Capital Crime: The One You least Suspect: Dilemmas and Decisions.

Leonardo St Paul's, London 

LONDON STAGE  

 Friday 13 June 2025
13:50 - 14:40

David Goodman, S. M. Govett, Remi Kone, 
and the participating moderator Brian McGilloway,
tackle the big 'what ifs' and discuss how their characters' tough decisions drive their novels
with the King of the moral dilemma.

David Goodman is a novelist and short story writer based in East Lothian, Scotland. His debut novel, 'A Reluctant Spy', is out from Headline Books on September 12th 2024. He writes in a range of genres, from spy novels to space operas, and he has been previously published in Clarkesworld and Analog Magazines. 

S.M. Govett read Law at Trinity College, Oxford, before qualifying as a solicitor in the City. After realising that didn't suit her, she started tutoring before turning her hand to writing, which she discovered was her true calling. She has since authored several bestselling YA novels. She also co-wrote the screenplay for the feature film, T.I.M., which was the no.1 film on Netflix upon release. Believe is her debut adult thriller. She currently lives in London. 

Remi Kone British Nigerian Emmy-nominated producer, has worked on a number of well-known television dramas, such as Killing Eve, Spooks and Lewis. She lives in London.

Brian McGilloway is an author hailing from Derry, Northern Ireland. He studied English at Queens University Belfast, where he was very active in student theatre, winning a prestigious national Irish Student Drama Association award for theatrical lighting design in 1996. He is currently Head of English at St. Columb's College, Derry. McGilloway's debut novel was a crime thriller called Borderlands, which was. shortlisted for a Crime Writers' Association Dagger award for a debut novel.

Capital Crime Festival

Capital Crime: Found in Translation.

Leonardo St Paul's, London 

GOLDSBORO BOOKS STAGE 

 Friday 13 June 2025
12:45 - 13:35

Jón Atli Jónasson, Lex Noteboom, 
Johana Gustawsson, Thomas Enger,
 moderated by Quentin Bates.
Our Bookshelves made richer by these
authors from abroad.

Jón Atli Jónasson  is an Icelandic playwright and screenwriter. He has written for several films. He is a founding member of the Mindgroup, a European umbrella group of people involved in experimental theatre. Considered one of the foremost Icelandic playwrights.

Lex Notebloom studied modern history at the University of Amsterdam. After his studies, he worked as a brand strategist for various advertising agencies while writing a science fiction thriller.The Man With a Thousand Faces is his debut thriller and also his first Dutch language story. It was received very well in the press and was nominated for best Dutch Thriller debut of the year.

Johana Gustawsson,  born in France, has a degree in political science, Johana Gustawsson has worked as a journalist for the French press and television. She married a Swede and now lives in London. She was the co-author of a bestseller, On se retrouvera, published by Fayard Noir in France, whose television adaptation drew over 7 million viewers in June 2015. She is working on the next book in the Roy & Castells series.

Thomas Enger was born in Oslo. but grew up in Jessheim. He has an education in journalism and has also studied sports and history. He worked at the Norwegian online newspaper Nettavisen for nine years. He has composed music and written books since the age of 18. He is also working on a musical. 

Quentin Bates is an English novelist of mystery/crime fiction novels. Quentin found himself working in Iceland for a year, which turned into a decade, and has used some of that experience as well as a university writing course to develop his Gunnhildur series. Although he is British, Quentin is more in line with Scandinavian crime fiction authors. Quentin is also a full-time journalist and feature writer for an obscure nautical trade magazine. 

Capital Crime Festival 

‘The Bad Seeds’ by C J Skuse

Published by Harpercollins,
24 October 2024.
ISBN: 978-0-00821667-2 (PB)

This is the latest in the Sweetpea series.  This is not for the fainthearted as the main character is a serial killer. 

Rhiannon Lewis aka Sweetpea is a relatable young woman who sees her destiny as ridding the world of predatory men.  This is a darkly comic novel and involves the main character fleeing the United States and her injured husband to come to the UK on behalf of her estranged daughter thought to be desperately ill.  The authorities are after her and she is constantly afraid of being caught. 

She is joined in her escape adventures by an ex-Policewoman Nnedi who is theoretically her enemy but turns out to be a co-conspirator.  The plot is too intricate to properly explain but sufficient to say it is both dark and sexy and sometimes outrageous. 

The Bad Seeds are a group of followers who support Sweetpea and encourage her activities and sometimes attempt to emulate them.  I can do no more than quote praise from John Marrs who says 'Makes Hannibal Lecter look like Mary Poppins. 

 Dark, depraved and devilishly delicious. A good read!
------
Reviewer: Toni Russell

C.J. Skuse was born in 1980 in Weston-Super-Mare, England and has first class degrees in creative writing and writing for children and, aside from writing novels, lectures in writing for young people at Bath spa university.  She is the author of the young adult novels Pretty Bad Things, Rockoholic and Dead Romantic (Chicken House) and Monster and the Deviants (Mira Ink). She has recently written the adult crime novels Sweetpea and its sequel for HQ/HarpeCcollins.

www.twitter.com/CJSkuse.  

Toni Russell is a retired teacher who has lived in London all her life and loves the city.  She says, ‘I enjoy museums, galleries and the theatre but probably my favourite pastime is reading.  I found myself reading detective fiction almost for the first time during lockdown and have particularly enjoyed old fashioned detective fiction rather than the nordic noir variety.  I am a member of a book club at the local library and have previously attended literature classes at our local Adult Education Centre.  

Capital Crime: Deception in Crime Fiction.

Leonardo St Paul's, London

LONDON STAGE  

 Friday 13 June 2025
12:45 - 13:35

Mark Edwards, Nicci French,  Erin Kelly, 
and the participating moderator Claire McGowan.
discuss dating games to serial killer ex-lovers,
unreliable witnesses to fooling the reader.

Mark Edwards writes psychological thrillers in which scary things happen to ordinary people. He has sold 5 million books since his first novel, The Magpies was published in 2013, and has topped the bestseller lists numerous times. His other novels include Follow You Home, The Retreat, In Her Shadow, Because She Loves Me, The Hollows and Here to Stay. He has also co-authored six books with Louise Voss. Originally from Hastings in East Sussex, Mark now lives in Wolverhampton with his wife.  

Nicci French is a pseudonym used by Sean French and Nicci Gerrard,  two London journalists who conceive and write together psychological thrillers.

Erin Kelly was born in London in 1976 and studied English at Warwick University. She has worked as a freelance journalist for ten years, specialising in women, health, sex and lifestyle.

Claire McGowan is the author of three crime novels with Headline Books and a former columnist for The Irish News and the Oxford Student. She has also written for The Times, the Guardian, Easy Living, the Bookseller, Stylist, the Dublin Herald, the Irish News, Candis magazine, and the Vagenda blog. She recently turned 32 but still sometimes can’t tell her left from her right in a hurry. 

Capital Crime Festival 

Capital Crime: Crime to Cool You Down This Summer.

Leonardo St Paul's, London

GOLDSBORO BOOKS STAGE 

 Friday 13 June 2025
11:40 - 12:30

Will Dean, Heidi Amsinck, R.O. Thorp, 
and the participating moderator is Ed James. 

Will Dean grew up in the East Midlands, living in nine different villages before the age of eighteen. After studying Law at LSE, and working many varied jobs in London, he settled in rural Sweden with his wife. He built a wooden house in a boggy forest clearing and it’s from this base that he compulsively reads and writes.

Heidi Amsinck is the award-winning author of a Danish crime fiction series featuring a Copenhagen reporter called Jensen. A journalist by background, Heidi spent many years covering Britain for the Danish press, including a spell as London Correspondent for the broadsheet daily Jyllands-Posten. Born in Copenhagen, she now lives in the UK where her work has been broadcast frequently on BBC Radio 4. Her latest novel is Out of the Dark (Muswell Press, April 2025).

 heidiamsinck.co.uk  

R. O. Thorp is an Australian living in Cork, Ireland, where she writes lyrics and herds cats. She was one of the Observer's top 10 debut novelists of 2021, and her writing has won the London Short Story Award and been shortlisted for the BBC Opening Lines Prize. Death on Ice is her first foray into murder mysteries.

 

Ed James is a Scottish author who writes crime fiction novels across multiple series and in multiple locations. His latest series is set in the Scottish Borders, where Ed now lives, starring DI Rob Marshall – a criminal profiler turned detective, investigating serial murders in a beautiful landscape. Set four hundred miles south on the gritty streets of East London, his bestselling DI Fenchurch series features a cop with little to lose and a kidnapped daughter to find. is Police Scotland books are fronted by multiple detectives based in Edinburgh, including Scott Cullen, a young Edinburgh Detective investigating crimes from the bottom rung of the career ladder he’s desperate to climb. The DS Vicky Dodds books put Dundee on the Tartan Noir map, featuring a driven female detective struggling to combine her complex home life with a heavy caseload.

Capital Crime Festival

Capital Crime: Small Town Heroes':

Leonardo St Paul's, London

 LONDON STAGE  

 Friday 13 June 2025
11:40 - 12:30

Tariq Ashkanani, Anna Bailey, Chris Chibnall
and the participating moderator is Robert Rutherford.

Tariq Ashkanani is a solicitor based in Edinburgh, where he also helps run Write Gear, a company that sells high-quality notebooks for writers, and co-hosts Write Gear’s podcast Page One. He had no formal writing training or consultation prior to writing his first book Welcome to Cooper.  

Anna Bailey was born in Bristol in 1995 and spent her childhood in Gloucestershire. She studied Creative Writing at Bath Spa university and wanted to become a journalist, but ended up moving to Colorado and becoming a Starbucks barista instead. In 2018 she returned to the UK, where she enrolled in the Curtis Brown Creative Novel-writing course and wrote her first novel inspired by her experience of living in small-town America. 

Chris Chibnall is a BAFTA, Royal Television Society, Broadcasting Press Guild and Peabody award-winning screenwriter, executive producer, and playwright whose work has been seen, translated and remade all around the world. His television work includes Broadchurch – remade as Gracepoint in the US and Malaterra in France – The Great Train Robbery, Doctor Who, Torchwood and Life on Mars. Death at the White Hart is his debut novel. 

Robert Rutherford had a random mix of jobs before taking the dive into crime writing; he's been a bookseller, pizza deliverer, karate instructor, football coach, and HR Manager. He lives on the North East Coast with his wife, children. He is a founding member of the Northern Crime Syndicate crime-writers group. 

Capital Crime Festival 

Capital Crime: Making History Human.

Leonardo St Paul's, London

GOLDSBORO BOOKS STAGE 

 Friday 13 June 2025
10:35 - 11:25

D V Bishop, Mel Pennant, S.J. Parris,  
and participating moderator Clare Whitfield.
discuss from the Renaissance Venice and Tudor England, to Windrush Birmingham and the criminal underbelly of 1920s Elephant and Castle, discovering the unforgettable characters that bring history to life with their creators:

D. V. Bishop is an award-winning screenwriter, and TV dramatist. His love for the city of Florence and the Renaissance period meant there could be only one setting for his crime fiction debut.

Mel Pennant is an award-winning playwright whose work has appeared in the National Archives, as well as on stage. Born in London, she was raised by an extraordinary village, which included her Jamaican grandparents who moved to England in the 1950s as part of the Windrush generation. Mel is drawn to stories that explore what’s hidden below the surface and celebrate the richness and strength of tight-knit communities.  She lives in London with her family and their dog, Bleu. A Murder for Miss Hortense is Mel’s first novel and she is currently writing another mystery novel starring Miss Hortense. 

S. J. Parris is the pseudonym of author and journalist Stephanie Merritt. It was as a student at Cambridge researching a paper on the period that Stephanie first became fascinated by the rich history of Tudor England and Renaissance Europe. Since then, her interest has grown and led her to create this series of historical thrillers featuring Giordano Bruno. Stephanie has worked as a critic and feature writer for a variety of newspapers and magazines, as well as radio and television. She currently writes for the Observer and the Guardian and is the author of several books and one son.

Clare Whitfield is a UK based writer living in a suburb where the main cultural landmark is a home store/Starbucks combo. She is the wife of a tattoo artist, mother of a small benign dictator and relies on a black Labrador for emotional stability. 

Capital Crime Festival 

Capital Crime: The One percent

Leonardo St Paul's, London

 LONDON STAGE  

 Friday 13 June 2025
10:35 - 11:25

Belinda Bauer, Charlotte Philby,  Charlotte Vassell, 
and the participating moderator Holly Watt.
discuss our fascination with bad people doing
horrible things: 

Belinda Bauer grew up in England and South Africa. She has worked as a journalist and screenwriter, and her script The Locker Room earned her the Carl Foreman/Bafta Award for Young British Screenwriters, an award that was presented to her by Sidney Poitier. She was a runner-up in the Rhys Davies Short Story Competition for "Mysterious Ways," about a girl stranded on a desert island with 30,000 Bibles.

Charlotte Philby worked for the Independent for eight years, as a columnist, editor and reporter, and was shortlisted for the Cudlipp Prize at the 2013 Press Awards for her investigative journalism. Founder of the online platform Motherland.net, she regularly contributes to the Guardian and iNews, as well as the BBC World Service, Channel 4 and Woman's Hour. She has three children and lives in London. Charlotte is the granddaughter of Kim Philby, Britain’s most famous communist double-agent. 

Charlotte Vassell studied History at the University of Liverpool and completed a Master’s in Art History at the School of Oriental & African Studies before training as an actor at Drama Studio London. Other than treading the boards Charlotte has also worked in advertising, executive search and as a purveyor of silk top hats.

Holly Watt started her career at the Sunday Times, before working on the investigation teams at the Telegraph, where she played a key role in exposing the MPs’ expenses scandal, and the Guardian. She is currently a senior reporter at the Guardian before working on the investigation teams at the Telegraph, where she played a key role in exposing the MPs’ expenses scandal, and the Guardian. She is currently a senior reporter at the Guardian.

Capital Crime Festival 

Capital Crime : Masters of Mystery: a panel of crime writing experts.

Leonardo St Paul's, London

 GOLDSBORO BOOKS STAGE 

 Friday 13 June 2025
09:30 - 10:20

Dr Duncan Harding (forensic psychologist),
Graham Bartlett (Police)
and Nicola Williams (practising Judge)
in conversation with participating moderator
(and criminal defence lawyer) Ruth Mancini. 

Dr Duncan Harding is a consultant adolescent psychiatrist, working with adults and children who commit serious crime. He is a specialist member of the Parole Board for England and Wales, and the college lead for expert witnesses at the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Specialising in forensic mental health, he has provided expert testimony in in many court cases involving homicide, serious violence and terrorism, and has conducted research into conduct disorder and criminal psychopathy. He lives in London.

Graham Bartlett was a police officer for thirty years, mainly policed the city of Brighton and Hove. He rose to become a Chief Superintendent and its police commander. He started writing when he left the police in 2013 and, almost by accident, became a police procedural and crime advisor, helping scores of authors and TV writers to achieve authenticity in their drama. Graham runs online crime writing workshops and courses with the Professional Writing Academy and deliver inputs to Masters programmes at the University of Cambridge and the University of East Anglia as well as at the Crime Writing Certificate programme at West Dean College. He lives in Sussex with his wife Julie. 

Nicola Williams started her career as a barrister in private practice, specialising in Criminal Law. She later worked as an Ombudsman both in the UK and abroad, dealing with police and military misconduct. She has been a part-time Crown Court Judge since 2010. She is the author of three legal thrillers. Without Prejudice, Until Proven Innocent (winner of the Diverse Book Awards Readers Choice Award 2024) and Killer Instinct, published July 2024. 
 

Ruth Mancini was born in South-West London and, after graduating, started her career as a marketing executive for a publisher before undertaking a post-graduate diploma in law and retraining as a solicitor. Ruth has spent the past twenty years in and out of courts and police stations, representing those accused of crimes. She still practises as a lawyer for a large criminal law firm with offices in London, conducting advocacy in the courts and defending people arrested at the police station. She also reviews the trial files across the firm and juggles her legal work with writing crime and psychological fiction. Her debut crime thriller In The Blood is a Sunday Times Crime Club pick and a top ten Amazon bestseller. She now lives in Oxford with her husband and two children. 

Capital Crime Festival 

Capital Crime : Terror on and Off the Page.

Leonardo St Paul's, London

LONDON STAGE  

 Friday 13 June 2025
09:30 - 10:20

Chris Carter, Erin E Adams,  Jessie Elland, 
and the participating moderator Andrea Carter,
discuss social injustices in horror and high concept thrillers:

Chris Carter was born in Brazil of Italian origin, he studied psychology and criminal behaviour at the University of Michigan. As a member of the Michigan State District Attorney's Criminal Psychology team, he interviewed and studied many criminals, including serial and multiple homicide offenders with life imprisonment convictions. Having departed for Los Angeles in the early 1990s, Chris spent ten years as a guitarist for numerous Glam Rock bands before leaving the music business to write full-time. He now lives in London. 

Erin E. Adams is a first-generation Haitian American writer and theatre artist. She received her BA with honours in literary arts from Brown University, her MFA in acting from The Old Globe and University of San Diego Shiley Graduate Theatre Program and her MFA in dramatic writing from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. An award-winning playwright and actor, Adams has called New York City home for the last decade. Jackal is her first novel. 

Jessie Elland (born 2000) is an English actress and author, from the North East of England. Elland is known for her role as Chloe Harris in the ITV soap opera Emmerdale. Her first novel The Ladie Upstairs, is published 22 May 2025. 

Andrea Carter graduated in law from Trinity College, Dublin. She qualified as a solicitor and moved to the Inishowen Peninsula in Co. Donegal where she lived and worked for a number of years. In 2005 she transferred to the Bar and moved to Dublin to practise as a barrister. She grew up in Ballyfin, Co. Laois.

Capital Crime Festival 

CrimeFest: Lights! Camera! Murder: Adapting for Film and TV.

  Sunday, 18 May 2025

10:40 - 11:40

The panel are Chris Chibnall, Barbara Nadel,
Barry Ryan, Matthew Sweet, 
and the participating Moderator is Lee Child. 

Chris Chibnall is a BAFTA, Royal Television Society, Broadcasting Press Guild and Peabody award-winning screenwriter, executive producer, and playwright whose work has been seen, translated and remade all around the world. His television work includes Broadchurch – remade as Gracepoint in the US and Malaterra in France – The Great Train Robbery, Doctor Who, Torchwood and Life on Mars. Death at the White Hart is his debut novel.

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.
Contact @barbaranadel.bsky.social 

Barry Ryan has been in television for an eternity. Co-founder of Free@Last TV, he has produced across the genre for most of the major channels including ITV’s Martina Cole's Ladykillers. He is joint showrunner of Agatha Raisin for Sky TV. More adaptations are in the works including Cathy Ace's Cait Morgan mysteries, Simon Brett's wonderful Charles Paris novels, Ian Moore's signature Follett Valley books and Tom Benjamin's Daniel Leicester series. He is addicted to books, television and laughter. 

Matthew Sweet is co-writer, with Mark Gatiss, of Bookish. He is the author of Inventing the Victorians, Shepperton Babylon, The West End Front and Operation Chaos. He has a twenty-five year career in radio and television, and he has been film critic of the Independent on Sunday, photography critic of Newsweek and fashion columnist for 1843/The Economist. His crime novel The New Forest Murders and his biography The Great Dictator: The Life of Barbara Cartland are forthcoming. 

Lee Child is one of the world’s leading thriller writers. It is said one of his novels featuring his hero Jack Reacher is sold somewhere in the world every nine seconds. His books consistently achieve the number-one slot on bestseller lists around the world and have sold over one hundred million copies. Lee is the recipient of many. He was appointed CBE in the 2019 Queen’s Birthday Honours.

jackreacher.com