The Daggers and CrimeFest

I'm back home, briefly, following an action-packed CrimeFest in Bristol. The convention celebrated its tenth anniversary in style, and a large room was packed to the rafters for the panel about our celebratory anthology, Ten Year Stretch. Considering that my fellow panellists included Lee Child, Yrsa Sigurdadottir, Simon Brett, John Harvey, and moderator Donna Moore, that wasn't perhaps surprising, and we had a great time. It was also good to see fellow contributors such as Jeffrey Deaver and Zoe Sharp during the course of the weekend.

I also, as usual, enjoyed moderating the Authors Remembered panel. This time I shared the platform with Sarah Ward, Nick Triplow, John Lawton, Chrissie Poulson and a new friend, Chris Curran. As ever time flew by all too quickly: so many great books to discuss, so little time. Sarah also moderated a splendid panel on "England's Green and Pleasant Land" in which I took part.

A very special highlight for me was the announcement of the CWA Daggers longlists. I'm truly delighted to say that, for the first time, and rather incredibly, I've been nominated for two Daggers in the same year: the CWA Dagger in the Library, and the CWA ALCS Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction (the latter for The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books, which has this year been nominated for four awards, two in the UK, two in the US). It's all rather dizzying, and I'm hugely grateful.

Among many other things, I was delighted to present Peter James with a personal memento recording the award to him (a couple of years ago) of the CWA Diamond Dagger (see him wielding it with great aplomb below!). I also had a highly enjoyable dinner with my publishers, about whom more news before long...All in all, a terrific week-end. The delegates were sorry to hear Adrian Muller announce at the Saturday night banquet that there is some uncertainty about whether CrimeFest will take place next year, but here's hoping...

Harrogate - and a question

Other commitments have meant that I'm reporting on the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival at Harrogate ten days after it came to an end. But it was a really enjoyable week-end, and it's prompted me to ask readers of this blog a question.

The programming chair for the Festival was Ann Cleeves, and she is such an efficient person that it was predictable that the whole week-end would be very well organised. And it was. Ann would be the first to give much credit to the very professional team that handles all the arrangements. It all seemed to me to run like clockwork. As usual, there was much socialising in the bar and elsewhere, and I took the opportunity to have a number of meetings, not least with my agent, with whom I was discussing my future writing plans. The good news is that he is happy with them!

I enjoyed the hospitality of Harper Collins at a dinner on the Friday evening, and met a number of fascinating people, including a new author, Ben McPherson; I sense that his debut novel will be well worth looking out for. Later on, Ann introduced me to Brenda Blethyn, the extremely pleasant star of Vera, and I finished up having a long chat with an old friend, that very fine writer Peter Robinson. The following night, I hosted a table at the Sicilian-themed murder mystery dinner masterminded by Kate Ellis. Great fun.

On Sunday, I took part in a panel celebrating the life and work of Patricia Highsmith. The moderator was Andrew Taylor and my colleagues were Peter James, Perer Swanson, and Sarah Hilary. Sarah had just won the Theakstons Prize for best crime novel of the year, and this gave me special pleasure as some years ago I included an early short story of hers in one of my anthologies for the CWA. She is a real star.

One questioner in the audience raised the issue of the relative significance of the author's life and the author's work. And this is my question to you - how interested, if at all, are you in the biography of a writer? Do you think it's relevant to their books?

My own views on this have shifted over the years. I used to think that the books were overwhelmingly more important than the life. Now, I take much more interest in the biographical material. In fact, I now think that you can't fully appreciate Highsmith (who, admittedly, had an extraordinary life) without knowing something of her life. But I'm sure that plenty of readers would take a different view. So - do let me know your opinion, and why you hold it.. 

Truly Criminal - a true crime collection, and thoughts about anthologies

Anthologies have always appealed to me. When I was quite young, I came across the CWA anthology, in those days edited by Herbert Harris, and never dreamed that one day I'd edit CWA collections myself. This I have now been doing for about twenty years. But until now, I've never produced an anthology composed exclusively of true crime essays. The time felt ripe to tackle such a project, and the result is Truly Criminal, which has just been published (very attractively indeed) by The History Press.

I'm really pleased with this book. Of course, I would say that, wouldn't I? But I do think it offers much that is unusual and intriguing. The range of contributions is terrific. We have essays by several stellar names, including this year's CWA Diamond Dagger winner, Catherine Aird, Peter Lovesey, and Andrew Taylor, plus CWA Non-fiction Gold Dagger winner Paul French. The foreword has been written by Peter James.

There are notable contributions by familiar names in the true crime field, like Kate Clarke, Linda Stratmann and Diane Janes, as well as excellent pieces by novelists Quentin Bates and Peter Guttridge, and a Shetland story by Shetland-based Marsali Taylor. A couple of contributions come from foreign members.

My own effort tackles the "Blazing Car" murder of 1930, a crime that has long fascinated me. It inspired a number of Golden Age stories, as did the Brides in the Bath case, which is the subject of Peter Lovesey's highly original essay, the Maybrick case, covered admirably by Kate Ellis, and the Wallace case, the subject of a recently discovered essay by Margery Allingham (who was a CWA member as well as a member of the Detection Club.).

It's often said - especially by gloomy publishers - that the market for anthologies is very limited. I'm not sure that's right. A book with a pleasing mix of ingredients can have a very widespread appeal. For proof of this, I can't resist mentioning my first two anthologies for the British Library - Capital Crimes and Resorting to Murder. Sales figures for these newly published books are already very high, and in fact higher than those of any previous anthology I've edited. Seems extraordinary, but it's true. And I hope that Truly Criminal will also find a receptive readership. It's a different sort of collection, and the contributors have done a wonderful job in telling their tales.

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.

The CWA Conference and a Red Herring

Last weekend I was away for one of the main events of the year, the CWA annual conference, which was held in Darlington, a town I've never visited before. As usual, it was a real delight to see old friends, as well as to meet a number of pleasant people for the first time.

There were a number of excellent talks, including one from a very entertaining detective who led the hunt for John Darwin, better known as "the canoe man", as well as interesting insights into the government proposed reforms of the police, and a talk about forensic anthropology. Inevitably, though, the absolute highlight was a trip to the Forensic Services Department at Teeside University. One of the speakers was Ian Pepper, whom I have mentioned before on this blog; he and his wife Helen have given me a good deal of help with my research over the years, most recently for The Hanging Wood.

At the gala dinner on Saturday evening, I was invited onto the top table with last year's Chair, Tom Harper, who has worked very effectively to strengthen the CWA's profile, and the newly appointed Chair, the bestselling writer Peter James. What I was not expecting was the moment when Tom announced the giving of an award to someone – let alone that the recipient would turn out to be me…

In fact, this is the Red Herring award for services to the CWA. When I got back home, I did a bit of research and discovered that previous recipients over the past 50-odd years have included the likes of Julian Symons, Gladys Mitchell and Fredrick Dannay (better known as one half of Ellery Queen). Suffice to say that I was both honoured and touched by this recognition. I have made many wonderful friends through the CWA over the past 20 years or so, and I certainly owe them a great deal.