickly, but I was delighted to spend quality time with old friends and new, including Janet Hutchings of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Gin Malliet, Michael Dirda, and Elaine and English Showalter. It was good, too, to meet John Norris, whose blog Pretty Sinister Books I've long enjoyed, for the very first time. My thanks and congratulations go to the Malice Board, who always do such a fine job. I've already registered for next year, and if you like crime conventions, this is one I can strongly recommend.

   

Guilty Parties

I'm pleased to announce the publication this month by Severn House of the latest anthology of the Crime Writers' Association, Guilty Parties. I've been editing the CWA anthology since the mid-Nineties, and it's always a joy to receive so many original stories. The only downside is that not all of the stories I enjoy can be included, for reasons of space, and that was especially the case this year, when I was flooded with submissions that were very varied and entertaining.

The book contains an intro from me, a short foreword by Alison Joseph, chair of the CWA, and author bios, but the meat, of course, is in the stories themselves. Because several entries were very short, I did manage to find space for more stories than usual - 24 in all. And they are all brand new. My own entry, "A Glimpse of Hell", was inspired by the wonderful time I had last year on the small island of Grand Cayman in the Caribbean. Definitely one of the bonuses from my travels in recent years.

There are some very distinguished names on the contributor list. They include Peter Lovesey, doyen of classic detection, and also his son Phil, who is himself a splendid writer and past winner of the CWA Short Story Dagger. Laura Wilson, Aline Templeton and N.J. Cooper are there, and so too John Harvey -  creator of Charlie Resnick- Christopher Fowler, and Paul Johnston. There are also writers from overseas, including Ragnar Jonasson.

Among the other contributors are Chrissie Poulson (whose thoughtful blog is always worth reading), Frances Brody, Kate Rhodes and Chris Simms. Different readers will have different preferences among the stories, and regular readers of CWA anthologies will note that a number of the contributors, including some relative newcomers to the genre, have never before featured in the anthology. In choosing stories, my criteria include variety, which I do think is an important aspect of a book like this. As far as I'm concerned, it's both a pleasure and a privilege to have had the chance to put Guilty Parties together.

Frances Brody - Murder on a Summer's Day - guest blog

Frances Brody is one of the more successful crime writers to have emerged in the North of England in the past few years. Her historical mysteries have earned a large following, and I suggested to her a while back that when her new book came out, she might like to write a guest post for this blog. And now here it is.

"The idea for Murder on a Summer’s Day struck me with the force of a falling tree, a family tree to be precise. A good friend told me about researching her ancestors: generations of Yorkshire folk. One day someone new cropped up, a third cousin twice removed: Stella Mudge. Granddaughter of Ilkley farmers, daughter of a circus performer, Stella was brought up in the Earl of Ellesmere, Bethnal Green. Having studied French, painting, music and ballet, she joined Jack Hulbert and Cecily Courtneidge’s chorus line. When the company travelled to Paris, Stella did too, even though she was under age. From there it was a crisp Chassé to the Folies Bergere. A young Indian maharajah spotted her, and that was that.

I have changed the names. As far as I know, no dancer called Lydia and no Prince Narayan really did visit Bolton Abbey in August, 1924 and stay at the Cavendish Arms. But if you read the story I hope you will believe every word, as I do. Narayan goes deer stalking, and fails to return. Kate Shackleton takes a telephone call from her cousin James, a civil servant in the India Office. Within a couple of hours, Kate is on the scene, investigating first a disappearance and then a murder.

While real life doesn’t have to make sense, fiction does and there is always a moment when what needs to be looked into becomes dauntingly clear. Writing about Bolton Abbey involved learning something about the estate’s owner.

The Ninth Duke of Devonshire, Victor Cavendish, did not spend an awful lot of time at his Bolton Abbey estate, except during the grouse shooting season. Why would he when family property included Chatsworth House, Hardwick Hall, Holker Hall, Londesborough Hall, Lismore Castle in County Waterford, Chiswick House and 2 Carlton House Gardens. He was Colonial Secretary at the time Narayan went missing. It would be his duty to take a personal interest when an Indian prince disappeared from his patch. Consequently, he has a walk on part.

The Cavendish family made their money from the dissolution of the monasteries, from timely deaths and propitious marriages. Bolton Abbey is the name of the village and the area surrounding the ruined priory that, for me, is the dominant image of the place.    

This is an area, a beauty spot, which teems with stories and legends. Now here is one more, that of the prince and the dancer who drove a white Rolls Royce along narrow country lanes, blissfully ignorant of what fate held in store."

For an excerpt from Murder on a Summer’s Day, go to Frances' blog

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.

Events with Fellow Writers

This has been such a horrible “summer” so far in Britain that I had dark forebodings about a barbecue and crime event organised by the tireless Tony Higginson of Formby Books for last Thursday. Yet- miracle of miracles – the evening was sunny and I have the photos to prove it! They were taken by fellow crime writer Ron Ellis, and the photo above also shows June Francis, a prolific and successful writer of Liverpool sagas who has been a friend of mine for many years.

My fellow speakers were Stephen Booth and Frances Brody. Stephen’s Peak District series about the youngish cops Cooper and Fry has achieved a very loyal following. Frances is, in comparison, a newcomer to the scene, but her historical mysteries featuring Kate Shackleton are also making a real impact and this year she was long-listed for the CWA Dagger in the Library.

On Monday of last week, I did an event with Mike Walters at Moreton Library in Wirral. I used to live in Moreton in the 80s, and was a member of the library. This was around the time I started writing my first novel, All the Lonely People. It was fascinating to go back. And I enjoyed the gig enormously – Mike and I did it as a conversation, and although (or because?) we hadn’t planned it in detail, it seemed to go really well. Mike is an interesting writer whose latest books are written under the name Alex Walters. His earlier work is set in Mongolia, and is also well worth a look.

I rather like joint events with other writers, and over the years I’ve done a great many of them. Different pairings have different dynamics, but I honestly can’t think of any writer with whom I’ve done an event in the past with whom I wouldn’t be happy to do another in the future. I can think of a couple of cases where two fellow panel members haven’t really hit it off with each other, but even that is very unusual. Perhaps it shows that writers are more collegiate souls than their solitary occupation might suggest?

Crimefest panels

I Fought the Law was the slightly mysterious title of my first Crimefest panel this year. I moderated an appealing group comprising Diane Janes, Frances Brody, Alison Bruce and Dan Waddell. The theme was crime fact and fiction. All four panellists have had their first crime novels published in recent years, but they were all very professional and this made for a lively discussion, even at 9 a.m., which is not my favourite time of the day. The audience was excellent, too

I hadn’t met Dan Waddell before, but found him a splendid panel colleague. He has written a couple of books which make use of his knowledge of genealogy, and oddly enough there was a time (probably about 15 years ago) when I did some research with a view to writing a genealogical mystery myself. But I gave up on the idea, and I have no doubt that Dan is much better suited to it than I would have been.

I was asked to reprise the Forgotten Authors panel, which was popular last year, although with a different group of authors. I’d been on panels previously with Caro Ramsay, Caroline Todd and Suzette Hill, but this was my first encounter with Stan Trollip, who is one half of the South African double act known as Michael Stanley.

We talked about a wide range of authors, ranging from John Buchan to James McClure. Caro amused me with her theory that Desmond Bagley and Duncan Kyle were one and the same person, and it has to be said that their photos do bear an uncanny resemblance to each other. A fun panel, and the only problem was that there was so much to say about the chosen authors that 50 minutes simply was not enough.

Back where it all began

Yesterday I made the three and a half hour round trip to Boroughbridge in North Yorkshire. Quite a long way to go for a lunch (and if the traffic is bad, it can be a five-hour plus trip) but definitely worth while. For this was the autumn lunch of the Northern Chapter of the Crime Writers’ Association, and the venue was the Crown Hotel, where I attended the Chapter’s inaugural lunch, more than twenty years ago.

At that time, I didn’t know any crime writers, but I was immediately made to feel at home by the convenor Peter Walker, who was there again yesterday. Peter is best known these days as author of the books on which the massively successful TV series ‘Heartbeat’ is based. He was one of three people at the lunch who have chaired the CWA – Lesley Horton and Margaret Murphy being the others.

Among those attending that inaugural lunch were Peter and Margaret Lewis, two academics who have written successful non-fiction books about the genre, as well as some good fiction. They have also set up that much-acclaimed small press, Flambard Press, publisher of Dancing for the Hangman. The three of us dined at the same table, accompanied (among others) by Roger and Jean from Cornwell Internet, who are responsible for the CWA’s website, and those of many leading crime writers.

There is always a ‘feelgood’ factor about these lunches, and this continues with Roger Forsdyke as convenor in succession to Peter Walker. Roger has just published a novel which benefits from his many years of experience in the police. There was an excellent turn-out of 37 people, a sure sign, as Roger said, that the Northern Chapter is the best supported of all the regional branches of the CWA. I enjoyed meeting up with friends old and new (the latter group includes Frances Brody and the historical novelist Karen Maitland). And on the drive back home, I reflected on how very glad I am that I accepted Peter’s original invitation to the Crown, all those years ago.

Dying in the Wool

Part of the appeal of crime fiction conferences and other events is that you bump into people, perhaps very briefly the first time, and then over a period of time you sometimes have the opportunity to talk to them at greater length, and start getting to know them better.

In just this way, I came across Frances McNeil initially at a Crime Writers’ Association event, and then had the chance of a longer conversation at St Hilda’s. Frances writes crime under the name of Frances Brody, and she is in the exciting position of awaiting the official publication of her first mystery, Dying in the Wool.

This novel, published by Piatkus (who published my first five mysteries – this was in the days before they were part of the Little, Brown group) is due out on 29 October, and I’ve just received an advance copy, boasting an attractive cover. The story is set in 1920s Yorkshire, and is announced as ‘the first book in a wonderfully whimsical new crime series. Imagine Miss Marple in her youth!’ The detective here is Katy Shackleton, a camera-toting amateur sleuth.

As for Frances, she has had a varied life, having lived in the USA before studying at Ruskin College, Oxford and York University. She has written four previous novels and a number of stage plays, and now lives in Leeds, where she grew up (and where I lived for a couple of years in the 70s, when I was training as a solicitor.) I wish her every success with her new career.