2011 Festival Programme

2011 Festival Events

Key:

Thursday 21st July 2011

8.00pm | Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year and Festival Opening Party

Welcome to the crime-writing world’s answer to the Oscars with host, Mark Lawson. It’s easy to let the glamour and the glitz go to your head but a pint of Yorkshire’s finest ale, Theakstons Old Peculier, will help you keep your feet firmly on the glorious northern ground. The anticipation is worthy of the best nail-biting thriller – which of the line-up of likely suspects will be taking home crime fiction’s most hotly-contended award? Watch the winner kill off the competition, and then continue the celebrations and commiserations at the Festival opening party.

Friday 22nd July 2011

9am| SPECIAL GUEST EVENT: Martina Cole

Martina Cole stands accused of having the most electrifying criminal record in the publishing world. She is the most successful British female novelist of the past decade with 18 titles to her name and books sales in excess of ten million. Cole writes about the world she knows and tells it like it is. Her novels, set in the murky underworld of London’s East End and her native Essex, are amongst the most requested in prison libraries: A testament to the truth of Cole’s writing and her eye for detail. Cole is renowned for her tough gutsy female characters, qualities shared by the author herself. An uncompromising Essex blonde with a talent for writing which compares to the hardest-boiled of American writers, Cole is a Brit with true grit.

The contemporary queen of the British crime novel will be cross-examined by 2011 Programming Chair, Dreda Say Mitchell. The verdict? Guilty as charged.

Martina Cole

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10.30am| PANEL DISCUSSION: Penned In

Breaking new ground for the Festival, this panel, chaired by investigative journalist and crime author Duncan Campbell, explores the rehabilitative power of the written word. Campbell talks to former prison inmates who have built new lives through writing; Erwin James, who served a life sentence for murder before becoming a Guardian columnist; ex-football hooligan-turned-writer and publisher Cass Pennant who experienced “more violence than most people will experience in a hundred lifetimes”, Noel ‘Razor’ Smith, a lifelong criminal with 58 convictions, who turned to writing after the death of his son, and Jonathan Aitken, author, former Cabinet Minister, ex-prisoner and campaigner for prison reforms.

12pm| PANEL DISCUSSION: Wrong ‘Uns

Take a walk on the wrong side of the tracks with a panel of authors whose depictions of dark underworlds and complex anti-heroes make compelling reading. Mandasue Heller, Denise Mina, Craig Robertson and Alex Wheatle confront the darkest impulses of our criminal societies to find the human truth at their hearts. Chair, thriller writer James Twining, guides us through the dark alleyways of the writers’ imaginations.

2pm| PANEL DISCUSSION: Old Blood

The Festival’s New Blood panel is now renowned for showcasing the great talents of tomorrow. It’s the crime fiction equivalent of Vanity Fair’s Young Hollywood edition. Nick Stone, Allan Guthrie, Cathi Unsworth and Mark Mills were all past graduates of the panel as debut novelists. Where are they now? At the top of their game. Chair Martyn Waites finds out about their experiences on the road to success.

3.30pm| PANEL DISCUSSION: What Lies Beneath

NJ Cooper steers us on a journey through deep and disturbing waters as she delves beneath the surface to get to grips with the fascination of the psychological thriller. Sophie Hannah, Tana French, Camilla Lackberg and Steve Mosby, all writers whose work success can be measured in reader’s sleepless nights, wade into the depths as they explain why writers and readers alike find this genre so gripping.

Camilla Lackberg

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5pm| PANEL DISCUSSION: Chasing The Story

Hold the front page! It’s not uncommon for journalists to make headlines for turning their careers to crime writing. Here, they go on the record about how their names went from bylines to gracing book spines. True Crime editor of Ireland’s the Sunday World Niamh O’Connor became a bestseller; Stav Sherez spent five years as a music journalist before becoming a CWA Dagger-shortlisted author and since 2005 has been the literary editor of the Catholic Herald, Charles Cumming is a former M16 operative and now Assistant Editor of The Week magazine, and former crime correspondent for the Observer Tony Thompson is regarded as one of the top true-crime writers at work in Britain today. Chairing the event is Henry Sutton, author and books editor of the Mirror.

8.30pm | SPECIAL GUEST EVENT: In Conversation: Linwood Barclay & Lisa Gardner |

The first of the Festival’s North American double-bills: Canadian writer Linwood Barclay enjoyed great popularity as humour columnist for the Toronto Star before his talents as a novelist propelled him on to the world’s stage. His first standalone thriller, No Time for Goodbye, was published in 2007 to critical acclaim and great international success. It was the single best-selling novel in the UK in 2008, selling more than 600,000 copies. Barclay’s following books have enjoyed similar levels of success with no lesser writer than Stephen King saying of the 2010 novel Never Look Away, “His is the best thriller I’ve read in 5 years.”

Barclay will be talking with New York Times best-selling novelist Lisa Gardner. Gardner blames a childhood with too much normality to explain why such a nice girl turned to writing such dark books. Employment as a management consultant was the unlikely trigger to her writing career; she started writing suspense novels for the chance to kill off characters who bore striking resemblances to her bosses. Gardner is now the acclaimed author of several thrillers, including The Killing Hour and Live To Tell.

Linwood Barclay

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10pm| X-Rated: Special Guest Howard Marks

Prepare to trip out as Radio 4’s Mark Lawson meets a man whose own life story proves reality is always stranger than fiction. During the mid-1980s, Howard Marks had 43 aliases, 89 phone lines, and 25 companies trading throughout the world. Bars, recording studios, offshore banks: all were money-laundering vehicles serving the core activity: dope dealing.

During his criminal career Marks had contacts with organisations as diverse as the Mafia, the IRA, MI6 and the CIA, leading the Daily Mail to dub him as ‘the most sophisticated drugs baron of all time.’

A world-wide operation by the Drug Enforcement Agency saw him busted and sentenced to 25 years in prison at the United States Federal Penitentiary. He was released on parole in 1995. His autobiography Mr Nice was recently adapted for film and the book remains an international best-seller and all-time cult classic. 2011 sees the release of Marks’ first novel Sympathy For The Devil.

Saturday 23rd July 2011

9am| SPECIAL GUEST EVENT: Tess Gerritsen

The internationally acclaimed bestselling author Tess Gerritsen grew up dreaming of writing her own Nancy Drew mysteries. But her mother, an immigrant from China, worried writing would get her nowhere. She studied medicine and practised for five years in Honolulu, Hawaii, but knew medicine was always a detour. Her first nine books were romantic thrillers before Harvest, her first medical thriller, shot her into the New York Times bestseller list in 1996. Dubbed the ‘medical suspense queen’, Gerritsen’s novel The Killing Place effortlessly sailed to the top of the Official UK Top 50 in January this year. A phenomenal success when she appeared at the Festival three years ago, in 2011 Gerritsen will be interviewed by broadcaster Jenni Murray.

Tess Gerritsen

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10.30am| PANEL DISCUSSION: The Outer Limits

This could be a case for Mulder and Scully. Andrew Taylor delves into strange new worlds as he investigates the growing popularity of novels which combine the use of paranormal elements with crime fiction. Sarah Pinborough, SJ Bolton, Patricia Duncker and Phil Rickman are the authors whose books go bump in the night.

12pm| PANEL DISCUSSION: New Blood

Vampires may still have them feeling faint at the cinema, but at the Festival we’re thirsty for a different kind of fresh blood. Check out the new kids on the block whose heart-stopping talents threaten to stake the old guard. Val McDermid introduces four hot new things on the edge of stellar success, including SJ Watson, one of the first pupils on the Faber Academy Creative Writing Course who has penned the sensational Before I Go To Sleep, Julia Crouch, whose crime debut Cuckoo delivers a gripping psychological thrill, Gordon Ferris, who swapped a successful career in banking after writing his debut, Truth Dare Kill and Melanie McGrath, who with her first crime novel White Heat has revealed an hypnotic new voice.

Melanie McGrath

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2pm| PANEL DISCUSSION: Legal Eagles

The Bar is a natural habitat for crime authors (we’re talking about the legal kind, of course, but we understand the other kind is quite popular too!). Let’s examine the evidence, M’Lud. The panel stands accused of being guilty of bringing their professional careers in the legal world to bear on the scintillating drama of the fictional courtroom. In the dock are legal eagles, MR Hall, Frances Fyfield, Martin Edwards and Helen Black, while nationally-renowned lawyer Peter McCormick, Senior Partner of McCormick’s Solicitors, takes the judge’s bench.

Frances Fyfield

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3.30pm| PANEL DISCUSSION: Vice Society

Immoral? Depraved? Degrading? The depiction of sex and vice in crime fiction is always a loaded topic. Do writers who explore the subject exploit the already exploited? Or do they serve an important purpose in illuminating areas too murky for the delicate sensibilities of the mainstream? Authors James McCreet, Val McDermid and Adam Creed are joined by former senior police officer Jackie Malton, the real-life inspiration for Prime Suspect’s, Jane Tennison. Author and journalist SJ Parris chairs.

5pm| SPECIAL GUEST EVENT: In Conversation: David Baldacci & Joseph Finder

Our second match of American heavyweights: In the blue corner, former attorney turned blockbuster novelist, David Baldacci. Baldacci holds the publishing world to ransom dominating the bookshelves of more than 80 countries and selling over 100 million books. Film adaptations of his work include Absolute Power with Clint Eastwood and Gene Hackman. A regular on the New York Times bestseller list, his books even bridge the political divide with both George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton cited as fans.

In the red corner, Joseph Finder. His plan was to become a spy. Instead he became a bestselling thriller writer winning a few awards along the way, including the International Thriller Writers Award for Best Novel for Killer Instinct and the Barry and Gumshoe Awards for Best Thriller for Company Man.

His first novel The Moscow Club was named by Publishers Weekly as one of the ten best spy thrillers of all time and was published in 30 countries. The acclaimed High Crimes became a film starring Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman. His novels have seen him hailed as “the CEO of suspense”. His latest is the second in the Nick Heller series, Buried Secrets.

David Baldacci

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6.15pm| Criminal Consequences Dinner & MC Beaton 75th Birthday Celebration

Join the Festival’s Reader-in-Residence Martyn Waites for a delightfully devious dining experience. With the help of the crime author at your table you’ll join forces with your fellow diners to compete in a fiendish game of Criminal Consequences. Guest authors hosting tables this year include: Helen Black, CJ Box, Alison Bruce, Adam Creed, Charles Cumming, Patricia Duncker, Christa Faust, Elena Forbes, James Forrester, Elly Griffiths, James McCreet, Leigh Russell, EV Seymour, Oliver Stark, Danny Miller and Anne Zouroudi

During the dinner we’ll also be celebrating a special woman. Incredibly, the modern day queen of crime fiction MC Beaton will be turning seventy-five in 2011. The creator of Agatha Raisin and Hamish Macbeth will be hosting a table and giving us the opportunity to raise a glass to her wonderful life and work.

MC Beaton

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8.30pm | SPECIAL GUEST EVENT: Lee Child’s ‘Room 101’

He sells a book somewhere in the world every second. He’s as rakishly charismatic as his action hero Jack Reacher. And he’s known as the nicest man in crime. We’ve begun to wonder if Lee Child might just be too good to be true, and so we’ve invited him to reveal his darker side by asking Child to select his crime writing pet hates and make the case for consigning them to Room 101.

You can find out a lot about a person when you know what really gets on their nerves. Get closer to the internationally bestselling author than ever before with the help of Independent columnist Christina Patterson, who will be the gatekeeper Child will need to convince of his choices.

Lee Child

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10pm| CABARET EVENT: Late Night Quiz

We’re not saying it gets deadly serious, but there are quizzes and then there’s the Theakstons Old Peculiar Crime Writing Festival quiz. The crème de la crème of crime fiction fans, authors and publishers show no mercy as they battle it out to prove who the real criminal masterminds are. This is your chance to test your team’s knowledge against some of the best brains in the crime business. Quizmasters Dreda Say Mitchell and Mark Billingham ask the questions to determine who will be waving aloft the coveted cup.

Sunday 24th July 2011

10am| PANEL DISCUSSION: No Place Like Home

Creating a sense of place so convincing the location becomes almost another character is a trick many authors attempt but few truly master. Four authors who have successfully staked their claim and taken ‘ownership’ of particular locations through their work share the secrets behind capturing a location and rendering it real in words. Laura Wilson (London) will be your tour guide as Anne Zouroudi (Greece), CJ Box (Wyoming), Urban Waite (Seattle), and Elly Griffiths (Norfolk) journey through the backdrops that bring their fictional worlds to startling life.

11.30am| SPECIAL GUEST EVENT: Dennis Lehane

Before becoming a full-time writer, Dennis Lehane worked as a counsellor with children with special needs and histories of abuse, waited tables, parked cars, drove limos, worked in bookstores, and loaded tractor-trailers. Now, he can barely write a shopping list without Hollywood optioning it. His New York Times bestsellers include Gone, Baby, Gone; Mystic River; Shutter Island; and The Given Day. Mystic River prompted Elmore Leonard to declare: “Boy, does he know how to write”. The movie of the book, directed by Clint Eastwood won Academy Awards for Sean Penn as Best Actor and Tim Robbins for Best Supporting Actor. Gone Baby Gone starred Morgan Freeman and Ben Affleck and Shutter Island featured Leonardo DiCaprio. To add to his too-cool-for-school status, he also penned three episodes of the acclaimed HBO series, The Wire.

Lehane is interviewed by the acclaimed British author Mark Billingham, whose Thorne series was recently adapted by Sky, starring David Morrissey.

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Dennis Lehane

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