‘Nothing But the Truth’ by Robyn Gigl

Published by Verve,
31 October 2024.  
ISBN: 978-0-85730-887-0 (PB)

 Erin McCabe has come a long way since she won her first big case; but even as an experienced defence lawyer whose skills are in demand, she still finds herself battling with a politicized and corrupt American legal system. In the fourth book in Robyn Gigl’s powerful series the corruption lies at the heart of the case – but even Robyn doesn’t realize how deep it goes until it’s almost too late.

She is called on to defend Jon Mazer, a policeman accused of killing a journalist, and at first it looks like an open and shut case. But open and shut cases are something of a speciality with Erin; in the face of apparently unassailable evidence, the defendant says he is innocent and she believes him. The journalist, who is black,  was working on an exposé of a malicious and prejudiced faction in the police force. The accused man, who is gay and himself a victim of the faction, was one of his sources, but the DNA and fingerprint evidence appear to be watertight.

The prosecution erects hurdle after hurdle as Erin sets out to gather information to build her case. To make things even more complicated, her partner Duane Swisher is black, and Erin is transgender, making them both prime targets for the prejudice, which is wide-ranging as well as deep-rooted.

The battle to build a case for the defence is played out against a background of personal issues which prove almost as complicated. Erin is about to be married to Mark, whose family are refusing to come to terms with her transgender status. His sister Molly is his only supportive relation; she is in a same-sex relationship, and she and her partner are keen to have a child. This triggers a longing in Erin, whose own family have only recently begun to accept her as a woman – all except her mother, who was positive about it from the start.

It would be easy for the sexual politics to take centre stage and overshadow the main event, which of course is Erin and Duane’s determined quest for justice for Jon Mazer. But Robyn Gigl is too skilled a storyteller to allow that to happen; she uses both strands to build a tale which illustrates the flaws which mar the American legal system – and does it through the medium of characters it’s easy to believe in.

The ending carries a hint that the series may be drawing to a close, but I can only hope this isn’t Robyn Gigl’s intention. She has created an engaging cast of regular characters and displays a neat hand with the good and bad guys who people each story. I’m sure I’m not alone in hoping for more of Erin and Duane’s cases.     
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Reviewer: Lynne Patrick

Robyn Gigl is an attorney who has been honoured by the ACLU-NJ for her work with the transgender community. A frequent lecturer on diversity issues, she lives in New Jersey, where she continues to practice law by day, and work on her next Erin McCabe novel by night.

Lynne Patrick has been a writer ever since she could pick up a pen, and has enjoyed success with short stories, reviews and feature journalism, but never, alas, with a novel. She crossed to the dark side to become a publisher for a few years and is proud to have launched several careers which are now burgeoning. She lives in Oxfordshire in a house groaning with books, about half of them crime fiction.

‘The Long Water’ by Stef Penney

Published by Quercus
4 July 2024.
ISBN: 978-152942567-3

It’s May in Nordland, the land-locked north of Norway within the Arctic Circle, at the town of Fauske by the long water within a former mining valley. The oldest pupils in the school are high with expectation of freedom at last. The pranks are mostly harmless, but four boys known as the Hellraisers are pushing to see just how much they can get away with. Until one of them goes missing in the mountains...

This complex, atmospheric thriller is a wonderful read. The small-town feel is created by a large cast of characters, all interconnected, and the narration moves between them. After a prologue introducing us to the area, the oldest of them takes over. Svea, who’s the only first-person narrator, lives alone with her dog, going only occasionally into town to meet up with an old schoolfellow, Odd Emil. It’s clear she has baggage from her past: a Nazi father, a bad relationship with her mother, a sister who went missing, an estranged daughter. Svea and Odd Emil’s grandchildren go to school together: Svea’s grand-daughter Elin is another key character, living with her pastor father, Eskil, and negotiating the difficulties of today’s teenage world by declaring herself gender-fluid, a state which Penney treats with subtlety and understanding. Another third-person narrator is Elin’s best friend, Benny, also in a single-parent family; his mother teaches yoga and runs a walking-centre up in the mountains. The children’s teacher, Marylen, is Eskil’s love-interest, and Elfin’s mother also reappears, once the valley is news-worthy enough to interest her journalist boyfriend. It’s a slow-burn novel: the boy going missing is announced in the prologue, and then Penney takes us back to meet all the characters and find out about their lives. Once the boy disappears, we’re plunged right into what it means to the whole community, and the cast is joined by Hanne Duli, the local police inspector charged with running the investigation. The landscape is beautifully described, and the Norwegian way of life brought out. The pace picks up once the boy goes missing, and we gradually realise nothing is as simple as it seems. The book ends in a surprising double-twist.

This is an unusual crime story, more like a novel, with a vividly-described setting and interesting characters, particularly the young people – we were taken right into the heart of their complicated lives in today’s world. The plotting was clever, and the ending satisfying. Highly recommended.
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Reviewer: Marsali Taylor

Stef Penney is a film-maker and writer. She grew up in the Scottish capital and turned to film-making after a degree in Philosophy and Theology from Bristol University. She made three short films before studying Film and TV at Bournemouth College of Art, and on graduation was selected for the Carlton Television New Writers Scheme. She has also written  and directed two short films; a BBC 10 x 10 starring Anna Friel and a Film Council Digital Short in 2002 starring Lucy Russell. Also writes Historical Mystery & General fiction, 

Marsali Taylor grew up near Edinburgh, and came to Shetland as a newly-qualified teacher. She is currently a part-time teacher on Shetland's scenic west side, living with her husband and two Shetland ponies. Marsali is a qualified STGA tourist-guide who is fascinated by history, and has published plays in Shetland's distinctive dialect, as well as a history of women's suffrage in Shetland. She's also a keen sailor who enjoys exploring in her own 8m yacht, and an active member of her local drama group.  Marsali also does a regular monthly column for the Mystery People e-zine.

 Click on the title to read a review of her recent book Death At A Shetland Festival

www.marsalitaylor.co.uk

‘Best Crime Stories Of The Year’ Volume 04

Edited by Anthony Horowitz and Otto Penzler.
Published by Head of Zeus,
26 September 2024.
ISBN: 978-103590976-6 (HB)

A fantastic selection of Crime stories published in 2023 and selected and edited by the above authors. 

There are 20 stories - all completely different and very original plus a bonus story by L. Frank Baum an author from the Golden Age of Crime Fiction, who died in 1919 after writing numerous famous stories including The Wizard of Oz. 

I enjoyed all the stories especially those with a surprising twist at the end.  The stories cover a wide range of styles and themes and although there are some gruesome murders along the way there is generally a sense of redemption or retribution at the end. 

I can't think of a better Christmas present to buy for Crime Literature loving family and friends!  As an introduction to good Crime writing this anthology is also a great potential gift. 
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Reviewer: Toni Russell

Anthony Horowitz is the author responsible for creating and writing some of the UK's most loved and successful TV series, including Midsomer Murders and Foyle's War.He has also written two highly acclaimed Sherlock Holmes novels, The House of Silk and Moriarty; a James Bond novel, Trigger Mortis; and his most recent stand-alone novel, Magpie Murders, was a Top Five Sunday Times bestseller.He is on the board of the Old Vic Theatre, and was awarded an OBE for his services to literature in January 2014. 

Otto Penzler is the proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City. He was the publisher of The Armchair Detective, the Edgar-winning quarterly journal devoted to the study of mystery and suspense fiction, for seventeen years. Mr. Penzler was the founder of The Mysterious Press, which has now become part of the Warner publishing empire; he also created the publishing firm of Otto Penzler Books, which is now an imprint at Carroll & Graf, and The Armchair Detective Library, a publishing house devoted to reprinting classic crime fiction for the collector and library markets.

‘The Case of the Lonely Accountant’ by Simon Mason

Published by Riverrun London,
11 September 2024.
ISBN 978 152942 599-4 (PB)

When Donald Bayliss (Don), Chief Accounting Officer and Vice President for Asset Management at Marshall Worth’s office in Bournemouth left the meeting he was chairing in 2008, those present assumed he would return in a few minutes. He didn’t. The next morning a bag containing the suit he’d been wearing was found near the sea. After the normal searches were made it was concluded that, for some unknown reason, Don had committed suicide.

Thirteen years later Don’s widow, Sylvia, now remarried, found a garish card amongst Don’s old business cards. The only information on it was the name, Dwight Fricker. She googled the name and found that in 2015 Fricker had been convicted of a string of misdemeanors including fraud and extortion. Concerned that Fricker might have been involved with Don’s disappearance, Sylvia rang the police. In their turn, anxious to avoid criticism from Sylvia who was active on their police board, the local police asked Talib, an ex-policeman who works as a ‘Finder’ of missing persons, to investigate what had happened to Don.

To begin with, nobody in Bournemouth had a bad word to say about Don. He seemed to be everybody’s idea of a quiet, decent, kind, and considerate individual who liked helping youngsters. Gradually though, a different side of Don’s character began to emerge. A prison visit to Dwight Fricker established that Don had been consorting with criminals and visiting night clubs. A lady at Marshall Worth described Don as a predator and a manager gave Talib sight of a report showing that Don was being investigated for embezzling company funds. Who to believe, and how to reconcile such discrepancies in Don’s character?

The Case of The Lonely Accountant is Simon Mason’s second novella featuring Talib, the ‘Finder’ of missing persons. That Talib should perform this service is especially poignant as we learn in this story and in Mason’s previous novella (Missing Person: Alice), that Talib is continuously haunted by the loss of his parents and of his wife and son.

In The Case of the Lonely Accountant, Talib shares lodgings with Mac, a youngish lady from New Zealand who, albeit from a completely different perspective, understands and sympathises with his position.  Mac shares Talib’s interest in literature and the two of them compare notes about Stevenson’s characters Jekyll and Hyde and the contrary features or the co-existence of good and bad seen within Don Bayliss’ character. Throughout the novella’s ingenious writing we are given many pointers as to why and how Don disappeared. But Talib has to make a second trip to New York, the home of Marshall Worth’s head office, before all is revealed. Only then can we appreciate all the clues and odd behaviours that have been so diligently planted along the way.

I have read both these novellas and feel that there is no reason why the second one cannot be read before the first. Indeed, reading the second one first might well increase the appreciation of the first.
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Reviewer Angela Crowther.

Simon Mason is an author of children's and adult books. His first adult novel, a black comedy entitled The Great English Nude, won the Betty Trask first novel award and Moon Pie was shortlisted for the Guardian Children's Fiction prize. Running Girl was his first story starring Garvie Smith. Simon lives in Oxford with his wife and their two children. 

Angela Crowther is a retired scientist.  She has published many scientific papers but, as yet, no crime fiction.  In her spare time Angela belongs to a Handbell Ringing group, goes country dancing and enjoys listening to music, particularly the operas of Verdi and 

INDEPENDENT PUBLISHER JOFFE BOOKS

CELEBRATES TWO OF THE TOP FOUR MOST-READ AUTHORS 

Independent publisher Joffe Books celebrates two of the top four most-read authors of the last decade, with a billion pages read of each in Kindle Unlimited.

Joffe Books is very proud to publish two of the most-read authors of the last decade as Amazon Books celebrates ten years of Kindle Unlimited. Two of the most popular authors in the UK, crime writer Joy Ellis has had over 1.2 billion pages read of her books in that time and Faith Martin over 1 billion pages read.

Joffe Books itself also celebrated its tenth anniversary this year. Built from nothing by former artist Jasper Joffe, it has become one of the largest independent publishers in the UK with over 5,000 titles and millions of books sold every year. It now has 20 full-time staff in its Shoreditch HQ.

Joy Ellis was out of print when Jasper succeeded in tracking her down in 2016 via a story in a local Lincolnshire newspaper and persuaded her to sign up with his eponymous publishing company.

 Since then, she has sold more than 3 million books, and her Jackman & Evans series is currently in development for TV with Richard Armitage’s White Boar Films and Sprout Pictures. Richard Armitage says: “I believe Joy Ellis is the closest thing we have to a contemporary Agatha Christie.”

Faith Martin, having written for nearly 30 years, became an overnight success with Joffe Books in 2019. She has written more than 60 novels under many pseudonyms and in several genres, including cosy mysteries and romance, but she has at last reached well-deserved mass market success and bestseller status.

Jasper Joffe, CEO says: “I couldn’t be happier to see two of our wonderful writers reaching so many readers. We built Joffe Books with Joy and Faith: utter joy in publishing our authors’ books and total faith in their talent!”

Joy Ellis says: “Totally amazed at the news and a huge thank-you to my wonderful readers and my equally wonderful publisher for making it happen. Overwhelmed.”

Faith Martin says: “I’m totally stunned. This news came out of the blue and was certainly something I never expected. My first reaction is to say a massive thank-you to all my readers, since, without them, there wouldn’t have been this news at all.”

Kate Nash, Faith Martin’s literary agent says: “Faith Martin’s novels are incredibly popular among a wide readership and it’s a real testament to her talent to see her up there among the very most popular authors in the UK.”

“Amazon Books is celebrating ten years of Kindle Unlimited — a digital reading subscription service allowing customers to read as much as they want on any device with the Kindle app, choosing from millions of eBooks, thousands of audiobooks and hundreds of magazines.

“First introduced in 2014, Kindle Unlimited was designed to give customers the freedom to explore genres, discover authors, and dive into a world of audiobooks and magazine subscriptions. Since 2014, Kindle Unlimited members have read more than 3 billion books globally.” Amazon press release

The top five most read authors on Kindle Unlimited in the UK over the last ten years:

1) J.K. Rowling

2) LJ Ross

3) Joy Ellis (Joffe Books)

4) Faith Martin (Joffe Books)

5) Michael Anderle

About Joffe Books : Founded in 2014 by Jasper Joffe, we at Joffe Books pride ourselves on our history of innovative publishing. Thanks to the unflagging passion and dedication brought by everyone in Team Joffe, we have built a reputation for crafting great books for readers, long-term relationships with authors and agents, and fleet-footed marketing of the books we love. We are very proud to have been shortlisted for Independent Publisher of the Year at the British Book Awards for the last five years. We won the IPG Trade Publisher of the Year in 2023 and Best Publisher at The People’s Book Prize 2024.

‘Close To The Edge’ by Anna Britton

Published by Canelo London,
12 September 2024. 
ISBN: 978-80436-526-7 (PB)

When DI Juliet Stern and DS Gabe Martin are both shot in the shoulder outside Southampton Crown Court there is no shortage of suspects.  These include the three Galanis brothers who control most of the serious crime in the area, Timothy Dunlow and his son Terence who had recently been investigated and then exonerated for a fatal shooting, and Superintendent Douglas Frey, a police officer forced to retire early after Juliet and others accused him of sexual harassment. Whilst everyone is busy with the shootings, the situation is complicated further when art student, Henry Garside, is reported missing by his distraught parents.

Gabe’s injuries are less serious than Juliet’s and she continues working. Close To The Edge is book two of what I assume will become a Stern and Martin police procedural series.  I haven’t read the first book, but it is clear that Juliet and Gabe have a decidedly unequal relationship. Juliet focuses on work to the exclusion of virtually everything else. Gabe, who has no insight into Juliet’s array of horrible domestic problems, is intensely loyal to her colleague. So, when Juliet asks Gabe to keep her investigations into Douglas Frey a secret, Gabe does so, but she gets into trouble when DI Paul Willis finds out. He restricts Gabe’s limited involvement still further. Undaunted, and helped by junior colleagues, Gabe continues to follow leads. Her boyfriend Ollie, and her very friendly Alsatian dog, Artie, who both feature prominently throughout the book, provide distraction, food and TLC.

Anna Britton is a natural story teller. Close To The Edge is one of those books that you just can’t put down until you know “who done it.”  The story rolls along effortlessly with an attractive and variable collection of characters whose interpersonal relationships, both domestic and professional, are captured beautifully. In addition, you end up really needing to know what’s going to happen to the characters in the future.  I will be looking out for book three in the series and going back to read the first one, Shot in the dark.
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Reviewer Angela Crowther

Anna Britton lives on the Isle of Wight with her husband and their chronically clumsy Labrador. An avid reader, she began writing around ten years ago and hasn’t stopped since. Anna works as a freelance editor and loves helping out other authors. When not filling her head with stories, Anna enjoys baking (and eating) cakes and exploring rivers in her kayak.

Angela Crowther is a retired scientist.  She has published many scientific papers but, as yet, no crime fiction.  In her spare time Angela belongs to a Handbell Ringing group, goes country dancing and enjoys listening to music, particularly the operas of Verdi and Wagner.

Coming Soon: City of Destruction by Vaseem Khan

 
Published by Hodder & Stoughton
29 November 2024

The 5th Book in the Malabar House series.

A political rally ends in tragedy when Persis kills a lone gunman as he attempts to assassinate India's divisive Home Minister, a man calling for war with neighbouring Pakistan.
With the Malabar House team tasked to hunt down his co-conspirators, Persis is given a second case when the burned body of an unidentified white man is found on a Bombay beach.
Meanwhile, Scotland Yard criminalist Archie Blackfinch, lies in a hospital fighting for his life, as all around him the country tears itself apart as a prelude to war...

Vaseem Khan was born in London in 1973. He studied finance at the London School of Economics. He first saw an elephant lumbering down the middle of the road in 1997 when he arrived in the city of Mumbai, India to work as a management consultant. This surreal sight inspired his Baby Ganesh Agency series of 'gritty cosy crime' novels. His aim with the series is to take readers on a journey to the heart of modern India. He returned to the UK in 2006 and has since worked at University College London for the Department of Security and Crime Science. Elephants are third on his list of passions, first and second being great literature and cricket, not always in that order. His first book The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra was a Times Bestseller and an Amazon Best Debut. The second in the series Perplexing Theft of The Jewel in The Crown won the 2017 Shamus Award for Best Original Private Investigator Paperback. His latest book in the Malabar House series is Death of A Lesser God, published in 2023. 

http://vaseemkhan.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/VaseemKhanUK
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/VaseemKhanOfficial/

News From the Continent : Criminal Women

A History of Female Criminality
A Visit to an Exhibition
by Susanne Querfurth

 

What turns a woman into a criminal in the public eye? And is a criminal woman any different from a criminal man? An exhibition in a small museum in the historical German Spa town of Baden-Baden set out to explore this question.

Back the 19th century the scientific theory on criminals in general was as simple as it was faulty. Physical features allowed one to determine quite clearly the character of a person. So from measuring skull circumference, length of nose and shape of ears common determinators were evolved, enabling to label someone a thief, a whore or a potential murderer. Finally anthropology developed a highly stylistic and racist set of „criminal types“, making it possible to judge and condemn individuals on first sight. A few decades later, the Nazis really went to town with ideas like that.

To ask with Professor Higgins: “Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” Interestingly, along similar lines of “scientific” reasoning as above, based on their physical features women were thought to be prone to committing certain misdeeds or crimes rather than others. On the one hand they were by nature determined for motherhood and therefore at the same time capable of and victimized by much more intense and raw emotion than men. In other words: deeply loving but a bit unstable and not to be trusted. Also, to be able to give birth they would clearly feel less physical pain than men. Any physical discomfort of theirs could therefore be disregarded as hysterics. One scientist compared women to “big children”, with more “bad traits” than men.

According to his theory, women were rather leaning to crimes like prostitution than to more violent acts. 

A similar bias quite likely led to a spectacular court ruling in the case of Lizzie Borden, defendant in an American axe murder trial, says the crime psychologist Lydia Benecke.  One argument in Borden’s acquittal was that such a crime would not have been in her nature as a woman. Futile but interesting it might be to speculate about the outcome of the ruling, had the means of the murder been poison – widely regarded as a “female” weapon.

A different case of a woman who committed atrocious crimes is that of the Hungarian Countess Elisabeth Báthory in the 17th century. She tortured and killed a number of young women, aided by her staff of equally cruel and loyal servants. A century after her death a male cleric invented a completely fictitious tale about the Countess having once punished a servant girl whereby a droplet of blood fell on her hand. Because she afterwards perceived the spot as rejuvenated she started to kill young women and bathed in their blood to stay young. This story about the “Vampire Countess” is still being recounted today although it is nothing more than a fairytale.

In both cases the gender of the perpetrator influenced the perception of their guilt. Either it was unthinkable that a woman could have committed an atrocious murder, or she had to be demonized to explain the deed. And in both cases modern psychology can well explain the psychopathological personality traits that might have led to the respective murders, very much regardless of gender.

Throughout the exhibition I learned that gender is the main factor influencing society’s judgment of deviant behaviour of women. 

During the Nazi rule in Germany we find a rising criminalization of political actions and opinions. One means of repression was to let more and more perpetrations fall under the death penalty.

Women had emancipated from the role model of the late 19th century and the German Empire during and after WW I. National Socialism aimed to reverse this development – independent and self assured women did not fit the Nazi ideal of womanhood.

This led to criminalization and in many cases even euthanasia of those who did not fit within the narrow definition of “normal”. Among others the exhibition portraits two artists who were committed to mental
institutions and concentration camps.

Painter Eva Schulze-Knabe was found guilty of supporting both communists and the resistance and was incarcerated, while her husband was sentenced to death. She managed to continue drawing self portraits on scraps of paper, thus working as an artist throughout the ordeal and giving insights into the brutal reality of her prison. Her artist friend Hildegard Seemann-Wechler suffered from a mental illness and was committed to an institution, sterilized and finally killed in 1940.

That the husband, Herr Schulze, was executed while his wife went to prison aligns with a then common tendency to judge the deeds of women not independently but rather as actions of loyalty to or influenced by their spouses than deeds of their own volition. Overall, men tended to be prosecuted for criminal offences, women for behaviour against social norms which often also covered aspects of mental illness or sexual behaviour.

Prostitution as a crime makes up another substantial part of the exhibition. The wide spread opinion in the 19th and early 20th century was divided between two theories that were logically not completely compatible. It was understood that social problems like poverty, broken families or alcoholism made prostitution the only means of income available to many women. Then again, it was seen as a decision, an act of free will to succumb to those pressures or temptations and prostitute oneself. And girls, being the weaker gender and suffering worse under the bad social circumstances than boys did, would therefore not be educated or morally strong enough to make better decisions for their lives. Their weakness lead them into crime.

What about the other person involved in the deal, the punter, one might ask? He was rather seen as being seduced and not as a party in a criminal act. Unsurprisingly, double standards are applied here as well. We can finally suggest an answer to Professor Higgins’ question: because society won’t allow her to be.

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Criminal Women. Eine Geschichte der weiblichen Kriminalität. Museum LA8 Baden-Baden, May 5, 2023 –February 29, 2024Volume accompanying the exhibition: Jadwiga Kamola, Sabine Becker,  Ksenija Chochkova Giese (Hg.):Criminal Women. Eine Geschichte der weiblichen Kriminalität, Verbrecher Verlag Berlin 2023C. Lombroso und C. Ferrero: Das Weib als Verbrecherin und Prostituierte, Hamburg 1894. 

Susanne Querfurth is a member of the Murderous Sisters (Mörderische Schwestern)
Germany. Her short story about an incident on a commuter train won a prize at a Crime Festival although it leaves open whether a crime has been committed at all. Susanne loves to read any genre but especially adores the great female crime writers. She works in HR and lives with her husband and a tortie cat in a wine region often dubbed the German Tuscany.

St Hilda’s Crime Fiction Weekend

9-11 August 2024

by Lizzie Sirett

The first time I attended the St Hilda’s conference was in 1997. It was my first experience of a crime fiction conference and I loved it. So much so, that I attended for the next 23 years. 
Then covid struck.
Because of parking restriction during the building work they were doing I hadn’t recently attended, but I did this year. Firstly, the building alteration to the college are simply magnificent. No don't panic as you can see from the picture above, the buildings haven’t been changed, just more have been added.

As in previous years, the weekend conference has a theme.
For this the 31st year the theme was

 A Dance to the Music of Crime
the Artful path to murder.

After the welcome at 5pm, we all gathered to meet Joan Cockin’s Granddaughter,
see photo left with Triona. And a chance to buy
Deadly Earnest.
Recently re-published by Galileo Publishers.

Afterwards we  all made our way to dinner, held as in previous years in the beautiful wood panelled dining room in the building you see above. 

  

Rev. Richard Coles has been a chancellor of the university of Northampton since 2017 and is a former Honorary Chaplain to the Worshipful company of Leathersellers.

His first novel in the series. The Canon Clement Mysteries
was a number one bestseller

www.richardcoles.com

On Saturday after a welcome by Sarah Hillary, the first speaker was 
Mark Billingham.

I would like to say that I enjoyed his enjoyment of country and western music in relation to his protagonist, and to a degree I did, until he trashed  jazz. Far too much bloody opera and jazz, if you ask me, he said.
Being a great lover of both opera and jazz, I decided to tune out at that point. My friend David Whittle, also a jazz and opera fan, booed loudly, so I joined in.

Following Mark there were talks by

  Erin Kelly who spoke on: Murder on the Dance Floor.
Doug Johnstone: A Lifetime of Dancing About Architecture
Saima Mir: From Bollywood to Bestseller
Lucie Whitehouse: Is it Different for Girls?

The 5-6pm slot was a talk by David Whittle on Edmund Crispin. David has provided…...

‘A Speaker’s Perspective....’

I was thrilled and flattered in equal measure when asked to speak at this year’s St Hilda’s weekend. The first time I lectured about Edmund Crispin was at the second such event in 1995. To be honest, looking back I’m surprised I knew enough about him to give a talk at the time as I’d only just started my researches for the biography I eventually published.

This year’s theme, A Dance to the Music of Crime, couldn’t be more suited to a writer who was also a composer under his real name of Bruce Montgomery. And I’m an admirer of Anthony Powell’s great novel sequence, whose title (after Poussin’s painting, of course) provided the pun in the year’s theme.

Having fought my way into Oxford off the M40, a warm welcome was provided by the organisers, and it was lovely to be reacquainted with Jean Harker who had invited me in 1995. I was able to remind the Rev. Richard Coles of the time I conducted him in a choir in Boston Parish Church when he was the curate there, and I was particularly pleased to meet Jake Lamar whose jazz-age novel Viper’s Dream I reviewed enthusiastically in Mystery People last year and which subsequently won this year’s CWA Historical Dagger.

Despite (or, perhaps, because of) the theme, there was a wide variety of talks. Joan Cockin’s grand-daughter provided a welcome introduction to the extraordinary life and times of this re-discovered author that had many of us scuttling off to buy her recently re-published novels. On Saturday morning Mark Billingham, in Songs in the Key of Murder, drew up battle lines after making disobliging remarks about the influence of jazz in crime (‘far too much bloody jazz, if you ask me’ he wrote in the outline for his talk). Jake Lamar provided a robust defence of the genre in his Once Upon a Time in Harlem on Sunday. Mind you, sitting with Mark, Doug Johnstone and Mick Herron amongst others on Saturday night in a neighbouring pub showed just how much the three know about rock (this from someone whose teenage musical rebellion – I was a cathedral chorister – peaked with The Carpenters and Barry Manilow). It was a novel experience to be ejected from a pub with sundry best-selling authors – not, sadly, because of bad behaviour but merely because it was closing time (Crispin would have been proud of us).

Those enthusiasts in attendance were certainly spoilt for choice. Other talks ranged from ballet to Bollywood, opera to Wimsey. Philip Gooden’s murder mystery challenge, Murder Con Brio, followed the PD James Dinner and featured some deliciously over-acting authors. It was entirely appropriate, following his comments about jazz, that Mark Billingham got his comeuppance and was unmasked as the villain.

 If you haven’t been to the St Hilda’s weekend, I encourage you to give it a go. It is a thoroughly enjoyable and relaxed mix of enthusiasts and writers in a gorgeous setting. Where else, for instance, would you get someone (in this case me) trying to explain to someone who grew up in The Bronx (Jake Lamar) exactly what the Carry On films were?* And all in the name of crime.  * In case you didn’t know, under his real name Edmund Crispin  composed the scores for the early Carry On films

Following drinks on the lawn on the Saturday evening The PD James dinner was served in the beautiful dining room. It has become a tradition for a murder mystery to be executed during the dinner. All the diners have to do is identify the murderer.

I own to be complete rubbish at this but I enjoy watching the people from the top table preforming, They are all without exception brilliant.

 The after dinner speaker was Philip Gooden, who lives in Bath.  He writes both fiction and non fiction. His mystery novels include the Nick Revill series, a sequence based in Elizabethan London and set around Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre.

The third Book in the serries, The Pale Companion, was shortlisted  for the Ellis Peters Historical Dagger Award. He is the author of The Guinness Guide to Better English and the editor of The Mammoth Book of Literary Anecdotes. Each of his Nick Revill mysteries revolves around a Shakespearean play mirroring life - in Sleep of Death the play was Hamlet, in this offering it is Troilus and Cressida.

 Sunday brought us

Ellie Griffiths, 

author of the series of crime novels set in England’s Norfolk County and featuring forensic archaeologist Ruth Galloway.

The first in the series, Crossing Places, featuring forensic archaeologist Ruth Galloway earned a good deal of praise both in Griffiths’ native country, England, and in the U.S. Norfolk Count. The Literary Review termed it “a cleverly plotted and extremely Interesting first novel, highly recommended. 

Since then, Elly has written fourteen further novels in the series. Recently she has written a second series set in Brighton in the 1950’s featuring magician Max Mephisto and DI Stephens. There are seven books in the new series, and an eighth scheduled to be published October 2025.

 Elly said she wrote her first book when she was eleven, it was called The Hair of the Dog,  which, she said must have been something her parents talked about. But in her mind it was to make something better.  She never finished it. Her first four books were published under her real name which is Domenica de Rosa, which in Italian means Sunday of the rose.  She always felt it was a writer’s name, and said she practiced writing her signature.  Although she has an Italian father she was born in London.

After graduating from  King’s College London she worked in a library and then got a job as a publicity assistant at HarperCollins.  She said she  loved working in publishing and eventually became Editorial Director for children’s books. She talked about the enjoyment of writing children’s books and yes, people are killed in her children’s books, but she said the thing to do is just to kill the teachers, not the children.

She talked about her meeting her husband Andy in a city wine bar. He was with a group of lawyers’, they got chatting,  and he told her didn't want to be a lawyer, what he really wanted to be was an archaeologist. She thought, Oh! how sweet, and decided to marry him. 

It was when she was on maternity leave that she started to write her first book, which would become her first published novel, Return to the Italian Quarter.

She had decided not to go back to HarperCollins after her maternity period was up, but was offered ‘A lovely treat’ to edit letterland, which was created to teach phonics using a story-based approach. The set-up was weird, she said, and can only be described as a poisoned chalice. Example: for the letter ‘F’ Fireman Fred’s Hose fits firm in his fist. She did try to point out that some people might see a double meaning there. However, she did write few herself - Poor Peter’s Perfect Pizza and several others.

But the birth of Ruth Galloway was when walking across Titchwell Marsh, Andy mentioned Prehistoric man and said he thought that marshland was sacred, because it’s neither land nor sea, but something in-between, a kind of bridge to the afterlife. As he said these words said Elly, ‘the entire plot of The Crossing Places appeared, fully formed, in my head and, walking towards me out of the mist, I saw Dr Ruth Galloway. And I knew everything about her. I didn’t think that this new book was significantly different from my ‘Italy’ books but, when she read it, my agent said, ‘This is crime. You need a crime name.’ She’d thought of taking her grandmother’s name Helena, but somehow she became Elly.  She recalled this in a later interview with Jane Wood and asked her ‘how did I get to be Elly?’  Jane replied ‘I think it looked a bit tidier’. Hence Elly Griffiths.

She had a two book deal, but was careful to leave the first book with an emotional cliff-hanger. Those of us who have avidly devoured the fifteen books in this series must, like me, be wondering and hoping, will there be more?

www.ellygriffiths.co.uk

My thanks go to the committee. Jake Kerridge, Jean Buchanan,
Mick Herron,  Jane Casey, Carolyn Kirby,
Abir Mukherjee and in particular Sarah Hilary 

who did a marvellous job seemingly to be
everywhere the whole weekend.

As it says in the Brochure,  the St Hilda’s Crime Fiction Weekend is like no other.
It has drawn readers and writers from all over the world for thirty years.

It is truly unique. If you haven’t yet been you are missing
something special.

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