IT'S A CRIME! (OR A MYSTERY...)

Hay on Wye Festival 24 May to 3 June

This year's programme is up; link to a 98 page pdf from here.  (Please note that this is a draft programme, the official one is to be published on 1 May.)

Some highlights:

Crime related:

Saturday 26 May, 11:30am,  Alexander McCall Smith to be interviewed by Oneword Radio's Paul Blezard.(£9)

Sunday 27 May, 11:30am, Ruth Rendell discusses her work with Stephanie Merritt. (£7)

Monday 28 May, 2:30pm, Aneurin Gareth Thomas, Enrique de Heriz, Carmen Posadas in a celebration of Spanish fiction, where Posadas's "The Last Resort" is crime fiction. (Free but ticketed.)

Monday 28 May, 2:30pm, Ian Rankin talks to Marcel Berlins and they celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Rebus series. (£8)

Tuesday 29 May, 10am, discussing the "second novel wobble" are Kitty Sewell, (psychological thriller "Ice Trap") Claire Peate and Jo Verity, with Lindsay Ashford (crime fiction).  This also includes Morris Dancers, apparently... (£4)

Wednesday 30 May, 3:45pm, Crimewave with Allan Guthrie, Alex Barclay, and Colin Bateman. (£5)

And click on the continuation link to find some other gems, non-crime fiction related...

Outside the White Lines - Chris Simms

I promised to get my hands on this début novel from Chris Simms after I heard him speak at Harrogate's Crime Writing Festival last year.  He's produced three novels since this début, but the motorway setting for Outside the White Lines was what caught my attention.  It sounded different and it is.  Road rage in this instance creates a killer and it's someone who can't stop killing.

Outside the White Lines tells the tale from three viewpoints: "the killer" (a nasty, feral and uncontrolled piece of work); "the hunter" (young Andy who has just joined the traffic police and wants to prove himself, but a nearing-retirement colleague who prefers to take it easy stands in his way); and finally, "the searcher", (an oddball character who lives on the periphery of society, finding a home on the central reservations and hard shoulders of the motorways, collecting and storing items found in his searches).

Sorry all...

...this blog has been a bit quiet for a time due to personal reasons, which are, even at this point of writing, unrelenting.

But I have a previously prepared post, (just like on Blue Peter when it comes to the machinations of washing up liquid bottles), that I had prepared earlier...

I hope you enjoy it and find another new British author - it's what might happen on the hard shoulder on motorways if you break down...  But I honestly hope you get the AA, the RAC or Green Flag and not this!  And the author, Chris Simms has more than excelled on this début subsequently, so I hear.  Try it out, please.

A READER'S holiday in beautiful Languedoc, France...

When literary author Clare Dudman posted about her experiences last year, I was the first to comment as the week sounded and looked so good.  This year, Clare returns to Languedoc along with crime fiction author Chris Simms and prolific writer Crysse Morrison.

This is the link you need to explore the wonders available and to get you there: 7 Day Wonder.

This is a week for book lovers.  You have the chance to relax and enjoy what you normally enjoy, but in a concentrated format and with the opportunity to discuss the books you love, directly with the authors.  The setting is real and not fictional, and just gorgeous!  (Do check out the pictures on the main site, as well as Clare's blog.  You won't be disappointed.  I suspect you'll be very tempted...)

7 Day Wonder do a remarkable job in connecting authors with readers, so do check it out.

As for the crime element and Chris Simms; I recently got my hands on a copy of his début novel Outside the White Lines, which came across as something of quite some originality when mentioned at the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival last year.  He's since moved on to more novels, bigger and better, so his reputation suggests, but something set on the UK motorway network caught my eye.  I recently started reading Outside the White Lines and I have to say that I am intrigued.  Simms has created a rather feral road-rage fictional male out there and I already see the daily motorway grind in another light.  (Preferably day light.)  By God it's nasty, but more on that later, when I've finished the novel.

7 Day Wonder do offer so much when it comes to a holiday based on interest, so please take a look.  I wished I was there last year and I wish I could make it this year, but, alas, it clashes with the Harrogate Festival and I also have a wedding to attend in July!

Borderlands - Brian McGilloway

Today sees the publication of Brian McGilloway's début crime novel Borderlands by Macmillan New Writing.

How good it is to feel in familiar territory when reading this novel, but with the added bonuses of a fresh outlook and originality.  The writing is excellent and the suspense of the plot is maintained to the end.    The novel is populated with many strong characters and leaves you with the feeling "I really want to know more about them".  McGilloway also introduces a new location and setting with the Tyrone-Donegal border, between the north and south of Ireland.  So strong is the novel, it's easy to imagine "Morse's Oxford", "Rebus's Edinburgh" having "Devlin's borderlands" snapping at their heels.

Brian McGilloway - Interview with the Author

Brian McGilloway has his début novel Borderlands published by Macmillan New Writing on April 6th.  The novel is the start of a series, set on the Tyrone – Donegal border, between the North and South of Ireland and introduces Garda Inspector Benedict Devlin.  Gallows Lane will follow and Pan Macmillan have recently committed to a further three novels.  Borderlands is the result of Brian's own passion for reading crime fiction.  Like many, he has his favourite authors, characters and series.  He perceived some as coming to the end of their lives and, knowing that he would miss them, decided to write a story he would like to read, a series he would like to read with a character he could admire and understand.  Luckily for us, Devlin's stories won't be for Brian's pleasure alone, thanks to MNW.

With any début author, it's always a pleasure to find out more about the author, the novel(s) and what lies behind the passion for writing.  Brian, an English teacher, who, with this level of publishing success can surely now add "writer" to his passport, proved to be very generous and open about his work and background.

Today's publishing news and more on crime fiction...

Some rather interesting stuff in today's email of links from the booktrade.info site, which is always a wonderful source of free publishing news.

Borders has another potential purchaser in the ring.  (Last week Richard Branson was reported as interested.)  This week it's Trevor Goul-Wheeker , former MD of book chain Hammicks, and he's believed to have teamed up Keith Watson, a former colleague at Hammicks.  It is not known if they have arranged finance yet.  Good to see some interested parties who have had some involvement in the world of books, to varying degrees.

Comedian Dawn French is offering up her memoirs.  Apparently it took an offer of £1.25m from each of the eight interested publishers for them to be able to sit at the table and discuss the proposal.  The Times says "Publishing insiders predict the memoirs of the 49-year-old French could set a record by selling for more than £1.6m. This is believed to be the amount that Weidenfeld & Nicolson, paid last year for the memoirs of Julie Walters. That book is due out next year."  The article also says "The book will probably appear in 2008 and could clash with Walters’s memoirs. Once these are published it will leave only Victoria Wood, another national comic treasure, to write hers."  Er, I don't think that Jennifer Saunders has done hers yet, has she?  But also, are these ladies really worth those sorts of figures?  I think their appeal rests with the 40+ age group, possibly female rather than male.  But certainly, neither is about to do a Blunkett and both do start with the benefit of the "national comic treasure" label (not exclusive to Wood, in my mind).

Coming later in the week...

Borderlands by Brian McGilloway is out on Friday April 6th.

I'll be posting up a review of the novel and an interview with the author on or near that date.

Meanwhile, here's the synopsis of the novel from Brian's site:

The abandoned corpse of local teenager Angela Cashell is found on the Tyrone – Donegal border, between the North and South of Ireland, in an area known as the Borderlands. Garda Inspector Benedict Devlin heads the investigation, in which the only clues are a gold ring placed on the girl’s finger and a piece of an old photograph, left where she died. While Devlin searches for the girl’s killer, her father has his own ideas about who is responsible, and his own ideas about how to make them pay.

As Devlin struggles to handle the murder enquiry - one which also involves a dead drug dealer, a local politician and a young Traveller boy - closer to home he becomes reacquainted with an old flame eager to rekindle their affair.

Then another teenager is murdered.

Things become further complicated when Devlin unearths a link between the recent killings and the disappearance, twenty five years previous, of a prostitute– a case in which he believes one of his own colleagues is implicated.

As a thickening snow storm blurs the border between North and South, Devlin finds the distinction between right and wrong, vengeance and justice, and even police-officer and criminal becoming increasingly unclear.

This debut crime novel, examining how the events of past still haunt the present in the borderlands of Ireland, marks the first in a series featuring Inspector Benedict Devlin.