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

Crime Function News

An offer available from the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival:

Special Offer for Festival Friends
Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards on ITV3
in conjunction with the Crime Writers' Association

Tickets are now available for the 2010 Crime Thriller Awards ceremony, to be held on the evening of October 8th in The Ballroom at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London - awards followed by dinner. Amongst other awards, the Gold, Steel and New Blood Daggers will be presented.  The organisers of the Awards are very generously offering Friends of the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival the chance to book tickets at a special discount rate!

Full price tickets are £149 + VAT, but Friends of the Festival can book tickets at the special rate of just £99 + VAT. To book, please e-mail Merric Davidson on merric@agile-ideas.com.

For more information on the Crime Thriller season on ITV3 click here.
To see footage from previous Awards Ceremony click here.

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For more information on how to become a Festival Friend and the benefits of membership, visit the Friends page on the Festival website.

National Crime Fiction Week – Charity Auction of P D James’s Talking About Detective Fiction

As promised – albeit starting a bit later in the week than originally planned – this blog’s event to mark National Crime Fiction Week is an auction of P D James’s Talking About Detective Fiction to raise money for The Book Trade Charity (whose Action Week was last week).

Oxford’s Bodleian Library Publishing has very kindly donated a copy of the book and it’s a signed and slipcased edition with a RRP of £30.  What better collectible could you hope for?  Who do you know who might appreciate this book for Christmas?  Or for a birthday?  On the weekend of Father’s Day, whose Dad might be prepared to wait a bit longer for something far more supreme than socks?

Crime Fiction Week 14-20 June 2010

The UK's Crime Writers' Assocation is holding a Crime Fiction Week during 14-20 June and has set up a dedicated site for it.  The site lists all the events taking place during the week, by date schedule and by location so you can see what's going on.  Whether author, an aspiring writer, in publishing, a bookseller, a blogger or anything else, you can also load up your contribution to the week.  To date, I have two contributions on there:

1. Along with Roger (R.N.) Morris, I have agreed to judge the Meldrum Writers' Group's Short Story Competition.
2. During the week, I am planning to run an auction on this blog for a collectible book.  As Crime Fiction Week immediately follows The Book Trade Charity's Action Week, the purpose of the auction is to raise money for The Book Trade Charity.  I am working on getting a real beauty for the auction right now, so please return for more information.

How good to have a Crime Fiction Week to celebrate the best in crime fiction in the UK.  There are already plenty of events posted up the site, so do take a look!

The TV Book Club - UK

The TV Book Club starts on Sunday 17 Jan on More4 at 19:30, to be repeated on Monday 18 Jan on Channel 4 @ 12:05.  It is, of course, produced by Cactus TV who introduced the Richard & Judy Book Club, and producer Amanda Ross remains the book selector.  Week 1 looks at The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters and week 2 brings a crime novel with Blacklands by Belinda Bauer.

On celebrities, Ross recently said "As broadcasters we were being forced into forking out ridiculous amounts of money. What kind of a person can literally be worth £50,000 for an afternoon of their time? It's wrong – it really is wrong."  But it is celebrities to whom Ross has turned for presenting the show:

• Jo Brand (comedian, actress and writer)
• Nathaniel Parker (actor who participated in the R&J Book Club)
• Gok Wan (has written books on styling)
• Laila Rouass (actress)
• Dave Spikey (comedian).

Borders Books in the UK - troubled times

Sadly, before the day is out I suspect we will learn that Borders in the UK is in administration.  It has been no secret that the group has been for sale for a while and it was reported that W H Smith ceased talks to buy 36 of their 45 outlets last Friday.

If last week ended badly for Borders, this week started on an accelerating worse-to-come.  Mainly via The Bookseller, we learnt yesterday that staff were instructed in the morning that customer orders could not be taken in store.  By the afternoon, online customer orders had drawn to a halt.  By last night, three suppliers were no longer supplying Borders with stock.

It has been reported that Borders is thought to be still in negotiations with HMV, owner of Waterstone's, amongst others.  However, the painful developments of yesterday suggest to me that notice of administration might come as early as today.  This would mean the end of Borders trading as we know it, but not necessarily the end as seen with Woolworth's.  Let's remember that part of The Works' chain survived under new ownership and according to an article in The Independent, they are also doing well this year.  As with any troubled business, those areas operating with some success have a chance to continue to do so in another format.

There is never a good time for such as this, but in the run up to Christmas it is worse.  My thoughts go out to employees of Borders and associated companies, including their suppliers.

Today's article in The Independent by James Thompson also includes an interesting analysis of the retail book market in the UK.

Good article on BookBrunch today...

By Trevor Dolby, publisher of Preface (Random House imprint), looking at literary criticism and our changing world.  A quote from the article:

"There’s also a myriad of new places people can get their direction. You need to search, but there are terrific reviewers on Amazon and in the blogosphere these days. Many have insight, are well read, and review in a way that is useful, educated and entertaining. There are blogs galore written by dedicated readers who want to share their considerable knowledge and personal taste with infectious energy. Then there’s radio, and TV (if Mariella says buy it I buy two, read one and have the other on toast), every prize under the sun from the Man Booker to the Costa, to the Samuel Johnson to the Romantic Novelists, the Nibbies, and, yes, there’s Richard & Judy. All of them much more relevant and effective at prompting someone to read/buy a particular book. And for the cognoscenti there’s, amongmuch else, the Literary Review and the TLS."

Do read it; it's a good article.

2008's Booker Prize - The Judges

Having bashed the Booker Prize in 2007 for being unexciting and a damp squib, this week has seen the announcement of the judges for 2008, along with commentary from John Sutherland in the Guardian's Book blog (he asks if Portillo will actually have the time).  As Chairman, joining judges comedian Hardeep Singh Kohli, Ottakar's bookshops founder James Heneage, critic Alex Clark and novelist Louise Doughty will be former politician, former Costa Book Prize judge, now political pundit on Andrew Neil's This Week programme: Michael Portillo.

Michael and friend.

I think the line up looks sound and I suspect that Portillo will add a little zest to the proceedings.  I don't expect he'll follow in Howard Davies's footsteps with pronouncements of criticism.

1997 was a cathartic year for Portillo, but since then he's provided an excellent example in finding humility.  And the man has presence and charisma.  I once saw him walking along Chiswick High Road - heard him before I saw - he commands attention.

Somehow he manages to look a bit twee on the sofa on This Week which results in Diane Abbott looking like a bit of a curmudgeon alongside him.

One thing's for sure with Portillo, he's not necessarily a "what you see is what you get" type, so 2008's Booker Prize will have some spice added.

Whether it actually gets exciting will depend on the books of course.

Bravo to Borders and its new investor in the UK

How wonderful to return home late on a Friday night to some good news for the UK's book buying public.  Thanks to the the ever reliable Book2book's communications, we now know that Borders UK has a new investor and it won't disappear into the ever generic and bland high street's modus operandi of book selling.

Book2book linked to an article in Publishing News that tells us that Risk Capital Partners has had their bid accepted by Borders US and that is good news!

Risk Capital Partners, to quote from their site, is "a team of four individuals investing their own money in private equity transactions. We are entrepreneurial investors with a good understanding and track record across a range of consumer, retail, leisure and support services businesses."  Notice the key word here: "entrepreneurial".  Entrepreneurs think differently; they don't boringly follow the established business models, they see gaps and opportunities in the market and then exploit them, creating successful businesses.

You only have to look at the make-up of the four investors that are "Risk Capital Partners" to get the picture.  Luke Johnson is probably their biggest name, currently the Chairman of Channel Four (a bit of a trial of a job during the last year) and sitting on the board of various other companies, he's also the man that bought PizzaExpress and took it into public ownership, he also brought Belgian cuisine to London in the form of Belgo, and there's far more.  His investing colleagues at Risk Capital Partners include a couple of chartered accountants and an experienced professional in "start-ups, restructuring and investment banking".  It's a bit like the team on the BBC's programme Dragons' Den, but this team is not seeking a media profile as well, they remain in the market, seeking success and making money.

What might this mean to the UK's book buying public?  There will remain another separate bookselling chain, under its own management, that can seek opportunities and do things differently.  I hope that Borders management, under its new ownership, will be steered into less of the lemming tendency and more of the "let's approach this differently and listen to our customers' expression of needs".  With investment from a team of entrepreneurs - that key word again - I am confident that Borders UK will have an interesting future and that book buyers will seek out their stores.

Bravo to Borders UK and to Risk Capital Partners!

Adding the Welsh angle, as sometimes comes up on this blog, Borders in Cardiff opens next weekend, on the 28th of September to be precise, in The Hayes in Cardiff, in the old David Morgan department store building, a mere few paces from the local Waterstone's branch.  Might this prove to be the "book corner" in Cardiff?

Good to see Borders remaining an independent chain with the potential for remaining "different" and hopefully with a wider selection of stock.  Readers want that; it doesn't all come down to price as it does in the case of a can of beans or the latest cook-chill variety of an evening meal to stick in the microwave.  Readers are discerning creatures; taste matters and individual genres are swallowed whole or spitted out.