Pass It On

As you presumably know, for the last week The Rap Sheet has been conducting a contest to give away three free passes to Britain’s CrimeFest 2009, which begins on May 14. Participants had to answer four questions relating to this year’s guests of honor.

Well, we now have the names of those free pass winners, chosen at random from among the people submitting correct entries. They are: Risto Raitio of Helsinki, Finland; Martyn Lewis of Wednesfield, England; and Karen Meek of Redditch, England.

Congratulations to all three. And our thanks go to the organizers of CrimeFest, Adrian Muller and Myles Allfrey, who made this competition possible.

To learn more about what CrimeFest offers this year, click here.

And for anybody who didn’t enter this competition because they were unsure of the answers to our questions, here are the correct responses, courtesy of Muller:

(1) Simon Brett
Which one of Brett’s non-series novels was made into a film
starring Michael Caine?
ANSWER: A Shock to the System.

(2) Michael Connelly
What connects Connelly to The Garden of Earthly Delights?
ANSWER: Hieronymus Bosch. Michael’s protagonist, Harry Bosch, was named after the painter of The Garden of Earthly Delights.

(3) Håkan Nesser
What’s the name of the first title in the Inspector Van
Veeteren series?
ANSWER: The Minds Eye--not Borkmann’s Point, which was the first title published in the English language.

(4) Andrew Taylor
What is Caroline Minuscule?
ANSWER: Andrew’s first book is named after a Carolingian script developed as a writing standard in Europe so that the Roman alphabet could be easily recognized.

Better luck next time.