Just in Case You Don’t Find Enough Books Under the Christmas Tree This Year ...

I was unable to attend last month’s launch party for the 2008 Harrogate Crime Writing festival. But I’ve gone to the festival for many years now, including this last summer (more on that here and here). And I heard recently from British novelist Simon Kernick, who is the event’s latest programming chair, a little about what is being planned for next July.

Special guests will include Sam Bourne, Robert Crais, Jeffery Deaver, Tess Gerritsen, Andy McNab, and Peter Robinson.

2008 will also mark the fourth year of the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award. Previous winners have included Mark Billingham, Val McDermid, and Allan Guthrie (who picked up the commendation this year for his 2005 debut novel, Two-Way Split). The UK brewing company T&R Theakston recently signed up to sponsor the Harrogate festival for another five years.

Finally, the organizers are holding a little competition to drum up early interest in this event (as if anyone’s paying attention to anything but holiday present buying right now). As a new press release explains,

This is your opportunity to win some great winter reading, including:

Andy McNab’s Crossfire, signed
Simon Kernick’s Severed, signed
Peter Robinson’s Friend of the Devil, signed
Robert Crais’ The Watchman, signed
Jeffery Deaver’s Devil, book-plated
And finally Tess Gerritsen’s The Mephisto Club

To win all you have to do [is] answer two questions correctly:

1. The Festival is 6 years old--but how many Programming Chairs has the Festival had and who were they?
2. Which three critically acclaimed authors have won the prestigious Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award, and in what year?

E-mail your answers to crime@harrogate-festival.org.uk, and tell the Harrogate gang that The Rap Sheet sent you.

This competition closes on Friday, January 4, when the name of a winning contestant will be extracted from a hat.

Next year’s Harrogate Crime Writing Festival will run from July 12 to 20. More information is available here.