CrimeFest Day 2 Part 1

Late nights!  Thursday evening was certainly a late night.  I managed to get to get to bed at 1:45am.  How I also managed to get up and be out of bed in time for breakfast, I don’t know.  I can only say that Coffee is my God at the moment. 

Anyway, because of me having to traipse up to Starbucks on Friday morning I had to miss a couple of panels.  I did get to the panel on Law or Justice?  How Does Your Protagonist Choose, which had Gerald O’Donovan, Zoe Sharp, Andrew Taylor, and James Sallis as panellists and it, was moderated by Stanley Trollip (one-half of Michael Stanley).  It was an interesting panel with a wide range of questions being asked.  These included whether or not the author’s felt that vigilantism was justified.  From the responses received, clearly they did not.  We also learnt that at the age of 65 James Sallis is learning to play the fiddle; Andrew Taylor can play the Ukulele and Gerald O’Donovan is still the under 9 backstroke champion at his prep school!

The other panel that I attend was the brilliant Kicking Ass: Spirited Protagonists and Tricky Situations.  The panellists were Brian McGilloway, Sue Grafton, Lee Child and Jacqueline Winspear.  Zoë Sharp was the participating moderator.  She always has been a brilliant moderator and listening to her with the panellists confirmed to me why I will always go to a panel where she is either a member or is the moderator.  She started off the panel with 5 degrees of separation between all the panel members.  This had the audience in fits of laughter as she managed to link all the panel members together.  Sue Grafton amazed me as she was much more grounded than I expected her to be and Lee Child was his usual charming self.  Brian McGilloway always gets me with his accent.  I could sit and listen to him talk for ages.  All the panel members worked well together.  Anyway, fan girl moment over now!  I am not going to go into intimate details about what was said because I have also been tweeting and therefore I am hoping that most people will have seen my tweets.  Nevertheless, they were asked if they fear killing off their character? Lee explained that with Reacher it will run its course and that it would not and could not be left unresolved.  At the end, Reacher would die.  Sue Grafton explained that for her books equalled life, death and crime.  She said that she would not kill off Kinsey Milhone.  Jacqueline Winspear that she would but would find it very upsetting.  She went on further to say that she had killed off a character in one of the books and that she had found that hard.  Brian directly said that he could not kill off Devlin. They were also all asked which were their favourite books.  For Brian it was his first one but, the one he considered to be the most personal is Little Girl Lost.  Sue Grafton like Brian said that her first book was the one that she was most proud of (A is for Alibi) but that she considered J is for Judgment the most personal.  For Lee it was the first Reacher novel The Killing Floor because he had no expectations.  Maise Dobbs, which was the first book in the series for Jacqueline Winspear as it, was a turning point in her life when she was recovering from a bad riding accident.  However, her most personal is one of the more recent ones The Mapping of Love & Death. It was inspired by a true story.  Once again it was standing room only for the event.  Some people even had to sit down at the front on the floor.  This year CrimeFest has been wonderful! Well organised, brilliant panels and wonderful people.

I did want to attend the Jeffrey Deaver interview but managed to get side-tracked.  Okay, I was at the Severn House drinks!  I also had to get my act together for the Crime Writers Association’s Dagger Shortlist Announcement Reception. My duties were to announce the shortlist for the short story nominations. I stupidly managed to leave my speaking notes at home, so I was rather pleased that I did manage to remember what I wanted to say off the top of my head.  I would before I forget like to thank my fellow Judges Adrian Magson and Paul Johnston for all their hard work.

The shortlists are as follows –

Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction (sponsored by ALCS)

To Live Outside the Law by Leaf Fielding published by Serpent’s Tail

DarkMarket by Misha Glenny published by Vintage

Hood Rat by Gavin Knight published by Pan Macmillan

The Negotiator by Ben Lopez published by Little, Brown

Witness David Smith with Carol Ann Lee published by Mainstream

The Eleventh Day by Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan published by Doubleday

Debut Dagger (sponsored by Orion)

Beached by Sandy Gingras (USA)

Broken Winged Bird by Renata Hill (Canada)

Chasing Shadows by Lesley McLaren (France)

Death by Glasgow by Jon Breakfield (UK)

Death Knell by Rob Lowe (UK)

Easy to Die by Sean Carpenter (UK)

Message from Panama by Britt Vasarhelyi (Panama)

One Man Army by Bram E Gieben (UK)

Port of Spain by Elizabeth Wells (Canada)

The Watchers by Karen Catalona (USA)

The Wrong Domino by Simon Miller (UK)

Trick by Sean Hancock (UK)

Short Story Dagger

The Golden Hour by Bernie Crossthwaite

From – Guilty Consciences, Edited by Martin Edwards and published by Severn House

Hixton by William Kent Krueger

From – Crimes by Moonlight, Edited by Charlaine Harris and published by Gollancz

The Message by Margaret Murphy

From - Murder Squad: Best Eaten Cold and Other Stories, Edited by Martin Edwards and published by The Mystery Press

He Did Not Always See Her by Claire Seeber

From – Guilty Consciences, Edited by Martin Edwards and published by Severn House

A Long Time Dead by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins

From - Best American Crime Stories 2011, Edited by Harlan Coben and published by Corvus

Laptop by Cath Staincliffe

From - Murder Squad: Best Eaten Cold and Other Stories, Edited by Martin Edwards and published by The Mystery Press

The Ellis Peters Historical Dagger

A Willing Victim by Laura Wilson published by Quercus

Bitter Water by Gordon Ferris published by Corvus

Icelight by Aly Monroe published by John Murray

I Will Have Vengeance by Maurizio de Giovanni published by Hersilla Press

Prague Fatale by Philip Kerr published by Quercus

Sacrilege by S J Parris published by Harper Collins

The Crown by Nancy Bilyeau published by Orion

Dagger in the Library (Sponsored by Random House)

Steve Mosby

Belinda Bauer

Imogen Robertson

S J Bolton

Susan Hill

Peter May

The International Dagger for crime fiction in translation

The Potter’s Field by Andrea Camilleri tr. Stephen Sartarelli published by Mantle

 I Will Have Vengeance by Maurizio de Giovanni tr Anne Milano Appel published by Hersilla Press

Until They Wrath Be Past by Åsa Larsson tr Laurie Thompson published by MacLehose Press

Trackers by Deon Meyer tr T K L Seegers published by Hodder & Stoughton

Phantom by Jo Nesbø tr Don Bartlett published by Harvil Secker

The Dark Valley by Valerio Varesi tr Joseph Farrell published by MacLehose Press.

Congratulations to all the nominees! More to follow later!