Martin Edwards's Blog, page 293

Questions and Answers

For me, the final act of the hugely enjoyable Crimefest 2010 was, as last year, the Criminal Mastermind quiz. The organisers of Crimefest kindly gave me a free pass to the convention on the condition that I returned to 'defend the title' that I won last year. My fellow contestants were Peter Guttridge, Ali Karim and Cara Black, and the quizmaster was Maxim Jakubowski.

The format of Criminal Mastermind follows closely the format of the TV show. You have two minutes each on your chosen special s...

Mike Hodges and John Curran

Two highlights of Crimefest for me were first meetings with two men whose work I admire for very different reasons. One of the advantages of spending a bit of time in the bar at conventions is that you meet some very interesting people, and this was never more the case than when Maxim Jakubowski and his wife introduced me to Mike Hodges, whose first novel is being published by Maxim's new imprint.

Mike Hodges is, of course, the legendary film director whose masterpiece is Get Carter. I've...

Crimefest panels

I Fought the Law was the slightly mysterious title of my first Crimefest panel this year. I moderated an appealing group comprising Diane Janes, Frances Brody, Alison Bruce and Dan Waddell. The theme was crime fact and fiction. All four panellists have had their first crime novels published in recent years, but they were all very professional and this made for a lively discussion, even at 9 a.m., which is not my favourite time of the day. The audience was excellent, too

I hadn't met Dan...

Crimefest 2010

I returned yesterday afternoon from a thoroughly enjoyable trip to Bristol, and I think everyone shared the view that Crimefest 2010 was a highly successful event. Congratulations are due to the hard-working team of volunteers who make sure that things go so smoothly, a tricky task accomplished with good humour and efficiency.

The superb weather was an added bonus and I took the opportunity to have a look round some parts of Bristol within walking distance. It's a rather appealing city, and...

Little Voice

Little Voice, the 1998 movie, is not a crime film – although it features several actors very familiar in roles from crime films or TV series – but has a screenplay which illustrates the interplay between story-line and characterisation. It is based on a play written by Jim Cartwright, and I thought it a well-crafted piece of work.

Cartwright's approach is to create vivid and memorable characters. Jane Horrocks is Little Voice, the almost mute young woman who is devoted to her late father, a f...

Where do crime writers come from?

My researches into the history of the Detection Club have been helped by a friend who supplied me with a list of club members dating back to 1932, not long after the august institution was founded. The committee members, led by G.K.Chesterton as President, were E.C.Bentley, Anthony Berkeley, G.D.H. and M. Cole, Edgar Jepson, Milward Kennedy, John Rhode and Dorothy L. Sayers.

But what really caught my eye was the addresses of the members. A very high proportion of them lived in London and...

Forgotten Book - Murder at Shots Hall

The reissuing of good detective stories that have long been out of print is always a cause for rejoicing, and Tom and Enid Schantz's Rue Morgue Press deserves special praise for reviving a number of very obscure titles, including the two detective novels written by Maureen Sarsfield.

I must confess that I had never heard of her, but Sarsfield was a British writer active for just a few years shortly after the Second World War; she also published a mainstream novel and (as Maureen Pretyman...

Crimefest

Today I set off for Bristol, and Crimefest. I've been looking forward to it, whilst worrying for some time that family health issues would prevent me from attending. Happily, this is not the case, and I am hoping that I'll find the week-end as restorative as I have done on previous occasions.

I'm moderating a couple of panels. 'I Fought the Law' on Friday morning concerns writers who write fact and fiction, and those involved include Frances Brody, Alison Bruce, Dan Waddell and Diane Janes.

On ...

Authenticity

We all want our books to be, and to seem, authentic – don't we? – but there is plenty of room for debate about what that really means. Robert Barnard tells a story about an American critic who praised his deep understanding of the backstage world of opera, when in fact Robert had no first hand knowledge of that milieu at all. But he wrote well enough to persuade the critic that he did.

A book or film that makes obvious mistakes of fact will tend to be panned, but a common experience is that...

Compulsion

The Leopold-Loeb case is one of the most famous American crimes. Two students – intelligent, but not as intelligent as they believed themselves to be – abducted and murdered a young man as a Nietzschean 'experiment' in committing the perfect crime in 1924. Of course, it was far from perfect. They were duly caught and convicted, but Clarence Darrow's advocacy saved them from execution. Loeb was murdered by a fellow prisoner, but Leopold was released after 33 years and died in 1971.

The story i...