Festival Round-Up with Indiana, part 1

An annual highlight for me is the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival. It’s a great opportunity to catch up with friends new and old. And to people-watch and of course listen to talks and interviews and to laugh at anecdotes. My favourite one this year was told by actor/writer Robert Daws. When he had an acting job as hospital manager in the TV series Casualty, he had to fire a particularly popular consultant in a very nasty manner. Six months later, after the episode had aired, he was out shopping. A couple of older women ran up to him and one of them started hitting and punching him as he had been so nasty to the consultant. The other woman was trying hard to pull her friend off, explaining that he was only the actor and that the whole thing wasn’t real. Still makes me chuckle. Goes to show the power of a good story.

Crime writers by and large are great story tellers. And nice with it. In fact, from my experience, the niceness of crime writers is not a myth perpetuated by crime writers. The only one this year who didn’t impress me with his charm was Mark Billingham who interviewed Canadian author Linwood Barclay.

Linwood Barclay

Now as we all know, Canadians are polite and nice, very nice. And Linwood Barclay, being a crime writer as well as a Canadian, is nice in spades. Only the faintest trace of annoyance crossed his expression when Mark Billingham made a crack about Canada being boring. All I can say is that city boy Mark needs better jokes or even better, go to Canada to experience nature at its most dramatic and get chased by a bear!

Mark Billingham bored in Canada

I can always be found in the audience of a Cosy Crime panel. Under the constant onslaught of gruesome social realism crime, the authors felt the need to argue their corner. Now I love Cosy Crime, it leaves me feeling good, glad to be alive. Nevertheless, I gather that the gentle approach is criticised for not exploring social issues. Although in my opinion a sinister country house, single malt whisky and handsome gent who is good at cricket and deduction counts as a setting I’m happy to get social with! With quiet confidence, Ann Grainger and Francis Brody are not troubled about the ‘low status’ of Cosy Crime, and if you’d written and sold as many books as Simon Brett, you could afford to be as gentlemanly about any criticism as he is. On this panel the new kid on the block, Ruth Ware (The Woman in Cabin 10), was in good company. The defence of Cosy Crime remained in the hands of Catriona McPherson who pointed out that Cosy Crime is all about the story. She aptly likened those who see crime fiction as a way of exploring social issues to those who claim to read Playboy Magazine for the articles! Interestingly, everyone on the panel concurred that some Cosy Crime, sometimes that of the American persuasion, was far too twee and that anything that involved sleuthing cats was out. I could but agree.

Event tourism is becoming more and more popular and I can see why. The atmosphere at the Crime Festival was terrific, and as the weather was so glorious (some would say too hot) there was a garden party feeling outside the Swan. This year there was also a tempting barbecue

barbecue

and lawn chairs set up around the refreshment tent with lots of comings and goings, perfect for mingling and people watching. 

Join me for more on the festival coming up in part 2.

Indiana Brown