For several years now, getting to Harrogate for the Old Peculier Crime Writing festival has been something I've been very keen on, but never quite got around to for a variety of reasons. So I'm pleased to be up here in North Yorkshire now, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Lee Child, Val McDermid and Mark Billingham, even if it's only for a flying visit.
The festival has a pretty good hit rate for attracting the top stars, and it has always done well at persuading Americans to brave the trip. This year's headliners are Child, a Brit whose US-set Jack Reacher novels have triumphed all over the world, Harlan Coben and Frederick Forsyth.
Regrettably I won't be able to see any of these, having failed to get a ticket for Child, and with plans to leave town before either of the others get on to the stage.
But it's been good to catch up with some less well-known names. I enjoyed a beer last night with Steve Mosby (and Lynn), whose third novel, The 50/50 Killer, I am a great admirer of. Al Guthrie, who had just won the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the year award (for Two Way Split) was around and suitably happy. He broke off conversation to call his wife to find out, touchingly, if she had finished crying since their previous conversation.
It was good also to catch up with my former FT colleague Jim Kelly and to meet Christopher Fowler.
All in all though the opening night party felt like a bit of a non-event - despite the presence of free beer - and I was looking forward to the sessions this morning.
Country Matters
Having made the move from London to the sticks about four years ago, and having starts for novels in both settings, I was intrigued by the prospects for a discussion about rural locations, which had a terrific panel of Jim Kelly, whose novels are set in the Fens, Anne Cleeves who has one series in post-industrial Northumberland and another in Shetland, Aline Templeton who writes novels set in decaying fishing communities in Scotland, while the prolific Simon Brett writes about rural west Sussex.
Engagingly chaired by Richard Burke (whose debut novel Frozen I thoroughly enjoyed), the discussion was fascinating.
What emerged from three of the writers is that while many of us enjoy a view of the countryside as a bucolic, well-heeled, peaceful haven from the chaos of the inner city, the truth is that many of these communities (away from the commuter belts of the major cities in particular) are desperately poor, and with the poverty come a great deal of social exclusion and subsequently crime. (Wealthy Arundel being the exception).
The size of villages and small towns brings with them, for better or worse, a sense of community in which everybody knows everybody (and their business), offering the writers a self-contained stage with all the characters and features required to construct their plots.
I particularly enjoyed Ann Cleeves' contributions and will be looking to get stuck into her books sharpish.
Snobbery and violence
There's probably no more appropriate place than relentlessly middle-class Harrogate to have a debate about class. And so with a glint in the eye, the festival organisers made Mark Billingham umpire in a ding-dong between Old Etonian David Roberts, author of the Lord Peter WImsey 1930s sleuth stories, self confessed middle class author Laura Wilson and a north east working class tag team comprised of Sheila Quigley (Sunderland grandmother turned author) and Martin Waites.
In the end this turned into a bit of knockabout post-lunch fun, with Roberts talking up the age of the English gentleman and harking back to a golden age of crime fiction, while the others mostly took the piss out of him. Quigley was a strange choice for the panel, with little to offer but a lot of cackling, while Laura Wilson and Waites gamely sparred with Roberts, whose views of modern crime-writing appeared to be that rather a lot of it was over-violent and somewhat uncouth.
Billingham was a funny and charming host, and it's a pity he wasn't given something more weighty to do.
Coming soon
I also attended the New Blood session introducing four relatively new authors, and I'll write more about them next week when I have a little more time to do them justice.
This evening I am attending a showing of Foul Play, a whodunnit featuring Laura Lippman, Billingham, Stuart MacBride and Stella Duffy. More on that, perhaps tomorrow.
Following that I plan to head to the local Waterstone's to see if the cold and the rain can deter the Potter fans from getting in to get their book at the first opportunity. (And to get mine). More Potter to come.