The End Of an Era.

Jeff––Saturday

Following up on Caro's post yesterday on the passing of CrimeFest, here are photos of how some current and alumni members (and friends) of MIE paid homage to an annual get-together that will be dearly missed.  The photos are in no particular order--the same as was our behavior.:)

 Thank you for many wonderful years, dear Adrian and Donna.

 

 

 

 

The end

––Jeff

The Last Crimefest

 This weekend we say good bye to the Bristol Crimefest.

Here's a flaneur around Thursday.....

Some reprobates on a panel- best avoided.

A little bit of soft voiced panellists and microphone issues - so all is normal at the festival

A panellist refusing the answer the questions about how many red jumpers he owns.

Waterstones had books - and other delights.

Bristol on Wednesday late afternoon.

We'd been up since 5 am.

Nice to see the city quiet.

Alan looked up the price of this boat. It was £5K less than my house.

And I have a ghost and big driveway.

I think these scene looks very European.

Water everywhere and none of it from the sky

and landing on our heads.

A lovely view

A old statue that replaced a newer statue that might be in the bottom of the river, which if you think about it is exactly where Neptune should be.

The canal in the sun.

We nibbled at a avocado flatbread.

Jonathon Livingston here got nothing.

To Document, or Experience?

 Wendall--every other Thursday

I recently mentioned John Fowles and The French Lieutenant's Woman to my students and saw utterly blank faces. That prompted me to revisit this post about him, since the "clicking" phenomenon only increases and the quote from Daniel Martin that has haunted me since 1978 is more and more relevant.

 

John Fowles has had an enormous impact on me as a reader and a writer, ever since I swiped my parents’ Book of the Month Club copy of The French Lieutenant’s Woman at age eleven. 

 

The first U.S. edition cover.

 

The cover of the book drew me in, immediately, and I still have that worn original copy, which I carried to college with me and have kept ever since..

 

The first paragraph, one long, glorious sentence, grabbed me instantly, with a phrase that still burns in my brain— “. . . Lyme Regis being that largest bite from England’s outstretched southwestern leg. . .”

 

The famous Cobb in Lyme Regis. Years later, I visited this gorgeous spot.

The rest of that paragraph sent me to the dictionary to look up the word "eponym,” and I kept my Webster’s beside me for the rest of the read. Just Fowles’s words alone probably got me through my SATs, and that habit of keeping a dictionary handy has served me well ever since, especially when I’m reading Cormac McCarthy.

 

Looking back now, as an author, I can truly appreciate the book’s complex structure and revolutionary approach to point of view, along with Fowles’s ability to weave themes of feminism, religion, sexual politics, art vs. nature, and so many others through his work. At the time, I just loved the book. His sentences went straight into me.

 

Of course I went on to devour everything of his I could find, going backward to The Collector and The Magus (my first real impression of Greece, Jeff!) and later forward to The Ebony Tower and, when I was in college, Daniel Martin. 

 

As a college student, bought it hook, line, and sinker.

 

This quote from that book is the one I’ve been thinking about lately:

 

“A lifelong avoider of other tourists, he had forgotten the extent to which every man is now his own image-maker. It was almost frightening, this obsession with capturing through one sense alone, and one that required so little thought or concentration: a mindless clicking. It encouraged the clicker not to remember, above all, not to feel. Perhaps it was the ultimate privilege, on that ship already loaded with unfair advantage of a cultural and economic kind: merely to duplicate seeing, to advertise in some future that one had been there.”

 

At the time, this idea stopped me in my tracks. And in the way only a college student can, I vowed to stop taking photos and, instead, to be present and just burn things on my brain. I did my best to experience, rather than document, for many years after that and I remember those years with a fond, well-lit clarity.

 

But when I see photos from that period, taken by other people, they also delight me and take me back. There are certain photos that I wouldn’t trade for anything—like this one where my glasses are crooked, taken by our “professional photographer” at the Little White Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas. It so completely captures the spirit of our wedding, that it has pride of place on our mantle and always makes me laugh. I am so grateful for it.

 

Nothing like a professional photographer at your wedding!

 

But for someone who loves words, a world where images seem to be the only acceptable currency feels out of balance. From Twitter’s word count limit to Instagram, the whole planet seems to be embodying Fowles’s idea—"a mindless clicking. It encouraged the clicker not to remember, above all, not to feel." And was he right? Do we make a choice between documenting and feeling?

 

Although I was late to smart phones, now that I have one, I am as guilty as anyone when it comes to taking endless photographs. I have so many, I had to buy extra space on Google. So, have I stopped feeling? What do all those photos mean?

 

When I’ve been lucky enough to visit museums and see photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Cindy Sherman, Roy DaSilva, Diane Arbus, Ansel Adams, or Dorothea Lange, there’s no lack of emotion there. It seems to be all feeling.

 

Dorothea Lange documented migrant workers and their families (public domain).

 

But photography as an art form is different from selfies and Facebook cover photos. I wonder what Fowles, who was notoriously private, would say about “the clicking” expected from an author today?

 

The pressure to document (and post) every appearance, every encounter with another author, every book box opening, every recipe realized, every panel, even details of our personal lives, can feel overwhelming. 

 

My husband, a smarter marketer than I, insisted I document this box-opening moment. There's a reason my face isn't in the picture.

 

Can we be present and really meet and listen to our readers, and do selfies at the same time? We can’t know what those photos mean to others, so it’s hard to say which is more important in the long run. Maybe there’s been a redefinition of  “Only connect.”

 

So where’s the balance, between feeling in real time and remembering? Between our public, photo-shopped selves and our deeper natures? How do all these photographs shape our reality? It’s still a conundrum for me. I blame the Book of the Month club.

 

--Wendall 

Bringing booklovers together in local communities - in gratitude for our crime and thriller 'tribe'

The author lineup for "Deadly in Devonport": Diane Robinson, Dr Jo Drayton,
Dermot Ross, Hannah Tunnicliffe, Rose Carlyle & William McCartney

Craig every second Tuesday.

Kia ora and gidday everyone, I hope you’ve all been enjoying some fabulous reads so far in 2025, whether new books or older ones. There are so many good and great crime and thriller stories out there, and plenty of cool authors to discover as well as enjoying old faves. 

I've certainly had a busy but fun bookish time of it recently, with a combination of awards judging (results tbc) and events planning and/or attendances, along with reviewing for various publications in a few countries, and daily reading in among all the usual life stuff. I'm feeling incredibly grateful for this cool 'tribe' we have of readers and writers, especially given how collegial and welcoming the crime/thriller part of the books world is overall. 

Back home in Aotearoa New Zealand our Mystery in the Library series is in full swing this month, with a bumper season of 30+ free/donation events featuring many dozens of different Kiwi storytellers at libraries in towns and cities big and small all across the country. 

The pic above is from last week's "Deadly in Devonport" event on the North Shore of Auckland; our first-ever visit to that library. A big crowd turned out for a fun panel featuring a nice mix of Kiwi storytellers: podcaster and author Hannah Tunnicliffe, New York Times bestselling non-fiction author Dr Joanne Drayton (who's written biographies of crime writers Anne Perry and Dame Ngaio Marsh), internationally bestselling thriller writer Rose Carlyle, Auckland lawyers and debut authors Dermot Ross and William McCartney, and 2024 Ngaios Best Kids-YA finalist Diane Robinson. 

Back in 2015, our library event series began with four events and nine authors

Designed to bring together booklovers - readers, writers, libraries, booksellers - in local communities, we started these events back in 2015, inspired by something I'd seen Crime Writers of Canada do when I was in Vancouver several years before. We began with four events in Auckland, Waikato, Wellington, and London. That's me in the bright blue shirt, alongside fellow British reviewer Ayo Onatade and 2015 Ngaios finalist Barbara Ewing.

Fast forward a decade, and this year we are holding 33 events this celebratory season, all across Aotearoa; the series has grown into a bit of a monster, in the best way. By the time we get to June, we will in total have held more than 125 free/koha events since 2015, featuring 250 or so different storytellers (some appearing several times). All with no funding or sponsorship whatsoever. Crazy what an idea and a lot of goodwill and great people can do, eh?

I confess when I was siting in my local SW London Library back in February this year, planning out some of this year's Mystery in the Library events, I decided to tally everything up. While I had a ballpark idea of how many MITL events and how many authors and libraries had been involved, I had a wee cry, overwhelmed by gratitude, when I realised the numbers: at that stage we'd held 90 events featuring 200+ different storytellers at 38 libraries in four countries (most events in New Zealand, but also a small handful in Australia, the UK, and even one in Iceland!)

Some of the decorations for our Lower Hutt
MITL event this year; authors and librarians

It can feel strange at times organising all these things from half a world away - I've only ever got to attend two of the 120+ New Zealand book events I've helped organise over the past decade - but it's also incredibly rewarding in a weird way, staying connected to my tūrangawaewae and vicariously enjoying all the enthusiasm and good times of all the authors, libraries, and readers involved.

It's really marvellous too how much some of the libraries get into it - here's a wee snap from our event at the War Memorial Library in Lower Hutt in April; the librarians there did a brilliant job with some crime/thriller themed decorations for the week of our event. 

(Personally, it was also pretty cool to see Dark Deeds Down Under, an anthology I edited and two of those authors, Jennifer Lane and Andi Buchanan, contributed stories too, on show). 

Books and libraries are a brilliant thing, and it feels great to support authors and libraries, and bring booklovers together in local communities, while helping spotlight a wide range of our Kiwi storytellers, from international stars to self-published locals, bestsellers and award-winners to new voices building their readership. I feel lucky to be able to play a wee part, even from far away. 

Back home in Aotearoa, our Mystery in the Library events aren't the only bookish goodies going on, of course. It seems festival and event seasons is now in full swing, in both hemispheres. 

This week, award-winning Maori filmmaker and author Michael Bennett (Ngāti Pikiao, Ngāti Whakaue), a two-time Ngaio Marsh Awards winner and co-screenwriter of hit BBC crime drama The Gone, is touring New Zealand with internationally bestselling Irish-Australian author Dervla McTiernan, writer of the Cormac Reilly series and standalones like WHAT HAPPENED TO NINA?

I've heard great things about their Dunedin and Christchurch events, with Hawke's Bay and Auckland still to go. 

Indigenous storyteller Michael Bennett and visiting author Dervla McTiernan
entertain a large crowd in Christchurch. Credit: WORD Chch

Last weekend was Featherston Booktown, and next weekend is the Auckland Writers Festival, my home country's biggest literary event. It's great to see that this year's AWF has a pleasing amount of crime/thriller authors included - that hasn't always been the case , with a terrific and diverse array of visiting internationals like Dervla McTiernan, Chris Whittaker, Sir Ian Rankin, Antti Tuomainen, and Asako Yuzuki, alongside local stars including Ngaios winners Michael Bennett, Jacqueline Bublitz, and Fiona Sussman, and international bestseller Rose Carlyle. 

In the UK, we’re also accelerating into ‘festival season’, with a range of large and smaller crime and thriller festivals happening all across the country over the next few months. As I write this we recently had Gwyl Crime Cymru Festival in Wales, which began as an online festival during COVID lockdowns but is now an IRL extravaganza in Aberystwyth, celebrating Welsh crime writing and crime writers while also welcoming other crime and thriller storytellers. I’m definitely keen to head along to that one in future years. Last Saturday, I also spontaneously decided to hop on a train to Brighton to attend Beyond the Book, part of the Brighton Fringe Festival. 

Jill Johnson and me at Beyond the Book;
her new novel comes out later in May

I arrived in time for the second session after an early morning train from London and doing Hove Promenade parkrun followed by my first dip in the sea for the year (more of a cold plunge for a few minutes than a swim), and before I even attended a session that magic of book events happened: on the lawn outside I randomly met 2x Ngaios finalist Jill Johnson, a UK-based Māori novelist who I'd Zoom chatted with, but never met in person.

Jill is the author of the fascinating Eustacia Rose mysteries, starring a neurodivergent LGBT+ professor of botanical toxicology and amateur sleuth. They've been featured on BBC Between the Covers, but Jill hasn't really been part of the 'festival circuit yet', so had come along to hang out at Beyond the Book and meet some fellow crime writers. 

A terrific closing panel at Beyond the Book Festival in Brighton with
William Shaw chairing international bestsellers Ruth Ware and Elly Griffiths

Beyond the Book unfolded as so often happens at fab festivals: an invigorating mix of terrific scheduled events, eg onstage sessions and other gatherings, along with spontaneous fun that happens when you bring a whole lot of cool, creative, fascinating people together - eg grabbing fish n chips on the beach, random chats on the lawn, on-the-spot interviews (eg I had a great long chat with Hallie Rubenhold, author of THE FIVE, on the lawn which is now likely to turn into a large feature for an Australian magazine), getting to spend time with pals and acquaintances, revel in books, and meet new people. 

And there's always a few moments that will always stick with you, whether big or small. I'd already had a terrific day when just as the final after-party at Goldsboro Books was winding down, store manager and superstar bookseller Rebecca pulled out a final bottle of wine that looked kind of familiar... 

It turns out that somehow a bottle of Sauvignon Gris from a vineyard in my hometown in New Zealand - a vineyard I actually worked a harvest season at back in 2013-2014 - had made it's way to Brighton. Astonishing; while I'd maybe expect some Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc - not exactly in short supply in the UK - I never would have predicted an aromatic blend from Waimea Estates, a smaller but very good Nelson vineyard. 

Wow, a taste of home

It was surreal, yet fitting; I was immersed in one of the things (book events/hanging out with authors) that make me feel most 'at home' and 'belonging', half a world away from my homeland, when I get a nod from home too. A new vintage of a wine I helped, in a small way, in my last full summer in New Zealand before moving to the UK. 

Life eh? Amazing what random, fun things can happen when you head along to events, putting yourself in the room with great people. 

Huge kudos to crime writer David Fennell and his organising team for Beyond the Book, and Rebecca and the Goldsboro Books crew, for putting on a really wonderful smaller festival that had a great vibe and mix (there were non-fiction, historical, and fantasy events too, alongside plenty of crime/thriller authors on the slate). 

While Gwyl Crime Cymru and Beyond the Book are smaller and growing new festivals, on the other end of the spectrum it’s a sad goodbye later this week to Crimefest.

Running annually in Bristol since 2008, after first appearing as a one-off visit by Left Coast Crime to Bristol in 2006, Crimefest has always been a bit unusual among British book festivals as b eing a convention-style festival more common in the USA. Because of this, it has showcased a huge array of writers, and welcomed many newer authors to the crime and thriller writing community who often may not have received onstage spots at the invite-only lineups of other British books festivals, crime or otherwise. 

At my first Crimefest in 2015, with Queen of Icelandic Noir
Yrsa Sigurðardóttir and leading British critic Ayo Onatade

Personally, in my first years in the UK, I met a lot of really cool people in the British and international crime writing community thanks to Crimefest, pre-COVID, many of whom have had a great and ongoing impact on me as a reviewer, features writer, awards judge, event chair and festival founder, anthology editor, and all the other hats I’ve found myself wearing in this weird and wonderful books world. This includes fellow MIE-ers like Jeffrey Siger, Michael Stanley (Michael & Stanley), Zoe Sharp, Annamarie Alfieri, Caro Ramsay, and others. 

So haere ra (goodbye) to Crimefest, and huge kudos to Donna Moore and Adrian Muller for keeping it going for so long during tough times in recent years. While it’s sad to see it go, it’s provided many people – writers and readers – including me many great memories. Sadly I can't go this year, but hopefully the finale this week will be another fab few days for all involved.

Later on in the UK calendar, I’m really looking forward Capital Crime in London in June, the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate in July, Bute Noir on a Scottish island in August, and Bloody Scotland in historic Stirling in September, among others.

I'm stoked to be chairing a fun panel at Capital Crime 
next month - come along if you're near London

We’re blessed nowadays with a plethora of opportunities to share our passion for books and great stories, and hang out with fellow booklovers – it’s a great ‘tribe’, and if you’re a keen crime and thriller fan (I imagine reading MIE that’s quite likely), I urge you to head along to an event or two, whether a bookshop or library event or a small or large festival  and meet some of the authors whose work you love. 

As someone who has interviewed hundreds of authors onstage and off, and seen in person thousands of interactions, let me tell you that most authors are thrilled to meet readers, and delighted to discuss storytelling, life, and more. They know our bookish ecosystem lives and breathes on the enthusiasm and support of readers.

And if you’re ever at an event where I’m onstage or off, feel free to come up and say kia ora (hello)

Until next time. Ka kite anō.

Whakataukī of the fortnight: 

Inspired by Zoe and her 'word of the week', I'm ending my all my MIE posts by sharing a whakataukī (Māori proverb), a pithy and poetic thought to mull on as we go through life.

"Ehara taku toa i te toa takitahi, engari he toa takitini"

(My success should not be bestowed onto me alone, as it was not individual success but success of a collective)

Bringing booklovers together - our "Nefarious Newtown" event earlier this year
with Jennifer Palgrave, Carl Shuker, Jennifer Lane, and Helen Vivienne Fletcher

Proving Santayana

 Guest Blogger Michael J. Cooper

From Annamaria: Today I am happy to welcome back my fellow historical novelist, who writes riveting mystery-thrillers set in the Middle East.  His current series focuses on World War 1 at a time that provides a distant mirror for the current state of the world, important and - at the same time - entertaining reading.

Take it away, Michael: 

The great Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana famously said “those who don’t remember history are doomed to repeat it.” To avoid such repetitions, we historical novelists seek to bring readers back to the past so that they can learn what not to do.

My two latest novels, set at the beginning of the First World War: Wages of Empire and Crossroads of Empire are a case in point. They include prominent historical figures Kaiser Wilhelm II, Gertrude Bell, TE Lawrence, Chaim Weizmann, and Faisal bin Hussein. And they particularly focus on Ottoman Palestine, since it was from Jerusalem where the kaiser dreamed to rule as Holy Roman Emperor and self-crowned King of Jerusalem, with dominion over Arabian oil reserves, control of the Suez Canal, and with an eye toward promoting German-Nordic racial supremacy throughout the world.

I gave Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, therefore, a prominent role in the books, because many historians believe that his decades’ long scheming and manipulating led directly to the Great War.  He methodically built up a naval force to challenge that of Great Britain, and he established layers of financial, military, commercial, and transportational ties with the Ottoman Empire. By-so-doing, Wilhelm made imperial Germany indispensable to a subservient Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the 20th century, reducing it to a vassal state. 

Apart from these maneuverings, the Kaiser makes for a great character study because of how outrageously strange he was, offering a veritable buffet of the bizarre to historians as well as to writers of historical fiction. To quote a prominent German historian, Thomas Nipperdey:  “Wilhelm was superficial, hasty, restless, unable to relax, without any deeper level of seriousness, without any sense of sobriety. He was arrogant, uncontrollable, without any concern for balance and boundaries, or even for reality and real problems. At the same time, he had a hyperactive sense of grievance, and was desperate for applause and success. He was theatrical, with an exaggerated bravado and desire to show off…”

As we read these descriptions of the German Kaiser, just imagine what it would be like to live in the grip of a head of state untethered by any restraint, who was able to rule by royal decree or by executive privilege.  A monarch motivated only by the need to feed his own monumental ego…

Just imagine.

 

In Wilhelm’s day, royalty commissioned paintings of themselves to project how they wished to be seen—by their subjects as well as by other nations. Nowadays, art, CGI, and AI serve the same functions. Herewith, some examples:

And a couple more:

 

 He has even imagined himself as the pope: 

Pope Pompous I

  

But we have at least been saved from that.  We have an American Pope who, given what he has said since his election, will focus on containing the worst impulses of a deranged and dangerous psychopath.

Viva Pope Leo XIV