Okay, so the final hours have come and gone at
Crimefest 2010. I managed to attend Jake Kerridge's interview with
M C Beaton and
Lindsey Davis. It was the kind of interview that was certainly worth settling down to and enjoying. Jake Kerridge had certainly done his homework. The banter between M C Beaton and Lindsey Davis was evident and it was more like listening to two old friends having a friendly chat whilst the odd question was thrown in than a formal interview.
The most anticipated panel for Sunday was of course
Crossfire: Criminal Mastermind. Three crime writers and one crime fiction reviewer placed themselves in the spotlight and in the hands of
Maxim Jakubowski as they took part in Criminal Mastermind.
Martin Edwards was the returning winner from last year and this year he was up against
Peter Guttridge,
Ali Karim and
Cara Black. As I indicated in an earlier post I would not be taking bets on whether or not anyone would be able to dethrone Martin. It was a really enjoyable panel even though I did find myself acting as time keeper on Maxim's behalf. I am not going to post the final results of Criminal Mastermind but I can tell you the final positions. In fourth place was Cara Black, in joint second place was Peter Guttridge and Ali Karim and as was expected in first place and thus retaining his title was Martin Edwards. Rather sadly we found out at the end of the quiz that it had been agreed before hand that if Martin Edwards were to retain his title then he would not be coming back next year to defend it. A shame but a decision that I can understand.
I am aware that I have not posted any pictures from Crimefest but I will be doing so over at the
Shotsmag website in due course. A number of photographs were taken and look out for the picture of me alongside Tonino Benacquista.
Crimefest 2011 will take place between 19 and 22 May.
Every week, Roberto Marías
crosses Rome on foot to arrive at his psychiatrist's office. There, he often sits in silence, stumped by
the ritual—but sometimes crucial memories come to the surface. He remembers when he was a child and used to
surf with his father. He remembers the
treacherous years he spent working as an under-cover Carabinieri, years that
taught him how cynicism and corruption are not merely external influences, but
also exist within us. He has lived an
intoxicating and crushing life, but now his psychiatrist's words, the hypnotic
strolls through Rome, and a meeting with a woman named Emma—who like Roberto is
ravaged by a profound guilt—are beginning to revive him. Moreover, when eleven-year-old Giacomo asks
Roberto to help him conquer his nightmares, Roberto at last achieves a true
rebirth. The Silence of the Wave is by Gianrico Carofiglio and is due out in
September 2013.
The Man Who Loves Dogs is by
Leonardo Padua and is due to be published in December 2013. Cuban writer Iván Cárdenas Maturell meets a
mysterious foreigner on a Havana beach who is always in the company of two
Russian wolfhounds. Iván quickly names
him “the man who loved dogs”. The man
eventually confesses that he is actually Ramón Mercader, the man who killed
Leon Trotsky in Mexico City in 1940, and that he is now living in a secret
exile in Cuba after being released from jail in Mexico. Moving seamlessly between Iván's life in
Cuba, Mercader's early years in Spain and France, and Trotsky's long years of
exile, The Man Who Loved Dogs is Leonardo Padura's most ambitious and
brilliantly executed novel yet. It is
the story of revolutions fought and betrayed, the ways in which men's political
convictions are continually tested and manipulated, and a powerful critique of
the role of fear in consolidating political power
