Material Witness: February 2016

February 25, 2016

Material Witness Live! At the Gap Festival

Material Witness celebrates its 10th birthday in 2016 and to celebrate I'm going to do something completely different - give a workshop on blogging at the Gap Festival in June.

This is a particularly special engagement for me as the Gap Festival takes place in the Oxfordshire villages of Goring and Streatley, the first of which I grew up in. This year is the second edition of a festival that brings together speakers and performers across a wide cultural spectrum after a successful inauguration in 2014. It's exciting for me to find myself as a Supporting Act to the likes of Ruby Turner, Lucy Worsley and Sir Peter Stothard - and also on the same bill as old friend Andy Ankerson, a local DJ of some note, who has accomplished much despite his steadfast refusal to play Dancing Queen.

The 10 year mark for the blog also seems like a good time to reflect on what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. It also marks the launch of a second blog, Mainlyontheplain.com, where I'm writing about Spain, where we currently live.

Ten years on I still get a big kick out of Material Witness and I'm really enjoying the different challenge of the new site. The primary reason for having them is because I love writing. At heart I am still a reporter, and I still get a thrill out of turning a blank page and an idea into a story. I write Material Witness because I love crime fiction and want to introduce people to new books and new authors. And the Spain blog because I want to help people appreciate what a wonderful country this is, and just how rich in experience it is beyond Barcelona and the Costas.

And so at the Gap Festival I'll talk about how to set up a blog and give some tips on how to make it successful - technical stuff on platforms, social media, SEO on so on. That's just a small part of it, however, and mainly I will look to talk about what makes a blog successful. I judge the success of my blogs purely from the pleasure I derive from writing them. They are hobbies, not a career. If you'd like to come along the workshop takes place on Sunday June 19th at 2.30pm in the Garden Room of the Goring Village Hall, a venue I remember fondly from childhood birthday parties and cricket club jumble sales.

I'm also looking forward to taking in a number of other events over the weekend, including Andy's Abba-free set, details of all of which are on the Festival's website.

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February 14, 2016

REVIEW: Coffin Road by Peter May

Peter May successfully left the Hebrides and his highly acclaimed Lewis trilogy behind him in his previous standalone novel Runaway – but, my goodness, how good it is to have him back there in his clever new bestseller Coffin Road.

On this occasion it is Harris, the southern neighbor to Lewis, where the majority of the mystery unfolds. And even here – more than fifteen hundred miles to the south reading in (mostly) Spanish sunshine – I felt I was on the windswept north western edge of the British Isles, hunkering down out of the Atlantic gales, such is May’s gift for bringing the islands to life.

Coffin Road opens as a man is washed up, soaked and freezing, on a Harris beach unable to remember who he is or why he might be there. With the aid of a neighbour he is hvelped to a house that is apparently his where a dog, Bran, is delighted to see him. Working on this slim self-knowledge, the man starts to try to piece together the details of his existence.

In parallel a teenage girl in Edinburgh, angry and alienated from her life following the suicide of her father, sets out to uncover why he abandoned her in this way.

Just as the man begins to get a slight grip on his existence he discovers the body of an unrecognised murdered man in the lighthouse in the Flannan Isles, to the west of Lewis, where his search has taken. Racked with fear, he believes he may be the murderer.

The investigation is placed in the hands of local detective George Gunn (who featured in the Lewis trilogy) and it uncovers a complex tangle of business, science and personal greed.

While Coffin Road, perhaps inevitably, lacks some of the intense characterization that marked the Lewis trilogy, it more than makes up for it in a suspenseful narrative that keeps its secrets right up to its dramatic conclusion. It’s a skillfully plotted novel, thoroughly enjoyable, and will confirm May’s status as one of Scotland’s modern crime masters – no mean feat in a very crowded field.

It will doubtless also serve as yet another compelling advertisement for the Hebridean tourist authorities. I spent much of the book poring over Google map views of Harris and Lewis and confirmed them as highly placed entries on the to-visit list.

Interview with Peter May

Review: Entry Island by Peter May