A Harro-ing Good Time

I have already shared a few comments here about this year’s Harrogate Crime Writing Festival. But two admirable crime writers give us still more in this week’s British newspapers. First comes Mark Timlin (Answers from the Grave), who writes in The Independent about the wonderful time he had:

Crime fiction is the largest genre in publishing, and there’s a lot of money to be made if you hit the top. I realised that last year when I saw a famous crime writer friend of mine drop two grand in a couple of boutiques in the high street on clothes and accessories, while half an hour earlier I had been debating whether I could afford an Oscar Peterson vinyl album for a fiver in a second-hand shop in a less salubrious part of town. But that’s the breaks. And no, I decided I couldn’t.

This year the weekend kicked off on the Thursday with an all-day symposium on how to write and market a crime novel, including talks on plot, characterisation and setting by [Simon] Kernick, Greg Mosse, Laura Wilson and Natasha Cooper. I’m not so sure about writing classes myself. I think if you need to write, you’ll write. But others are all for them, and that’s what makes horse races. I think the £100 fee for the day would be better off spent on a pile of crime novels. Reading is the best way of teaching yourself writing, I reckon.

In the evening, the award for Crime Novel of the Year was presented, with a big party afterwards. The winner was Two-Way Split by Allan Guthrie, published by Polygon, a small Scottish independent press who consistently fail to send me review copies. Everyone I spoke to told me that Guthrie is a big talent, so it looks like a trip to WH Smith’s for me as soon as possible.

As a matter of fact, it’s a pity they do that presentation and party on the Thursday evening, as most delegates haven’t arrived yet. The rest of the weekend is crammed full of panels of writers, publishers, agents, and anyone else with knowledge of the crime scene. The most popular session was about how to make a historical novel accurate, with Lindsey Davis among others. The queue to get in snaked through the hotel foyer and out into the car park, where it mixed with the dedicated smokers banned from enjoying their nicotine fix indoors. I’ve got to say there are few more ridiculous sights than that of grown men and women (and you can count me in as one) wandering around outside under umbrellas just to smoke a cigarette. Sad too, because what fictional genre has more of a relationship with tobacco than crime? Conan Doyle, Raymond Chandler and Humphrey Bogart, I’m sure, must be spinning in their graves.

Meanwhile, we have the pseudonymous Tom Cain, author of The Accident Man, giving readers of The Telegraph an amusing take on attending his first crime-writing conference--and incidentally letting slip his real name:

Over the rest of a long, long weekend there will be author interviews, panels, parties, writing clinics, an award ceremony and even a crime-writing quiz night. Harrogate is by far the biggest event in British crime writing and it attracts the best names in the business. Recent star guests have included P.D. James, Kate Mosse, Michael Connelly and Reginald Dalziel and Pascoe Hill. This year’s big four attractions are the 45-year-old American crime superstar Harlan Coben, who sells almost three million books a year; the British but New York-based Lee Child, whose Jack Reacher books sell at the rate of one a second; Val McDermid, creator of Dr. Tony Hill, hero of ITV’s The Wire in the Blood series; and Frederick Forsyth, who has spent more than 35 years at the top of the thriller-writing trade.

Aptly enough, I have arrived as a double agent. So far as the organisers are concerned, I am Tom Cain, author of a newly published thriller, The Accident Man, whose mission is to take part in a ‘New Blood’ panel of first-time writers. Little do they know, however, that I am also David Thomas, undercover reporter. Well, not until I apply for my press pass, anyway.

Cain/Thomas seems also to have had a great time, and just happens to mention the highly covered Harrogate Quiz, which, if memory serves me correctly, was won by a team on which yours truly participated:

And so we stagger on to the final event before the frolics draw to a close: a massive crime-writing quiz, contested by authors, publishers and fans alike. ‘The winner gets this magnificent cup--not to keep, merely to be photographed with,’ announces the quizmistress [Natasha] Cooper.

She is assisted in her work by Simon Kernick. He appears to be having trouble enunciating his questions. But both as the man who will be chairing next year’s festival, and as one of the most eminent representatives of the new generation of British crime writers, Kernick is profoundly aware of his responsibilities. So he makes a sincere apology to his peers with words that sum up the very essence of what happens when hundreds of the nation’s most gifted wordsmiths gather in a single place to analyse and celebrate their craft.

‘I'm sorry if my voice is slurred,’ Kernick says, with earnest sincerity. ‘I have been drinking heavily.’

You will find Timlin’s complete Harrogate report here. Cain’s recollections are located here.