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

Home from the Hay Festival

I am now home from the Hay Festival after an enjoyable and what proved to be an exhausting week.  My thanks to those who welcomed me this year on the stewarding front - what a lovely bunch you all are!  Special thanks to Anna who provided me with a local bed on which to crash last night and to Chris who very kindly dealt with a laptop anomaly of mine and delivered a five minute tutorial on Windows Vista.  (Dearie me, I wasn't even shutting down the laptop properly.  In fact, I wasn't shutting it down at all...)  I am sure I now have a better idea of what I am doing with this laptop, although I am still some way off the 95% confidence mark.

Posts have started on the BBC site which you can read via this page.  To date, submitted are G. F. Newman (& posted) on his novel Crime and Punishment, as well as John Micklethwait on religion and his co-authored book God is Back.  Further posts will trickle through this coming week - I have a very busy couple of days to come (job interview on Tuesday) and will finish the rest at the end of the week.  Coming up are:

• Anthony Horowitz (the adult session) on screenwriting and TV work with hints on what's to come from this prolific writer.
• The Digital Rights and Wrongs event for which you need to be prepared to be enthused and not worried for once!  When it comes to the digital world both Jamie Byng of Canongate and Caroline Michel of lit agency PFD were truly inspirational, proving they are on the ball or indeed, ahead of the game.  (Almost immediately, Michel earned my respect when she uttered a phrase that put her into the Theodore Levitt school of marketing thought; something in which I firmly believe.  More later.)
• Geoff Dyer on his novel Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi.  Dyer was also surprised with the announcement (and presentation) at the end of his event - made by James Naughtie - that he had won this year's Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for comic writing.
• A couple of other posts of a general nature, because you have to get a feel for the experience.

I have a word count limit for the BBC, so if anyone wishes to read a longer post for further information on G. F. Newman, the digital rights event or Anthony Horowitz, please let me know in an email or in the comments.  Further notes can be transcribed later in the week for this blog's posts.

In a total contrast to last year's mud-filled site that needed a pump out from the local emergency services on more than one occasion, this year's Hay Festival was the recipient of much glorious sun and people were devouring ice-cream; drinking water as if their kidneys might pack up soon; wearing shorts; and wearing sandals without socks, if we were lucky.  I'd love to say that it's only the men who might make the latter faux pas, but I did spot a petite woman in a sundress wearing cork platformed and high-heeled wedge sandals and... socks.  Hats were also in abundance.  We had Panamas, Tilleys, Potties and peaked-caps.

In addition to the adults there were also plenty of children having a fantastic time.  Hay Fever focuses on the children, but they also have immense fun in simple things like running and jumping on and across the walkways; trying out the deckchairs to whoops of delight and surprise when they sink into the canvas and their feet no longer touch the floor; licking ice cream (which requires intense concentration); and seeing the animals.

This is a festival not just of literature and ideas, but a whole festival of fun for all the family for which you can take in the whole week and not suffer seaside pier dysfunction/flop.

It was a great ten days and if you haven't been yet - stop putting it off!  Make it next year's main holiday.

A final note: Henning Mankell's event was cancelled and when I approached the Box Office for a ticket/return I was told this was because of health reasons.  Let's hope the master of the Wallander series of books - now also on TV in the UK - makes a speedy recovery.

Life on the road in Wales...

From last Saturday I have been at the Hay Festival approximately every other day and this will now increase to every day to the end of the Festival on Sunday.  I cannot blog about the stewarding aspect, but I will say that I am enjoying it and would recommend it to anyone.  It's great fun and you meet a wide cross-section of people.

I am able to blog about the events I attend as a paying punter and these will hopefully appear on the BBC's site, with perhaps more detail here at a later date.  I need to get writing from tomorrow morning (er, later this fine morning and after some sleep), before I head out again.  Thus far, I have been to see G. F. Newman interviewed by Marcel Berlins.  Newman is probably more familiar to all for his TV work, but he has a novel out now from Quercus titled Crime and Punishment.  The interview was interesting to say the least and "run of the mill" thoughts would not be ascribed to Newman.  He comes at conventional thoughts from another tangent entirely and good for him for making us think.  In the past, he may have also controversially visited the health service in this country, but the criminal justice system is his main focus.  And I think he came out with something at Hay that will make us all think again on something we take for granted.  Watch this space for more.

Bleed a River Deep - Brian McGilloway

Bleed a River Deep is the third in Brian McGilloway's Inspector Devlin series and it seemed a long time since I read the last one.  But not to worry, I was soon into this novel's plot and experienced timely reminders of what had gone before.

"In a safe pair of hands" applies to the author as well as the character Benedict Devlin.  McGilloway provides yet another tale full of plot twists, with Devlin wrestling his conscience as he seeks justice for the victims and takes work home with him, sometimes literally.  The prose is simple, but packs a punch when conjuring up the moment, the emotion, the person.  Take the opening paragraph, for example:

The last time I saw Leon Bradley with a gun in his hand, he was standing in our garden at home.  Only five years old and a little under three feet tall, he had a cowboy hat tipped back on his head, his hair, strands of fine spun gold, hanging in his eyes.  My younger brother, Tom, who was playing the Indian, had taken refuge in our shed, sharpening his plastic knife in preparation for a scalping.

Many of us will remember days like that one.

The Apprentice: Series 5, Episodes 8 & 9

Episode 8: Margate

Golly gosh, was this the most stressful task to date?  Practically everybody was suffering from facial spots and on You're Fired Lorraine could be seen puffing out a huge inhalation of smoke. 

This week the teams were re-branding the Kent seaside town of Margate.  They had the early morning call and were given just 30 minutes to get ready and pack an overnight bag.  Ben managed to find time to gel his hair, as you do.

The Language of Bees - Laurie R. King

Most of us can name authors whose work we anticipate so keenly that we know not whether to devour or savour a new volume.  For me, Laurie R. King fell into that category over ten years ago and now, with her 19th novel, we see the most welcome return of Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes in what turns into the most personal of their cases.
 
The Language of Bees is the follow-up to 2005's bestselling Locked Rooms.  It is 1924 and we see Russell and Holmes return to Sussex after seven months of travel through India, Japan and California.   As well as the mystery of the disappearance of an entire colony of bees from one of Holmes's hives, their homecoming is disrupted even before crossing the threshold by the unexpected reappearance of a disturbingly familiar face from the past.  Damian Adler, a talented young painter, is seeking their help in locating his missing wife and child.
 

Apologies...

...for the lack of crime fiction at the moment, but real life events have taken over.  When not seeking a job, I am immersed in the detail of what is being disclosed in respect of MP's expenses and the impact on our Parliament and democracy.  It's a shame that this boil has been allowed to fester, only to be involuntarily lanced right now, because we all know that the state of the economy is paramount in the minds and lives of so many in the UK and Europe and elsewhere, at the moment.  A bunch of self-seeking, damage limitation headless chickens is not what we need right now.  But, unfortunately, it's become part of the culture of governing and thus it's also par for the course and needs to be dealt with, with immediacy.

More on MPs' Expenses...

The DT has criticised Ken Clarke for basing "his entire political career on his financial acumen but when it comes to filling in his expenses forms, his book-keeping leaves much to be desired" and also said the "shadow business secretary had to be reminded repeatedly to submit receipts for claims running into thousands of pounds for security and cleaning at his second home in south London".

I can understand that: call it a busman's holiday.

But now, the DT also reports that LibDem MP Lembit Opik "charged taxpayers for a £40 court summons he received for the non-payment of his council tax. He will refund it."

Tax-payers should fund an MP for fines on being tardy?  That's really taking the mick.

The Apprentice: Series 5; Episode 7

Half way through the series you might expect the candidates to have learned something along the way and to exhibit this by upping the ante.  Alas, not so this week as the flashing beacon of assistance in sales just seemed to have them running in the other direction to avoid a migraine.  (But they lost it because there were definitely headaches in the Boardroom later.  And venom and wrath and spit and hellfire...)

What were the candidates tasked with?  To their disappointment the setting was not Spain or Italy, or even a flight abroad, but  a trundling up the M1 in the people carriers to the Manchester and Liverpool areas where twelve pitches of innovative products were to be reviewed.  Each team had to pick two and go on to sell these to dealers in the area over two days.  And what was that flashing beacon of assistance?  For day one of sales, Sir Alan had laid on a hardware store in Liverpool and a high-end furniture chain branch in Manchester (Heal's).  Logic and common sense might decree - to some at any rate - that selecting products that matched to the day one retailers would be of advantage.  But this was not on the radar for either of our hapless teams.

On MPs' expenses...

With more disclosures in this morning’s Daily Telegraph, it is no surprise that I have spent a good bit of today reading about MPs’ expenses.  I recently commented on Welsh monikers when I wrote about Mari Strachan’s The Earth Hums in B Flat, so I thought I’d lighten the mood a bit and apply Welsh monikers to some of the MPs.  (Quotes in italics are directly from the DT.)  Please feel free to add your own in the comments.

The Preacher - Camilla Läckberg

Well, the competition for female Scandinavian crime authors writing of dark places of both the mind and geography, but with some added and well-placed humour just heated up.  Yrsa Sigurðardóttir remains in the lead for me, but having read The Preacher, Camilla Läckberg is certainly hot on her tails.  Women will love this one - and men prepared to laugh at their own sex – where men are portrayed in all their dignified and undignified glory.  And it seems that Swedish men are very similar to British men; take the summer BBQ for example:

“…As usual, the males gathered round the barbecue, feeling like he-men while the women sat and talked.  Erica had never understood the thing about men and barbecuing.  Men who would normally claim to have no idea how to cook a piece of meat in a frying pan regarded themselves as complete virtuosos when it came to getting the meat exactly right on an outdoor grill.  Women might be entrusted to provide the side dishes, and they also functioned as excellent beer-fetchers.”

Ms Läckberg had me chuckling on many an occasion and it has to be said that there are certainly very dark elements in this rather clever crime novel, which kept me guessing until the end.

Läckberg’s other main depiction-of-character-skill lies with children, and the novel opens with a wonderful passage describing a naughty six year old boy getting up early to play at the King’s Cleft, a forbidden location because of its seclusion.  Unfortunately, he never gets to play as he quickly discovers the corpse of a naked woman and when he works out that the woman is dead he runs home, no longer fearful of a scolding.  When the cops and forensics arrive, two skeletons are then discovered underneath the woman’s body.