CrimeFest 2025: Report by Jared Cade

The seventeenth CrimeFest conference, opened on the 15 May 2025. 
At the Grand Mercure Hotel in Bristol.

The conference was spread over 4 days and there were 60 panels
included several interviews.

 For those of you who were unable to attend this year, several 
Mystery People members have contributed short write-ups on one or two of the events and panels that they particularly enjoyed.

Jared Cade writes...

"Just back from CrimeFest in Bristol. The weather was so nice I was tempted on the outward bound journey to get off at Bath Spa where scenes from the 1979 movie Agatha were shot, starring Vanessa Redgrave and Dustin Hoffman. The festival took place at the Bristol Grand Mecure Hotel - scene of many a CrimeFest conferences over the years. It was great to catch up with old friends and make some new ones as well as attend some terrific panels.

The Ghost of Honour was John Le Carre.

Among the panellists were Agatha Christie's publisher David Brawn of HarperCollins (who confided he had found my recently published book Secrets From The Agatha Christie Archives very useful for referencing facts which was very flattering), Lee and Andrew Child of Reacher fame, Tom Harper, Felix Francis (son of Dick, who amused everyone by wearing a yellow tie emblazed with the words: Police Line Do Not Cross), Lindsay Davis (who once got stuck in a deep bath and survived to tell the story), Tom Mead (who is riding a wave of popularity with his locked room mysteries), Victoria Dowd, author of the brilliant Smart Woman Mysteries, and Free at Last TV's Barry Ryan who produces Agatha Raisin for TV. Donna Moore, Zoe Sharp, Louise Mangos and Antony Johnston were among the terrific moderators.

A great festival was capped off for me by having the delightful Barbara Nadel as my travelling companion on the way home. Her Inspector Ikmen novels are terrific reads and have been turned into a television series.

Adrian Muller and Donna Moore and their team have done a great job of organising CrimeFest for the last 16 years and it was supposed to be the last as they are stepping down - however, a last minute reprieve during the
Gala dinner appears to be in the offering with Barry Ryan of Free at Last TV expressing an interest in keeping the festival going. Fingers crossed. Watch this space.

Jared Cade’s most recent book is The Elusive Dietrich.
Click on the title to read the review.