Harrogate Crime Writing Festival, 2006
The Old Swan Hotel, Harrogate

Congratulations from all at chrishigh.com to the winner of the Theakston's Old Peculier Harrogate Crime Writing Festival 2006 - Val McDermid.

Val McDermid is one the nation’s foremost, respected and most popular authors and was nominated for her book The Torment Of Others published by HarperCollins.

Read the Official Theakston’s Old Peculier Harrogate Crime Writing Festival press release (opens in a new browser window)

In just four years, The Theakston’s Old Peculier Harrogate Crime Writing Festival has become established as the premier crime fiction event in Europe, attracting readers and best-selling authors from around the globe.

The 2006 Festival more than built on the success of 2005, with a star-studded line-up, a new venue in the Crime-linked building of The Old Swan Hotel – made famous by being Agatha Christie’s bolt hole in times of strife, eighty years ago – and panels that promised to be both entertaining and informative in equal measure.

A new addition to the event was the introduction of Creative Thursday, which gave enthusiasts the chance to meet the masterminds behind the novels and to pick their brains during workshops. This was extremely well received and many of the “classes” were sold out weeks in advance, as were the author/reader dinners, which were also new for this year.

The second annual Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year was won by Val McDermid for her novel, The Torment Of Others. Val took the trophy from last year’s inaugural winner, Mark Billingham, and rarely, if ever, will a win be more warmly greeted. Ian Rankin, Martin Edwards, Stephen Booth, Lyndsey Ashford and Susan Hill should feel no shame at being beaten to the £3,000 and hand engraved beer barrel that constitute the prize, as their books were all worthy nominations.

Jenni Murray of BBC Radio Four’s Woman’s Hour made the announcement, while Simon Theakston presented the award to an emotional Val.

The panels, as ever, were as diverse in content as they were in opinion. The Great Gender Debate featuring Denise Mina, Ian Rankin, Val McDermid and Mark Billingham, chaired by Natasha Cooper, tried … and largely failed … to determine which gender wrote the better crime novels. The panel was hugely entertaining and not a little heated, or was that just the weather and the room in which it was held? The weather was certainly unseasonal. Who expects temperatures nudging the early-thirties in July in the UK?

A further heated exchange as Australian Shane Malloney, actress and novelist Stella Duffy and author John Connelly debated what it was that made up Unique Voices in writing. It is never easy to pigeon-hole writers and these three – along with Charlie Williams – are all but impossible so to do, as voices became un-uniquely raised after Connelly said that Crime authors “do not experiment widely enough” in their writing.
A little like watching the mixed doubles final after the men’s final at Wimbledon has reached a fifth set tie-break, Building On Success introduced four newly published authors Louise Welsh, Alex Barclay, John Rickards and Michael Robotham how they coped with the excitement of becoming published and the difficulties of writing that crucial second novel.

Ian Rankin, author of the multi-award winning Rebus novels in conversation with the multi-award winning John Harvey, who boasts some 90 plus novels to his catalogue, was enthralling and highly entertaining as both read from as yet unpublished manuscripts. Listening to how these giants got to where they are today was both fascinating and amusing.

At the end of a long, heat-filled-in-more-ways-than-one day, the humour vent was released during Foul Play hosted by Simon Brett, as Stella Duffy and Mark Billingham hammed up a specially written Agatha play for Laura Wilson and Shane Maloney to unravel, in their own inimitable styles. As amusing as you’d expect from a cast such as this, Foul Play was a perfect cue after which to adjourn to the bar.

The beauty of this festival is the accessibility of the authors and their willingness to talk to their readers. 2005 and was good, but 2006 was better, as many congregated into the wee small hours to chat the night away.

The Gritty City saw Margaret Murphy, Chris Simms, Denise Mina and Paul Charles explain how they saw their central locations of Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow and London as integral characters in their stories, and how research was vital to each aspect of each novel.

The debate as to whether Crime will ever be considered good enough to be accepted by the high-brow literary novel lovers to win awards such as The Booker Prize, was re-examined by Ian Rankin, Mo Hayder, Robert Goddard and John Harvey, with the general consensus being that it was unlikely, given that Crime Fiction had to have that integral component of all novels – a story.

American Crime Fiction giant, George Pelecanos, rounded off the day’s panels. The author, whose works include Hard Revolution and The Big Blowdown, spoke with BBC Radio Four Front Row presenter, Mark Lawson, about his career as novelist, television and film scriptwriter. The audience were held in rapt attention throughout and his latest novel, The Night Gardener, was made available prior to publication to those lucky enough to hear the man dubbed “The coolest writer in America” give his talk.

The night ended in traditional style with the Late Night Pub Quiz. Tensions were high during the battle to wrestle the trophy away from Shots Magazine, last year’s winners, with the achievement being reached by a team called Last But Not Least, which included Simon Kernick and Radio 7 presenter Paul Blezzard who duly lorded it over the rest for the remaining hours of the day and long, long night.

If anything, the popularity and warmth of The Harrogate Crime Writing Festival has increased in 2006. It can only be hoped that, under the stewardship of Natasha Cooper – who takes over from Mark Billingham as Organising Committee Chair for next year – it will again be better supported, yet more star-studded and even more entertaining than before. With the drive and determination of all those in the background, and at the forefront, to ensure the festival’s success, that is almost as guaranteed as Crime Fiction remaining popular.