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So
CrimeFest has started today and as usual I shall be doing by usual blogging and
tweeting as much as possible. Also for
those of you that have followed me over the years will remember that my blog
posts from CrimeFest tend to be a mixture of what is happening in the panels
and whatever takes my fancy. So sit back
and enjoy. If you want to follow what is
happening at CrimeFest on Twitter then they are using ♯CrimeFest15.
So
what has happened so far?
The
trip down was non-eventful. It was however lovely to bump into the lovely
Daniel Gedon from Goldsboro books on the train.
Our arrival at Bristol was enlivened by the fact that it was pouring
with rain.
It
was lovely to see so many people on arrival at the hotel. Unfortunately I
missed the first panel, which was Debut
Authors: An Infusion of Fresh Blood, which featured Tom Callaghan, Jason
Hewitt, S J I Holiday, Cal Moriarty, and M P Wright and moderated by Jake
Kerridge. It wasn’t done on purpose but
I was waiting for my room to be ready.
I
did however attend the panel A Woman in a
Man’s World that had Ray Celestin, MJ McGrath, Helen Giltrow and William
Shaw as panel members and MR Hall as the participating moderator. This was a very interesting panel and the
various comments from the panellists made for a lively debate. It was interesting to hear from the
panellists about their views. One of the things that Ray Celestin stated was
that when he was writing his female character he did not want to be seen as
sexist when it came to his character. Furthermore,
he chose a female as his third main character as he felt that it was a good
idea. The added problem was that not
only was she not allowed to join the police because she was African
American. She was allowed to do menial
work. This is the reason why she joined
the Pinkertons instead. William Shaw
also pointed out that for him the problem arose from the fact that he was
writing a female character before feminism took root. M J McGrath explained
that the inspiration for her main character Edie was from a true-life person
who was a small Inuit woman. MR Hall stated that initially his main character
was male but he decided that he wanted to write an emotional book hence the
reason why he decided to change his main character to female. In the case of Helen Giltrow she explained
that her main female character was created by accident. She literally took over as the book was been
written. She had initially wanted to
write a book with a male hero. One of
the questions that was raised was whether or not women were a lot more
interesting as lead characters in crime fiction. According to MJ McGrath women have a lot more
things to struggle with including for example childcare. As William Shaw explained crime fiction was
seen to be a man’s world. On the other
hand, MJ McGrath felt that crime books were all about character and psychological
novels are being dominated by women – better known as Domestic Noir. Both Helen
Giltrow and MJ McGrath would have liked to have seen and read Before I Go To Sleep, with a male
protagonist. They also felt that it
would also be interesting to read a novel about sexual assault by a woman to a
man. MR Hall also wondered if we
expected our female lead characters to be heroic and if there was an actual
reason for them to be heroic or an interest in them being so. It was felt that there was a great tradition
of men being the anti-hero but not women.
Ray Celestin however pointed out that we were starting to see women as
anti-heroes. But it was also felt that
we expect different things from our male and female heroes.
Some
of the other issues that were raised in the panel were whether or not male and
female readers got the same from a book or were they looking for different
things. Furthermore, it is impossible for women to read violence the same way
as men. It was also felt that women
readers were a lot more judgmental about female characters than men. It was noted that women are by far the largest
readers of crime fiction.
More
to follow…….
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