CrimeFest: Historical Fiction: Medieval Villainy and Renaissance Violence

 Friday, 16 May 2025

17:10 - 18:00

The panel are Tom Harper, David Penny,
L.C. Tyler, G.J. Williams, 
and the participating Moderator is Louise Mangos.

Tom Harper is the international bestselling author of thirteen thrillers and adventure novels, including Lost Temple and Black River. He has also co-written five books with the late Wilbur Smith, most recently Warrior King. Research for his novels has taken him all over the world, from the jungles of Peru to the high Arctic. He is a former Chair of the Crime Writers' Association, and lives in York with his wife and two sons.

tom-harper.co.uk

David Penny is the author of the Thomas Berrington Historical Mysteries set in Moorish Spain and the early Tudor period. David’s work is available in eBook, print and audio, as well as translations into Spanish and German. He also writes the Izzy Wild contemporary police thrillers, and the Unit-13 WWII Paranormal Spy Thrillers.

davidpenny.com 

L.C. Tyler is a former chair of the CWA and the author of two detective series. He has won the CWA Short Story Dagger, the CrimeFest Goldsboro Last Laugh Award (twice) and been shortlisted for the Edgar Allan Poe Awards and the CWA Historical Dagger. His latest book (2024) is The Three Deaths of Justice Godfrey. He has lived and worked all over the world - but most recently in London and West Sussex.

lctyler.co 

G.J. Williams is author of The Tudor Rose Murders Series – historical murder mysteries that take real Tudor events and people, then throw in a plot and bodies. Her debut, The Conjuror’s Apprentice, was published in 2023; the second in the series, The Wolf’s Shadow, hit the shelves in 2024 and the third, The Cygnet Prince, is scheduled for launch in June 2025. The series has been now been selected for distribution in the USA. 

gjwilliamsauthor.com  

Louise Mangos writes award-winning psychological suspense, historical mysteries, and short fiction. Her latest psychological whodunnit Five Fatal Flaws was shortlisted in the Page Turner Awards. She holds a Masters in Crime Writing from the University of East Anglia in the UK. She currently lives at the foot of the Swiss Alps with her Kiwi husband and two sons where she enjoys skate skiing in winter and wild swimming in summer. 

louisemangos.com 

CrimeFest: The Last Laugh: What's So Funny About Murder?

 Friday, 16 May 2025

17:10 - 18.00

The panel are Ruth Dudley Edwards, Nev Fountain,
Mike Ripley, Olga Wojtas, 
and the participating Moderator is Simon Brett.

Ruth Dudley Edwards is a journalist and prize-winning historian. In her twelve satirical crime novels she ridicules political correctness: her targets include academia, gentlemen’s clubs, the House of Lords, literary prizes and conceptual art. As well as the CWA Non-fiction Gold Dagger for Aftermath: the Omagh Bombing and the Families’ Pursuit of Justice, she won the CrimeFest Last Laugh Award for Murdering Americans and CrimeFest’s Goldsboro Last Laugh Award for Killing the Emperors. 

ruthdudleyedwards.com 

Nev Fountain is an award-winning writer, known for his work on Dead Ringers. He has also contributed to many other programmes, including Have I Got News for You, and is a gag writer for Private Eye. He has written six murder-mystery novels: a trilogy called 'The Mervyn Stone Mysteries', a ‘serious’ thriller, entitled Painkiller and The Fan Who Knew too Much which was released by Titan books. Lies and Dolls, will be released this year.

Mike Ripley is a multiple award winning author of both comic crime fiction and non-fiction. He was crime critic for the Daily Telegraph for ten years, a scriptwriter on the BBC’s Lovejoy series, has edited two volumes of ‘lost’ short stories and scripts from Callan and contributed over 200 gossip columns to Shots magazine. His next novel, Buried Above Ground, is an unconventional crime novel ‘written by someone who has read too many crime novels.’

shotsmag.co.uk 

Olga Wojtas writes comic crime as an antidote to real life. Her surrealist humour has been compared to the likes of PG Wodehouse, Jasper Fforde and the Marx Brothers. Her debut novel, Miss Blaine’s Prefect and the Golden Samovar, was published in 2018 and her fifth in the series, Miss Blaine’s Prefect and the Uncharted Island, is published this year. She also writes the Bunburry series of cosy crime e-novellas under the name Helena Marchmont. 

olgawojtas.co.uk  

Simon Brett has published over a hundred books, many of them crime novels, including the Charles Paris, Fethering, Mrs Pargeter, Blotto & Twinks and Ellen Curtis series. In 2014 he received the Crime Writers’ Association’s highest award, the Diamond Dagger, and in 2016 he was awarded an OBE ‘for services to literature’. 

simonbrett.com 

‘Fortress of Evil’ by Javier Cercas

Published by MacLehose Press,
24 April 2025.
ISBN: 978-1-52943-620-4 (HB)
Trabslated from the Spainsh byAnne McLean

Fortress of Evil (in an excellent translation by Anne McLean) is the third story in the Terra Alta trilogy. I had the pleasure of reviewing its predecessor Prey for the Shadow for ‘Mystery People’ in 2023, and Fortress of Evil maintains the high standard.

We are now some years on from Prey for the Shadow; indeed, the story is set in 2035, not that it is immediately obvious if you haven’t read the previous novel, although as a follower of football I should have suspected this the moment there was mention of a Barcelona v Real Madrid Champions’ League final which has yet to occur and which occupies an important place in the story. Melchor Marín has been a librarian for some years in Terra Alta, more than two hours’ drive from Barcelona. A former drug dealer who served time in prison before joining the police, Melchor remains a complicated character, living it seems on sandwiches and cola, who has retained his links with his former colleagues. His daughter, Cosette, is now 17. Melchor has always supressed the truth about her mother’s death many years previously, and now Cosette has discovered that her mother was killed in a hit-and-run incident intended to scare Melchor off a case. She feels angry and betrayed and goes to Mallorca with a friend, Elisa. Cosette makes it clear that she does not want to hear from her father for the time being and ignores his texts and calls.

Melchor’s concerns grow when Elisa returns without Cosette, even more when he fails to contact his daughter, and it appears that she has disappeared. He feels that he has no alternative but to travel to Mallorca to try and find her. He is getting nowhere when an anonymous email arrives and sets him on a path to the powerful Swedish American billionaire Rafael Mattson via another former policeman, Damian Carrasco. We soon get to the point where one imagines that matters may have been sorted (except that we are barely halfway through the book), but then Carrasco reveals a plot which appeals to Melchor and which requires accomplices. Melchor manages to persuade former colleagues and current officers to take part, some more easily than others and some more surprisingly than others. The manner in which Melchor gathers his team together is an important part of the story and brings many old feelings to the surface. The meeting at which they agree to go on with the scheme is particularly tense and is central to the story. Can everyone be trusted?

What marks this novel out from the general run of crime (as with its predecessor) is its complex collection of relationships (such as old feuds and jealousies) and vivid descriptions. And it constantly throws up surprises. For instance, I naively assumed that the actual execution of Melchor and Carrasco’s split-second plot would occupy a good part of the remaining narrative given how the tension over it builds up, but it is dealt with very quickly and it is other things that become important as the novel reaches its conclusion. Power by whatever method is a major thread, as it was in Prey for the Shadow, and themes of the MeToo movement range increasingly prominently (Harvey Weinstein gets a mention). As with Prey for the Shadow, the generally gritty atmosphere of the novel is leavened by Melchor being reminded by his friends that Cercas has written up his cases. The author’s use of the present tense has the effect of moving the action along.

Fortress of Evil can be read as a stand-alone, but it helped to have read its predecessor. I have yet to read the first of the trilogy Even the Darkest Night but intend to do so. In recommending this novel very enthusiastically, I hope that Cercas’s career in crime is not complete with this third story. Indeed, without perhaps reading too much into it, the last line of the book gives us cause to think that there is another path ahead.
------
Reviewer: David Whittle

Javier Cercas was born in 1962. He is a novelist, short-story writer and essayist, In the 1980s he taught for two years at the University of Illinois, and since 1989 has been a lecturer in Spanish Literature at the University of Gerona. He is a regular contributor to the Catalan edition of El Páis.  

David Whittle is firstly a musician (he is an organist and was Director of Music at Leicester Grammar School for over 30 years) but has always enjoyed crime fiction. This led him to write a biography of the composer Bruce Montgomery who is better known to lovers of crime fiction as Edmund Crispin, about whom he gives talks now and then. He is currently convenor of the Midlands Chapter of the Crime Writers’ Association. 

CrimeFest: The Modern Thriller: High Concept, High Stakes.

    Friday, 16 May 2025

16:00 - 16.50

The panel are Roger Corke, Heather Critchlow,
Felix Francis, Antony Johnston, 
and the participating Moderator is Zoe Sharp. 

Roger Corke is a TV journalist who travelled the world, making investigative documentaries for the BBC’s Panorama, ITV’s World In Action and Channel 4’s Dispatches. His debut crime thriller, Deadly Protocol, was published in September to lavish praise from fellow crime authors – far greater than he dared to hope! It's the ultimate medical conspiracy: a scientist working on medicine's Holy Grail - a cure for cancer - is brutally murdered. Who killed him and why?

rogercorkeauthor.com 

Heather Critchlow is the author of the Cal Lovett series and speculative thriller The Tomorrow Project. Her debut novel Unsolved was published in May 2023 by Canelo and was shortlisted for the Bloody Scotland Debut Prize. It was followed by Unburied and Unsound in 2024, with fourth in the series Unknown out August 2025. Heather’s short stories are featured in the Afraid of the Light anthologies of fiction written by crime writers. 

heathercritchlow.com 

Felix Francis took over writing the ‘Dick Francis Novels’ from his father. He has recently finished Dark Horse, which will be published in September 2025. It will be his nineteenth crime novel. Felix lives in Northants with his wife, Debbie, and two dogs. A keen cricket supporter, he is a member of MCC and the Lord’s Taverners, as well as of the Crime Writers Association, the International Thriller Writers, the Detection Club and The Garrick. 

                              www.felixfrancis.com 

Antony Johnston is one of the most versatile writers of the modern era, with a body of work spanning books, film, graphic novels, videogames, and non-fiction. An award-winning author and New York Times bestseller, his creations include Atomic Blonde, The Dog Sitter Detective, the Brigitte Sharp thrillers, and many more. In 2025 his interactive crime novel Can You Solve the Murder? will be published by Transworld. 

antonyjohnston.com 

Zoë Sharp spent her childhood living aboard a catamaran on the northwest coast of England. She opted out of mainstream education at twelve, and wrote her first novel at fifteen. She began writing crime thriller fiction after receiving death threats in the course of her work as a photojournalist, and has been nominated for numerous awards. Her latest series has an ex-copper and an ex-con artist investigating police corruption and a possible miscarriage of justice.

zoesharp.com 

CrimeFest: Historical Fiction: When Society Meets Murder.

    Friday, 16 May 2025

16:00 - 16:50

The panel are Fliss Chester, T.E. Kinsey,
Pam Lecky, Fiona Veitch Smith,
and the participating Moderator is Dolores Gordon-Smith.

Fliss Chester writes cosy crime and is the author of seven books in the 1920s-set Hon Cressida Fawcett Mysteries series, published by Bookouture. The first book in the series, Death Among the Diamonds, recently went to number two in the free Kindle Amazon US chart. She also wrote the Fen Churche Mysteries series, set just after WW2, and is about to start a new modern-day cosy crime series, which will also be published by Bookouture this year. 

flisschester.co.uk

T.E. ‘Tim’ Kinsey was born in the 1960s. He grew up in London in the 1970s and went to university in Bristol in the 1980s. He worked in magazines in the 1990s, and for IMDb in the 2000s. He still lives near Bristol. He’s a mediocre drummer and a terrible guitarist. He’s responsible for the popular Edwardian cosy series The Lady Hardcastle Mysteries (published by Thomas & Mercer). 

tekinsey.uk 

Pam Lecky is published by Avon Books UK and Storm Publishing. She is the author of the Sarah Gillespie WW2 espionage series (Avon Books UK), and the Victorian Lucy Lawrence Murder Mysteries (Storm Publishing). Her standalone WW2 police procedural Under A Lightning Sky was published last July. She is currently working on a contemporary crime series set in her native Ireland. She is a member of the CWA and HNS. 

pamlecky.com

Fiona Veitch Smith writes Golden Age mysteries and historical fiction. Her debut crime novel in the Poppy Denby Investigates series, The Jazz Files (re-released as A Front-Page Murder), was shortlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger 2016. Her latest book, The Penford Manor Murders, (fourth in the Miss Clara Vale Mysteries) was released in March. Fiona is formerly a journalist and university lecturer and lives in Newcastle upon Tyne with her partner and two border collies. 

fiona.veitchsmith.com 

Dolores Gordon-Smith is the author of the Jack Haldean murder mystery series set in 1920’s England, the latest of which is The Chapel in the Woods, published by Severn House, and two WW1 spy thrillers, Frankie’s Letter and The price of Silence. Married with five daughters, a growing number of grandchildren and various dogs and cats, Dolores has been a teacher, a civil servant and a shaker-out of Christmas puddings in a jam factory. 

doloresgordon-smith.co.uk 

CrimeFest: One of a Kind: Atypical Characters

   Friday, 16 May 2025

14:50 - 15.40

The panel are Paul Durston, Christina Koning,
Tom Mead, Bridget Walsh, 
and the participating Moderator is 
Michael Stanley (Michael Sears).

Paul Durston is a former police officer, and now a crime fiction writer. His books – If I Were Me, If We Were One and If You Were Chosen are psychological crime and revolve around Charlie who’s having identity problems. He is flattered that CrimeFest has selected Charlie for the One of a Kind – Atypical Characters panel set for 2.50pm on Friday, and hopes to see you there. 

pauldurston.com 

Christina Koning has worked as a journalist, reviewing fiction for The Times, and taught Creative Writing at the University of Oxford and Birkbeck, University of London. From 2013 to 2015, she was Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Newnham College, Cambridge. She won the Encore Prize in 1999 and was long-listed for the Orange Prize in the same year. Murder in Oxford is the ninth novel in the Blind Detective series.

Tom Mead is the author of the Joseph Spector locked-room mystery series. His books, which include Death and the Conjuror, The Murder Wheel and Cabaret Macabre, have been critically acclaimed, published in ten languages (and counting!), and nominated for numerous awards. A short-story collection, The Indian Rope Trick (and Other Violent Entertainments), came out in November 2024 and the next Spector novel, The House at Devil's Neck, is published in August 2025. 

tommeadauthor.com 

Bridget Walsh’s obsessive interest in the weirder elements of nineteenth-century life has led her to write a series of crime novels set in a down-at-heel Victorian London music hall. The Tumbling Girl won the HWA Debut Crown and was shortlisted for the CWA New Blood Dagger. The third in the series, The Spirit Guide, will be published in 2026. Bridget lives in the fine city of Norwich with her husband and two dogs. 

bridgetwalsh.co.uk

Michael Sears writes with Stanley Trollip as Michael Stanley. Their Detective Kubu novels are set in Botswana and based around real issues affecting southern Africa. The ninth will be out later this year. They also wrote a thriller about rhino poaching, Dead of Night, set in South Africa. They won a Barry Award for Death of the Mantis and were finalists for other awards including an Edgar and an ITW award. 

michaelstanleybooks.com

CrimeFest: Ghosts From The Past: When Yesterday's Crimes Are Felt Today.

   Friday, 16 May 2025

14:50 - 15.40

The panel are John Harvey, Barbara Nadel, 
Michael Ridpath, Teresa Solana, 
and the participating Moderator is Alex North.

John Harvey was awarded the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger for Excellence in Crime Writing in 2007 and his story, ‘Fedora’, won the CWA Short Story Dagger in 2014. Also a poet and dramatist - his adaptation of the Resnick novel, Darkness, Darkness, was staged at Nottingham Playhouse in 2016 - he was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of Goldsmiths’ College, University of London in 2020 for his “significant achievements and contributions to literature.” 

mellotone.co.uk 

Barbara Nadel is the author of the Cetin Ikmen series of crime novels, adapted for TV as The Turkish Detective on BBC2. She also writes the Hakim and Arnold crime fiction series, set in east London. Her latest Ikmen book, The Wooden Library is due to be published in May 2025 while her most recent Hakim and Arnold, The Golem of East Ham, was published in February 2025.

Michael Ridpath used to work as a bond trader in the City of London. After writing several financial thrillers, which were published in over thirty languages, he began a crime series featuring the Icelandic detective Magnus Jonson, the latest of which is Whale Fjord. He has also written five stand-alone historical thrillers set in the twentieth century. He lives in London. 

michaelridpath.com 

Teresa Solana made her debut as a novelist in 2006 with A Not so Perfect Crime. Her novels and short stories, set in Barcelona, are originally written in Catalan and have been translated into several languages. She has won several awards, including the Crims de Tinta Prize for the novel Black Storms, which opens the series starring the Catalan deputy inspector Norma Forester. Her work is characterised by her satirical style and her sense of humour. 

Alex North’s first novel, The Whisper Man, was a Sunday Times, New York Times and international bestseller. It has been translated into over 30 languages and is currently being adapted for film. It was followed by The Shadow Friend and The Half Burnt House, and his most recent novel is The Man Made of Smoke. Alex is a pseudonym for an award-winning crime novelist. He lives in Leeds with his wife and son."                    

                                         alexnorth.co.uk 

‘Let’s Kill George’ By Lucy Cores

Published by Duell, Sloan & Pearce, New York, 1946.

Shelley Ames, an aspiring actress is George Banat’s newest protegee. Shelley, is poor, frightened and insecure, following the death of both her parents in a car accident, and George has taken her under his wing and settled her in his house ‘Heartsease’. To Shelley George is a God. 

If George sometimes got himself confused with God, it was perhaps not altogether his own fault. His second wife Sophie had tolerated for many years certain manifestations of privilege enjoyed by all the deities, from Zeus down. And to girls like Shelley – his sureness, his wit and his compassion were things to lean on without question.

Our story opens with Shelley having invited a young actor Ralph to Heartsease for the weekend.  Ralph is impressed to be staying at the home of the highest paid screenwriter in Hollywood.  Living in a separate part of the house is George’s daughter Monica, married to Carlos. And visiting for the weekend is Jacques Marino, an Austria film director.

And flitting about is see all, hear all, Tessa the housekeeper.

It all looks set for a pleasant weekend until George’s son Mons arrives, still in uniform with Corporal’s stripes. From then on things start to go downhill. Mons doesn’t seem to have the same admiration and regard for his father the rest of the family have. 

The next day was a beautiful June day, but Shelley had a peculiar feeling that the weekend on which she had counted so much was going wrong.  And as the day progresses and George reveals information about her that she would prefer him not to have mentioned, things begin to spiral downwards.

Then George is found dead.

I find books that deal with family murder particularly fascinating, as we first meet and accept the characters at face value, then watch as the writer slowly peals back the facades and reveals the truth beneath. Recommended.
------
Reviewer: Lizzie Sirett

Lucy Michaella Cores Kortchmar (14 January 1912 – August 6, 2003) was born in Moscow. She was the daughter of violist Michael Cores and the niece of violinist Alexander Cores. Her family fled the Russian Revolution and arrived in the United States in 1921. She attended the Ethical Culture school and Barnard College. In 1942 she married Emil Korchmar a screw machine parts manufacturer. They had two children, Michael and Daniel a professional guitarist. Cores wrote two mystery novels, Painted for the Kill (1943) and Corpse de Ballet (1944), featuring female protagonist Toni Ney, a former ballet dancer. She also wrote the mystery Let's Kill George (1946). She also wrote a number of romance and historical novels. At the time of her death, at age 91, Cores was writing a novel about Alexander Puskin.

CrimeFest: Leaving the Scene: CrimeFest Anthology Panel

    Friday, 16 May 2025

13:40 - 14.30

The panel are Cathy Ace, Jane Burfield,
Peter Guttridge, Maxim Jakubowski, 
and the participating Moderator is Donna Moore.

Cathy Ace writes the Cait Morgan Mysteries (Eve Myles will star in the forthcoming TV adaptations by Free@LastTV), and the WISE Enquiries Agency Mysteries. Her work has won Canada’s Bony Blithe, CrimeFictionLover’s Best Indie, IPPY and IBA Awards, and has been twice shortlisted for the CWC’s Awards. She migrated to Canada from Wales aged forty, is a Past Chair of Crime Writers of Canada, and also belongs to Sisters in Crime and the Crime Writers Association.

cathyace.com 

Jane Burfield is an award-winning author of short fiction. She loves to show the darkness that lurks behind the facade of sweet domesticity and respectability. Her story, ‘There Be Dragons’, was a finalist for the Crime Writers of Canada Award of Excellence for Short Stories.

Peter Guttridge has been a regular at CrimeFest since it began. He writes, he interviews more famous writers, this year he will have published a smuggler novel and a non-crime novel, Struggletown. He laments the end of the best crime fiction festival in the world.

Maxim Jakubowski worked for many years in book publishing, owned the Murder One bookstore in London and now writes, edits and translates full-time. He is the author of twenty-one novels, the latest being Just A Girl With A Gun, six short story collections including Death Has A Thousand Eyes, over one-hundred anthologies and is a Sunday Times bestselling author under another name and in another genre. He is a past Chair of the Crime Writers' Association.

maximjakubowski.co.uk 

Donna Moore is the author of crime fiction and historical fiction. Her first novel, a private eye spoof called Go To Helena Handbasket, won the Lefty Award for most humorous crime fiction novel and her second novel, Old Dogs, was shortlisted for both the Lefty and Last Laugh Awards. Her third novel, The Unpicking, is set in Victorian and Edwardian Scotland and the follow-up, The Devil’s Draper, set in 1919, was published in May 2024. 

donnamooreauthor.com 

CrimeFest: Subgenres and Themes: A Life of Crime (Writing)

   Friday, 16 May 2025

13:40 - 14.30

The Panel are Elizabeth Chakrabarty, Sarah Dunnakey,
Jo Furniss, Christine Poulson, 
and the participating Moderator is Sarah Ward.

Dr Elizabeth Chakrabarty was longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize and shortlisted for the Polari First Book Prize in 2022 for her novel Lessons in Love and Other Crimes, published in 2021 by the Indigo Press with her essay ‘On Closure and Crime’. An interdisciplinary writer of fiction, poems and essays, she was also shortlisted in 2022 for a short story published in The Dinesh Allirajah Prize for Short Fiction 2022: Crime Stories (Comma Press). 

elizabethchakrabarty.com 

Sarah Dunnakey has won a Northern Writer's Award for Fiction and the NWA Arvon Award. Her debut novel The Companion - a murder mystery set in the 1930s and the modern day was published by Orion in 2017. In November 2024 Avon published Sarah's The Twelve Murders of Christmas: twelve murderous stories, twenty fiendish puzzles and one final mystery to solve. Sarah also writes and verifies questions for quiz shows including Mastermind, University Challenge and Pointless.

sarahdunnakey.com 

Jo Furniss is the author of crime novels Dead Mile and Guilt Trip, plus psychological thrillers All the Little Children, The Trailing Spouse and The Last to Know. After spending a decade as a broadcast journalist for the BBC, Jo gave up the glamour of night shifts to become a freelance writer and expat. Originally from the United Kingdom, she lived in Singapore, Switzerland and Cameroon. Jo also writes for the Short History Of podcast from Noiser.                           jofurniss.com 

Christine Poulson was an academic with a PhD in History of Art. Then she turned to crime. She has written three medical thrillers, Deep Water (2016) Cold Cold Heart (2017), set in Antarctica, and An Air That Kills (2019). In 2018 she was short-listed for both the Margery Allingham Prize and the CWA Short Story Dagger. Safe as Houses, a collection of her short stories, will be published by Comma Press in November.

 christinepoulson.co.uk  

Sarah Ward is the author of ten crime novels. A Patient Fury, was the Observer book of the month and The Quickening a Radio Times book of the year. She is currently writing two series – one set in New England and the other in West Wales where she lives. She has also written Doctor Who audio dramas. Sarah is former Vice-Chair of the Crime Writers Association and now helps organise Gŵyl Crime Cymru Festival. 

crimepieces.com