Detectives Beyond Borders' CrimeFest blogfest: Ruth Dudley Edwards

I'm off to Bristol for CrimeFest 2009 next month. Between now and then, I'll devote some posts to authors and others who'll join me there.

First up is Ruth Dudley Edwards, whose novel Murdering Americans won CrimeFest's Last Laugh Award 2008. That was the eleventh novel in her series about the splendidly named Robert Amiss; The English School of Murder is the third.

I may devote a post to Edwards' satire, but here it's humor's turn, specifically Edwards' talent for maintaining a tone through incidental action and description. This line, in the fourth chapter, without having any immediate bearing on the plot or anything to do with Edwards' targets, gives a fair idea:

"`Suspicious,' observed Amiss, who was losing interest rapidly."

The novel is set in an English-language school, and Dudley is not the only crime writer to find such a school fertile ground for a story of crime and corruption. The other half of the title's wordplay applies, too. Amiss' friend Ellis Pooley is a genial and wide-ranging connoisseur of crime novels.

A special treat for P.G. Wodehouse fans: Amiss' improvised effort to trap a recalcitrant cat in an early chapter is a tribute to "Jeeves and the Impending Doom," my favorite Wodehouse story and one of his best.

More to come, maybe.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Crimefest pictures, plus why other festivals should get with Crimefest's program

(Contestants in Crimefest 2010's Criminal Mastermind quiz game. From left, Peter Guttridge, Ali Karim, Martin Edwards and Cara Black. In the festival's least surprising development, Edwards won again this year.)

Crimefest 2010 is done except for Monday's excursion to Hay-on-Wye. A tip of the hat to organizers Adrian Muller and Myles Allfrey for another well-organized and exceedingly convivial event, sparked this year by some creative programming that other crime festivals might do well to study.

(Ruth Dudley Edwards and Bill James)

Today's example was a hands-on translation workshop with Ros Schwartz, Dagger award-winning translator of Dominique Manotti. This joins Saturday's self-defense clinic with Zoë Sharp as a clever and worthwhile supplement to panels, signings and discussions.

I'll be back to highlight some of past four days' thought-provoking panels, including Andrew Taylor on writing about the past, Ruth Dudley Edwards on sex and food, and Chris Carter on a bold, clever and free feat of marketing and self-editing.

For now, though, I'll have an early night to recover from three days and nights of crime and carousing. Until then, enjoy the pictures.

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

Crimefest report, Part I

Nelson's Column, Trafalgar Square,
London. Nelson was once a reporter,
but he decided he wanted to stop
working without, however,
giving up a paycheck. (All
photos by your humble blogkeeper.
Explanation for the newspaper
humor in the caption and the 
lede first paragraph available
 on request.)

Random thoughts and facts without having to worry about coherence. Not that it really matters, but here are some aperçus upon my return from Crimefest 2015, Bath, and London.

*

Gunnar Staalesen

John Lawton spent just a day at Crimefest, but he offered the welcome news that another Frederick Troy novel is on the way, probably in 2017, and that his next novel, a sequel to the non-Troy Then We Take Berlin, will include a cameo appearance by Troy. The Troy books are the models of how to write fiction about recent history, and how to do so with humor, wit, and bite.

*

K.T. Medina

Kati Hiekkapelto

For some reason, I met more authors and other people new to me at this Crimefest than ever before, including folks with whom I had worked or corresponded for years without, however, meeting them in person. Grouped by the language families of which their native tongue is a member, beginning with Finno-Ugric, these included Kati Hiekkapelto, Alan Carter, Alex Shaw, Craig Sisterson, Karen Sullivan, Steve Cavanagh, Louise Phillips, Sheila Bugler, Craig Robertson, Alexandra Sokoloff, Ewa Sherman, Jackeeta MT Collins, Paul Gitsham,  Kate Lyall Grant, Anthony Quinn, Hans Olav Lahlum,  and at least one person, I believe from the north of England, whose name slips my mind at the moment, for which I apologize.  These meetings are what makes festivals so much fun.

*

Peter Guttridge, Ali Karim

James Runcie's speech at the festival's gala dinner was funny, barbed, and tailored precisely to his audience. Runcie made a game of it, reading a series of sentences from either crime novels or books that had won the Man Booker Prize, then asking the audience to guess into which category each example fit. All I can say is that some of those Booker winners should never, ever show their faces in public again, at least not if using the names under which they write.

*

Ragnar Jonasson,
who was not one
of the two 
warring authors

The heated exchange at the bar between two authors who set their books in two countries in a state of conflict in the real world. Each hotly defended the country where he sets his novels, citing history recent and more remote.  War on a smaller scale was averted only when one of the authors tactfully retreated behind the line of conflict, leaving me to quiz the other on history going back a thousand years. Neither author is from the country where he sets his books, and I would guess their passion reflects the depth of their devotion to their subjects.

*

Ruth Dudley
Edwards

Robert Olen Butler

Separate political discussions with Ruth Dudley Edwards and Yrsa Sigurdardottir at the same hotel bar including bracing statements by each that I might not have expected from individuals of their political persuasions.

Barry Forshaw, Antonia Hodgson,
Simon Toyne, Peter Guttridge

Maj Sjöwall, Lee Child

Such surprises go a small way toward restoring my faith in humanity. It was also nice to see Yrsa win the festival's Petrona Award for best Scandinavian crime novel, for The Silence of the Sea. Yrsa has been pleasant company at many conventions, and Maxine Clarke, for whom the award is named, left the first comment ever at Detectives Beyond Borders.

Selfie outside the hotel where I expect
to return next year for my sixth Crimefest.

© Peter Rozovsky 2015

CrimeFest blogfest II: What's traditional about a traditional mystery?

(Here's my second in a series of posts about authors who plan to attend CrimeFest 2009 in Bristol, England, next month. I'll be there, too, working when I should be having fun and having fun when I should be working.)

What's traditional about a traditional mystery? If you'd asked me a few weeks ago, I might have said traditional = cozy = prominent role for old dear = village or country-house setting = knitting = cute animals.

Then I read what Ruth Dudley Edwards had to say on the subject. In the United States, she writes on her Web site, "the distinction is made between cosies and hard-boiled, terms which are unknown here except to the cognoscenti. I am definitely in the cosy league – what Reg Hill, who is there too, calls ‘the Jane Austen end of the crime writing spectrum’."

One always knew that Britain had Christie and the U.S. had Chandler and that the dichotomy might have echoes to this day. Still, having just read Edwards' The English School of Murder, I was surprised to see the author place herself in the cozy league. The novel, after all, is set almost entirely in London, and it includes passing and not-so-passing references to drug use, homosexuality, menages-a-trois and any number of up-to-date political and cultural jabs and other references, not to mention the occasional four-letter word.

I've just opened Martin Edwards' Waterloo Sunset, and I've noticed reflections on urban growth and boosterism, not to mention a character who just might be disturbingly demented. I hadn't expected this from an author who has proclaimed his allegiance to traditional mysteries. Heck, the man even named his novel for a song by the Kinks.

I know something about what a traditional mystery isn't: full of explicit sex and wrenching violence. But sharpen my thinking, and tell me what a contemporary traditional mystery is.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Bouchercon VIII: Roll, Jordans, roll

A tip of the battered baseball cap to Ruth and Jon Jordan of Crime Spree magazine, honored at Bouchercon 2009 with an Anthony Award for special services.

I got to hang with Ruth and Jon throughout the convention, and their warmth, energy and brains are contagious. They plan Bouchercons. They put out a magazine. They love crime fiction and its community, and they are full of creative ideas for bringing new readers to the genre. They are the sorts who make one want to roll up one's sleeves, get to work, and have fun doing it. I feel quite sure that no one has deserved an award more. (Visit the Rap Sheet for a complete list of Anthony Award winners and nominees.)

***

I occupy a fairly specialized niche, and one of the pleasures of conventions is the chance to break out, to meet authors and even entire genres outside my specialty of international crime fiction. In the past, this has led me to Scott Phillips, Megan Abbott, Christa Faust and, through Brian Lindenmuth, back to comics and graphic novels. In Indianapolis I met, mingled, dined, drank at the same table as or schmoozed with Victor Gischler, Kelli Stanley, Heather Graham, Theresa Schwegel and Rosemary Harris, among others whom I had known previously just by name or not at all.

Practitioners and fans of crime fiction's various subgenres sometimes spit on the ground at the mention of each other's specialties, so it was nice to see the hard-boiled and the cozy breaking bread in good fellowship in Indianapolis.

Of course, I had good fun with the usual suspects, too, notably talking P.G. Wodehouse with Ruth Dudley Edwards at a dinner outing that also included Leighton Gage, who started the Wodehouse ball rolling; Cara Black; and Stuart Neville. The latter drank a Newcastle Brown Ale.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

"In that moment of joyous intimacy, men wear socks"

That's what John Connolly (center) said at this afternoon's discussion on Sex and Violence: How Far is Too Far? at the Sunday (Irish) Independent Books 2008 Crime Writing Series.

The comment, about one of the unsexy problems Connolly encounters writing sex scenes, was typical of the event's orientation. The authors came together in four panels over two days, and, amid all the good craic, a lot of practical, no-nonsense discussion emerged. For this post, I'll offer a selection of authors' comments from the event. Over the next few days, I'll follow some of them up with more detailed discussion. And now, readers, please welcome our panelists:

Declan Hughes on his early attraction to crime fiction: "A book without a mystery isn't a proper book."

Ruth Dudley Edwards on the start of her writing career: "Having got the check, I thought I ought to write a book. And I found I had a good time doing it."

Gene Kerrigan on one of his early inspirations, Richard Stark (Donald Westlake): "You start off in awe of someone else and trying to be as good as they are."

Alex Barclay (right): "I thought the story wasn't complete if there wasn't a mystery."

Tana French: "I actually have the narrator before I have the plot."

Edwards: "My hero is P.G. Wodehouse."

Paul Johnston: "I'm not even Irish, so I don't know why I'm here, either." (Laughter from audience.)

Hughes on his love for intricate, Big Sleep-esque plotting: "I like getting confused."

Hughes on a protagonist's personal entanglements: "I hate when the detective has a girlfriend."

Declan Burke (left) on his novel Eightball Boogie: "I thought it would be good to do a kind of Humphrey Bogart character set in rural Ireland."

Arlene Hunt (second from left) on how she tried to make her protagonists stand out: "They're terrible. ... Two detectives, they're just not that bright."

Brian McGilloway (second from right) on where Northern Ireland ends and the Irish Republic begins: "On the back roads, it's impossible to tell."

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

Crime writers and reviewers, as they looked at Crimefest 2015

Martin Edwards

Kati Hiekkapelto

Ali Karim

Jake Kerridge

Anthony Quinn

Gunnar Staalesen

Steve Cavanagh

Ruth Dudley Edwards

Hans Olav Lahlum

© Peter Rozovsky 2015

Crimefest I: If this is England, where's the rain?

Everyone remembers who won tons of gold at the Olympics: Michael Phelps. Mark Spitz. Don Schollander (Come on, you remember Don Schollander.)

But who remembers the folks who won silver?

My team finished has just finished second at the Crimefest pub quiz for the second year in a row. This time my teammates were two of the ubiquitous names on the British crime fiction scene, Maxim Jakubowski and Ayo Onatade, but they were not enough to overcome the jet-lagged lump of North American baggage that joined them at the table.

We lost to a team that included Martin Edwards, Ann Cleeves and Karen Meek, just as last year's winning team did. And there were no prizes for runners-up this year, which means fewer books to carry home.

Quizmaster Peter Guttridge said this year's questions would be easy. Lying sack of &(^%!; they were ball-busters.

Tomorrow: Bill James, Ruth Dudley Edwards, Lindsey Davis, Donna Moore, Mike Hodges, Yrsa Sigurðardóttir and more.

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

Crimefest 2010: Blame it on Yrsa

I met Yrsa Sigurðardóttir for the first time at Bouchercon 2008 in Baltimore. While we were there, Iceland's banking system crashed.

We met again at Bouchercon 2009 in Indianapolis, when Yrsa was on my translation panel and everyone's economy had crashed.

Now my attendance at Crimefest 2010 in Bristol next week is imperilled by ash from that damn volcano in Yrsa's damn country. Yrsa, quite naturally, is scheduled to attend the fest.

Here are today's questions: Has any country as small as Iceland ever produced so many good crime writers and so much natural and financial disaster in so short a time? And is it all Yrsa's fault?

And here's the list of Crimefest attendees. It includes Bill James, Colin Dexter, Maxim Jakubowski, Donna Moore, Malcolm Pryce, Martin Edwards, Ruth Dudley Edwards, and many, as the saying goes, more.

I'll join them and provide entertaining and informative accounts, geological upheaval permitting.

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

Political incorrectness

There's a fair bit of it on display in Ruth Dudley Edwards's Matricide at St. Martha's, one of the books I've harvested on this book-heavy vacation.

A rich patroness has died and left a sizable bequest to the struggling St. Martha's College at Cambridge, and factional battles have broken out about how to use the gift. "The decision has to be taken by the end of the term," writes protagonist Martin Amiss, "and the Fellows are at war over what it should be. With her customary delicacy, Jack describes the two main tribes as the Virgins and the Dykes, with a minority party called the Old Women."

The first group, Amiss explains, "are devising the Alice Toon Postgraduate Scholarships in Theology, Paleography, Medieval Law and so on. Dame Maud Theodosia is compiling a definitive list at present of the most unpopular subjects anyone can think of.

"The second lot, the Dykes, are fewer in number but they're better street-fighters ... Her lot want to spend the money on a centre for Gender and Ethnic Studies." And the "Old Women are in fact men." I'm not far into the book, then, but I am prepared to have my sensibilities joyously offended.

Edwards said more than once during her appearances at the Books 2008 Crime Writing Series that she writes about institutions, so what she's up to is not sexism or cheap shots. Rather, it's a little thing called satire, and so far it's been nice to read.

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

Akashic to publish Belfast Noir

Photos by your humble blogkeeper

In the best news out of Belfast since the Titanic Van Morrison, Akashic Books is adding Belfast Noir to its "City Noir" crime-fiction series.

Confirmed contributors include Glenn Patterson, Eoin McNamee, Garbhan Downey, Lee Child, Alex Barclay, Brian McGilloway, Ian McDonald, Colin Bateman, Ruth Dudley Edwards, Claire McGowan, Tammy Moore, Lucy Caldwell, Sam Millar and Gerard Brennan, with Adrian McKinty and Stuart Neville as editors who I hope will contribute stories as well.

It's the world's best crime writing in one place, and you can read it in 2014. Learn more at McKinty's place.

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

Murder and Mayhem in Muskego, Part 4: Wisconsin cozy

No one knows exactly what noir is, but everyone wants to be it. No one knows exactly what cozies are, but even authors who write them shy away from the term.

One panel at Murder and Mayhem in Muskego comprised writers whose work fits comfortably under the cozy umbrella, yet when the panel's moderator brought the subject up, he asked, "What about the c-word?" The ensuing discussion revealed that matters could be worse. In Canada, someone said, such books, low on graphic violence and usually with female amateur sleuths as the protagonist, are called fluffies.

On a 1-10 scale, cozy to noir, my own crime reading probably falls between 7 and 9. But I spent a good part of Bouchercon 2009 annoying people with my suggestions for clever titles, so I have a soft spot for the author of books such as Hail to the Chef and State of the Onion.

[Click here for one definition of a cozy mystery, here for Ruth Dudley Edwards' discussion of why the term is problematic — and almost uniquely American — and here for my own previous discussions of this question (scroll down).]

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Some pictures from Crimefest 2016

From left: Ian Rankin, your humble blogkeeper, Ali Karim, 
Mike Stotter. This photo by our courteous, efficient, and aesthetically
sensitive waitress. All others by Peter Rozovsky

I'm back in London after the most enjoyable of the six Crimefest I've attended. Highlights included:

Anne Holt

1) Anne Holt's wisdom.

Gin and tonie

2) Hendrick's gin.

Crimefest T-shirts

3) Crimefest's T-shirts, and ...

Susan Moody, Laura Wilson,
Alison Bruce

Ali Karim, Steve Cavanagh

Alan Glynn

Kati Hiekkapelto, Ann Cleeves

Ruth Dudley Edwards

Thomas Mogford, Ian Rankin, Andrew Taylor

Alan Glynn and an inadvertent, unidentified woman

Albert the Gorilla

© Peter Rozovsky 2016

What's happening in Indianapolis

My Thursday morning translation panel will not be the only one at Bouchercon of interest to fans of international crime fiction.

Thursday afternoon (Oct. 15) offers Irish Crime in Fact and Fiction with Kathryn Kennison, Ruth Dudley Edwards and Stuart Neville, and O Canada: Crime North of the Border.

On Friday, convention-goers can attend Murder at the Edge of the Map, where moderator Leighton Gage and panelists Christopher G. Moore, Tamar Myers, Yrsa Sigurðardóttir and Michael Stanley will discuss what mystery novels can tell us about international and exotic settings.

Saturday brings Criminal Consumables: The Craft and Popularity of Food and Drink in Mysteries and Crime Through Time: Research Versus Imagination in Historical Mysteries, the latter in a panel whose members include John Maddox Roberts and the excellent David Liss.

Also on Saturday, War Crimes: How War Shapes Characters and Crime Novels and The Humor Panel: Why Do Humor and Death Go So Well Together?

Those are just some of the panels on topics that have come up for discussion here at Detectives Beyond Borders. Lots more panels promise to be interesting, too, as do some of the off-site, non-panel events. My favorite of the latter is probably Friday's tour of the Hachette warehouse.

Click here for a complete Bouchercon program. If it's not too late, register now, and I'll see you in Indianapolis.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Irish crime writers speak: The Books 2008 Crime Fiction series

Crime Always Pays posts notice of The Sunday (Irish) Independent's Books 2008 Crime Fiction Series, September 5 and 6 in Dublin. Topics include "Heroes and Villains: What We Love and Hate about Crime Fiction," "Forty Shades of Grey: Real Fiction, Real Ireland" and "Sex & Violence: How Far is Too Far?" plus John Connolly in conversation with Declan Hughes.

The author and moderator lineup also includes Gene Kerrigan, Tana French, Alex Barclay, Ruth Dudley Edwards, Paul Johnston, Brian McGilloway, Arlene Hunt, Declan Burke and "Critical" Mick Halpin.

Crime fiction is also on the agenda outside the formal crime fiction segment of Books 2008. Derek Landy, author of the Skulduggery Pleasant series, will appear at a children's event, and John Banville will speak at a "Meet the Author" event under his pseudonym Benjamin Black. Why he is billed under his crime-fiction alias but is not part of the formal crime fiction segment, I don't know. Perhaps this reflects this fine author's equivocal reception in the crime fiction world.

So come on out to if you happen to be in the area. If you can't make it, read Detectives Beyond Borders for reports from the scene and maybe an interview or two.

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

Technorati tags:
Irish crime fiction

What a laugh!

Declan Burke blogs the news that his novel The Big O has been nominated for the Last Laugh Award. This prize, awarded to the best humorous crime novel published in the British Isles in 2007, is to be announced at next month's Bristol CrimeFest.

Burke's competition:

Murdering Americans by Ruth Dudley Edwards
The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam by Chris Ewan
Hard Man by Alan Guthrie
Silent in the Grave by Deanna Raybourn
Angel's Share by Mike Ripley
The Herring Seller's Apprentice by L. C. Tyler
What's So Funny? by Donald Westlake

Going up against Donald Westlake for a comic-crime award is like learning that your play has been tossed in the ring with some guy named Shakespeare, but Burke's tour de fun has an excellent chance.

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

The Saint, P.G. Wodehouse, and copy editing

The introduction to the new edition of The Saint and Mr Teal invokes the name of P.G. Wodehouse, and aptly so; the writing is that good.

The introducer, one John Goldsmith, claims a place for author Leslie Charteris alongside (or above) the stars of British adventure writing of the early and middle twentieth century. The Saint was a rule breaker, Goldsmith writes, free of the anti-Semitism and racism of his upper-class British fictional counterparts. Goldsmith also offers an astute discussion of Charteris' literary style.

The introduction's one conspicuous weakness is Goldsmith's account of his trip to "a remote fishing village on the coast of Brazil," where "when I mentioned the Saint faces lit up, recognition was instant. It was smiles and ecstatic cries of ‘El Santo! El Santo!’ all round."  Why the Brazilian villagers spoke Spanish rather than Portuguese is a mystery to be solved by Goldsmith, his copy editor, or, just maybe, a linguist. (Read Goldsmith's introduction at the Hodder & Stoughton website.)

Wodehouse lovers will also note the name of the Scotland Yard detective Claud Eustace Teal, whom Charteris introduced in 1929 — six years after Wodehouse had created Bertie Wooster's unforgettable scapegrace cousins Claude and Eustace Wooster in The Inimitable Jeeves. That makes Charteris the earliest crime writer known to your humble blogkeeper to have paid apparent tribute to Wodehouse. He joins such later authors as John Lawton and Ruth Dudley Edwards.

And finally, a tip of the Yorkshire wool cap to Zoë Sharp, who talked up Charteris and The Saint at Crimefest this year.

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

Crimefest 4: Stump the Irish criminal mastermind

 

I can now reveal my role in the just-concluded Crimefest 2013 in sunny Bristol, England, without contravening the Official Secrets Act: I wrote the questions with which contestant Declan Burke had to grapple in the expert-knowledge segment of the festival's Criminal Mastermind quiz. (I'd have won the competition myself last year if I'd had more sleep, less gin, and a sharper ear for the unaccountable way the English speak English.)

My chosen subject last year was Dashiell Hammett, in a quiz I lost on penalty kicks on Hammett's birthday. Declan this year picked Irish crime fiction, and, through the magic of technology, you can now match wits with him.  It's like experiencing the clanging church bells and midnight kebabs of Bristol in your very own home! Do well on this quiz, and you'll win my admiration and maybe a book. Your two minutes begin ... now.

==================

1.  Which 2007 novel opens: "No offence, Taoiseach ... but you're talking out of your hole"? 
2.  Ronan Bennett’s fifth novel is Zugzwang. What is a zugzwang?  
3.  From which humorist did Ruth Dudley Edwards lift a scene in The English School of Murder, substituting a cat for a swan?  
4.  What was the purpose of Stonehenge, according to Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code?
5.  In which Irish novel is a character kidnapped, and “They made her perform Riverdance”?  
6.  Who said: “I think the great Troubles novel will be written by a woman”?
7. Which Irish crime protagonist’s name means the same thing as Sam Spade’s?
8. 
   Who is Fetch?
9. Who is Israel Armstrong?
10. What is LEPRECON?
11. Which novel headed Brian McGilloway’s 2009 list of “Top 10 Modern Irish Crime Novels”?
12. Which sectarian killer is the model for Victor Kelly in Eoin McNamee’s Resurrection Man? 
13. Who calls the 1970s a golden age of paranoia?
14. Which novel includes the following line: “Unity was always McShiel's programme, because it did not necessitate taking sides on any definite question.”?



15. Which includes this: “Thing was, he did look like Mickey Rourke. But late-night Brixton, most do, even the women."?
16. Which two non-Irish crime writers did John Banville call “Two of the greatest writers of the 20th century”?
17. Which Irish short-story collection pays tribute in its title to Damon Runyon?
18. Which Irish author was movie director John Ford’s cousin? 
19. Which Irish crime writer is the son of the writer and critic Seamus Deane? 
20. Which Irish crime writer wrote three books with Jason Starr?

© Peter Rozovsky 2013