2014 Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Programme Book

THE RETURN 17-20 July 2014 Old Swan Hotel

Featuring:

BELINDA BAUER, MARK BILLINGHAM, ANN CLEEVES, ROBERT GALBRAITH (J.K. ROWLING), SOPHIE HANNAH, JOHN HARVEY, LYNDA LA PLANTE, LAURA LIPPMAN, PETER MAY, VAL MCDERMID, DENISE MINA, STEVE MOSBY, S.J. WATSON. Keep up to date with all the festival news by following us @TheakstonsCrime.

Join the conversation online #TOPCRIME2014

10

th

www.harrogateinternationalfestivals.com

Programme at a glance

FREE

Key:

Thursday 17 July 9.00am – 5.30pm Creative Thursday: Crime Fiction Writing

Workshop Festival opens with…

8.00pm Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year

and Festival Opening Party

Friday 18 July 9.00am Special Guest: Denise Mina 10.30am The Good Old Days?

12.00pm Turning To Crime 2.00pm In Space, No-one Can Hear You Scream 3.30pm Worst Things Happen At Home 5.00pm Special Guests: Ann Cleeves In Conversation

with Peter May 7.30pm Special Guests: Robert Galbraith In Conversation

with Val McDermid* 10.00pm Let’s Twist Again…

Saturday 19 July 9.00am Special Guest: Lynda La Plante 10.30am Special Guests: Sophie Hannah In Conversation

with S.J. Watson 12.00pm New Blood 1.00pm Readers’ Book Group.

2.00pm The New Wave Of Forensics 3.30pm How Safe Is Your Smartphone?

5.00pm Special TV Event: Broadchurch 6.15pm Murder Mystery Dinner 8.30pm Special Guests: Laura Lippman In Conversation

with Belinda Bauer 10.00pm Late Night Quiz

Sunday 20 July 10.00am Keeping It Real 11.30am Special Guest: John Harvey interviewed

by Mark Billingham

= event included in Weekend Rover ticket,

= event included in Friday Rover ticket,

= event included in Saturday Rover ticket.

= event included in Reduced Weekend Rover ticket.

*All events take place at the Old Swan Hotel, Swan Road, Harrogate with the exception of the Robert Galbraith/Val McDermid event which will take place at the Royal Hall, Harrogate.

www.harrogateinternationalfestivals.com

@theakstonscrime #TOPCRIME2014

Welcome There’s a good reason the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival is regarded as the liveliest and most exciting event on the crime fiction calendar.

It’s not that the Festival attracts the best writers from all around the world, from household names to future stars – although it certainly does. It’s not the beautiful setting, or the amazing panels covering every aspect of the genre from print to screen, or the quiz that provokes fierce competition and laughter in equal measures – although again, that’s all true. It’s not even simply down to the beer. No, the reason is that the Festival is friendly and inclusive: a vibrant, open mixture of readers and writers rubbing shoulders in the events and in the bar, but most of all in celebration of a genre we all love. Every July, the finest carnival of crime fiction in the world takes place in Harrogate.

We hope you enjoy becoming an important part of that.

Steve Mosby, 2014 Festival Programming Chair

Sponsors & Supporters Title Sponsor

Crime Novel of the Year Partners:

Premier Partners:

Event Sponsors:

Supporters:

Media Partners:

Special Projects Managed and presented by Harrogate International Festivals.

Chief Executive: Sharon Canavar Literature Festivals Manager: Gemma Rowland, Literature Festivals Co-ordinator: Hannah Jane Copestake PR: Ann Challenor-Chadwick and Clair Challenor-Chadwick, Cause UK Ltd Programming Committee: Steve Mosby, Chair. Jane Gregory. David Shelley. NJ Cooper. Val McDermid. David Mark Harrogate International Festivals is a registered charity no. 244861.

She has given talks throughout the world on edge trends in culture and media, and directed winning documentaries and children’s shows. an author had her finger on the zeitgeist it is Beukes. The Shining Girls is her breakout book.

2014 Authors: Katherine Armstrong ‘Katherine is from Belfast and has worked for Faber & Faber for over nine years.

She has an MPhil in Publishing Studies from the University of Stirling and previously worked as a bookseller for Waterstones Ocean Terminal in Edinburgh.

She commissions Crime and Thrillers, with a specific emphasis on contemporary commercial thrillers.’

Parker Bilal is the pseudonym of Jamal Mahjoub. Mahjoub has published seven critically acclaimed literary novels, which have been widely translated.

Dogstar Rising is his second Makana Mystery. Born in London, Mahjoub has lived at various times in the UK, Sudan, Cairo and Denmark. He currently lives in Barcelona. - See more at: http://www.bloomsbury.com/author/parkerbilal#sthash.mMhjsp0M.dpuf

Alex Barclay is the author of several bestselling thrillers. She studied journalism in college, and went on to work as a journalist and copywriter before writing her first novel, Darkhouse, a Sunday Times Top Ten bestseller featuring NYPD detective Joe Lucchesi. This was followed by a sequel, The Caller.

Mark Billingham has twice won the Theakston’s Old Peculier Award for Best Crime Novel and has also won a Sherlock Award for the Best Detective created by a British writer. Each of the novels featuring Detective Inspector Tom Thorne has been a Sunday Times bestseller, and Sleepyhead and Scaredy Cat were made into a hit TV series on Sky 1 starring David Morrissey as Thorne.

Mark lives in North London with his wife and two children.

The Dying Hours is out now.

Alex won the Ireland AM Crime Fiction Award at the Irish Book Awards for her third novel, Blood Runs Cold, which was the beginning of the Special Agent Ren Bryce series.

Since then, Ren has featured in Time of Death, and Alex’s most recent novel, Blood Loss.

Sharon Bolton’s (previously S.J. Bolton) first novel Sacrifice was published in February 2008, to much acclaim. Sacrifice was voted BEST NEW and EMERGING AUTHOR on Amazon in 2008 and nominated for the Mary Higgins Clark Award at the Edgars in the US. Awakening, her second novel, was nominated for Best British Novel at the Barry Awards and scooped the Mary Higgins Clark Award.

Belinda Bauer grew up in England and South Africa. She has worked as a journalist and screenwriter and her script The Locker Room earned her the Carl Foreman/Bafta Award for Young British Screenwriters.

With her first novel, Blacklands, Belinda won the CWA Gold Dagger for Crime Novel of the Year. Her second and third novels, Darkside and Finders Keepers, were highly acclaimed, and she was shortlisted for the CWA Dagger in the Library Award 2012 for her entire body of work.

Sharon Bolton’s third novel Blood Harvest was a finalist for 2010 CWA Crime Novel of the Year and she was shortlisted for the CWA Dagger in the Library Award in 2011 for a body of work. Now You See Me her fourth novel was the first to feature DC Lacey Flint and was shortlisted for the Theakstons Crime Novel of the Year in 2012. She lives near Oxford with her husband and son.

Belinda is a repeat guest on Front Row and regularly appears at Harrogate Crime Festival. She lives in Wales.

Her most recent novel is Rubbernecker.

Lauren Beukes has previously published two novels - Moxyland and more recently Zoo City which won the Arthur C Clarke Award in 2011, and was listed as one of the Guardian’s top 10 African Books. In film, Lauren has worked on the travelogue of Archbishop Desmond Tutu: The South African Story, the SPITTING IMAGE-STYLE political satire puppet show - Z News, as well as directing the documentary Glitterboys & Ganglands, which won Best LGBT at the San Diego Black Film Festival.

cutting awardIf ever Lauren

Hilary Bonner is a full time author and former chairman of The Crime Writers’ Association.

Her published work includes nine previous novels, five nonfiction books: two ghosted autobiographies, one biography, two companions to TV programmes, and a number of short stories. She is a former Fleet Street journalist, show business editor of three national newspapers and assistant editor of one. She now lives in the West of

3

Chris Carter worked as a criminal psychologist for several years before moving to Los Angeles, where he swapped the suits and briefcases for ripped jeans, bandanas and an electric guitar.

After a spell playing for several well-known glam rock bands, he decided to try his luck in London, where he was fortunate enough to have played for a number of famous artists. He toured the world several times as a professional musician. He is now a full time writer.

Olivia Colman studied acting at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, cutting her professional acting teeth on several episodes of the BBC sketch comedy Bruiser in 2000. With countless TV roles paving the way, in 2011, Colman landed parts in The Iron Lady and Tyrannosaur—films that would bring her dramatic critical acclaim and become her calling cards into the larger film world, and ultimately lead her to the role of the Queen Mother Elizabeth in the 2012 film Hyde Park on Hudson, among other roles. In 2013, she starred as DS Ellie Miller in the ITV crime series Broadchurch, which won her the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress.

Jane Casey was born and brought up in Dublin. She has been twice shortlisted for the Irish Crime Novel of the Year Award. She is the author of The Missing and two previous Maeve Kerrigan novels The Burning and The Reckoning. Married to a criminal barrister, Jane lives in south-west London. Jane has also written a Young Adult novel, How To Fall.

N.J. Cooper is an ex-publisher, past Chair of the Crime Writers’ Association, and lifelong Londoner. She writes for a variety of newspapers and journals and contributes to many radio programmes such as Woman’s Hour and Saturday Review. In 2002 she was shortlisted for the Dagger in the Library, an award that ‘goes to the author whose work has given most pleasure to readers’.

Ray Celestin lives in London. He studied Asian art and languages at university and is a script writer for film and TV, as well as publishing several short stories.

THE AXEMAN’S JAZZ is his first novel.

Paul Cornell is an award winning writer of novels – comics, short fiction and non-fiction, as well as a TV screenwriter for Doctor Who and many other series. Paul’s current series of supernatural crime novels – The Shadow Police – are set in his own slantwise version of our reality. His latest is The Severed Streets – sequel to London Falling – which is out now worldwide.

England where she was born and brought up and where most of her novels are set.

Chris Chibnall gained a First Class Honours degree in Drama and English from St Mary’s University College. After leaving St Mary’s he gained an MA in Theatre Studies from Sheffield University.

He was a co-founder of the Asimmetric Theatre Company and his play ‘Now We Are Free’ was also premiered by the company at the Edinburgh Fringe, receiving a Fringe First nomination. Both plays were directed by Edward Lewis.

Julia Crouch studied drama at Bristol University and worked as a theatre director and playwright.

After the birth of her second child, she retrained and ran a successful graphic and website design consultancy. A third baby appeared.

While producing two children’s picture books for an MA in illustration, she realised that she enjoyed the writing more than the drawing. So, two Open University creative writing courses later, she had a couple of stabs at NaNoWrimo (National Novel Writing Month), where the aim is to produce a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. She spent a year editing her second attempt, which became her debut novel Cuckoo. Her other books are Every Vow You Break and Tarnished, all published in the UK by Headline. Her work has also been translated and published worldwide. She is currently working on her fourth book, Wrecked, which is about a terrible thing that happened on a Greek island in 1980. Most days she works in a shed at the bottom of her Brighton garden, helped by her two cats, Keith and Sandra.

Ann Cleeves worked as a probation officer, bird observatory cook and auxiliary coastguard before writing. She is a member of ‘Murder Squad’, working with other northern writers to promote crime fiction.

In 2006 Ann was awarded the Duncan Lawrie Dagger (CWA Gold Dagger) for Best Crime Novel for Raven Black.

Ann’s Shetland book Red Bones was made into the BBC One drama, Shetland, this year. The second series of ITV’s adaptation of VERA starring Brenda Blethyn aired earlier this year. Ann lives in North Tyneside.

4

Charles Cumming was born in Scotland in 1971. He was educated at Eton and graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1994 with First Class Honours in English Literature. In the summer of 1995, Charles was approached for recruitment by the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). A year later he moved to Montreal where he began working on a novel based on his experiences with MI6. A Spy By Nature was published in the UK in 2001.

A Foreign Country is his sixth novel.

Paul Finch is a former cop and journalist, now turned full-time writer. He cut his literary teeth penning episodes of the British crime drama, The Bill, and has written extensively in the field of film, audio drama and children’s animation. He is also well known for his work in the thriller and horror fields. To date, he’s had 15 books and nearly 300 stories published, and is a two-times winner of the British Fantasy Award and a one-time winner of the International Horror Guild Award. Paul has also written scripts for several movies. The most recent, The Devil’s Rock, was released to the cinemas last July. Paul lives in Lancashire, with his wife Catherine and his children, Eleanor and Harry.

Eva Dolan is the alter ego of an Essex based copywriter. She blogs, she writes, she talks about herself in the third person and feels vaguely uncomfortable about it.

Helen FitzGerald is one of thirteen children and grew up in Victoria, Australia. She now lives in Glasgow with her husband and two children. Helen has worked as a social worker for over ten years. She has published three previous novels with Faber: Dead Lovely (2007), My Last Confession (2009) and The Donor (2011). The Cry will be released in September.

Steven Dunne began teaching English in Croydon in 1988 before moving to Derby in 1996, where he began to think about writing a novel. In 2007, Steven self-published Reaper, a thriller about a serial killer who strikes in Derby. Harper Collins bought the rights and The Reaper was released internationally in 2009. A sequel, The Disciple, was released in August 2010. Both books were critically acclaimed. He signed a publishing deal at Headline to release the next DI Brook thriller Deity, which released in June 2012. His fourth novel, The Unquiet Grave, is published in hardback and on Kindle on July 4th, 2013.

Robert Galbraith is a pseudonym for J.K. Rowling, author of the ‘Harry Potter’ series and The Casual Vacancy. Val McDermid said of Galbraith’s first crime novel – ‘The Cuckoo’s Calling reminds me why I fell in love with crime fiction in the first place’.

Mark Edwards is the No.1 bestselling author of Catch Your Death and Killing Cupid, cowritten with Louise Voss. He lives in Wolverhampton, UK, with his young family and works as a freelance copywriter.

A.D. Garrett is the pseudonym for the writing collaboration of prize-winning thriller writer Margaret Murphy and forensic scientist Professor Dave Barclay.

Professor Barclay is a worldrenowned forensics expert and advisor to police forces and the media. He has worked on some of Britain’s highest profile murder cases and alleged miscarriages of justice including the Blood Sunday inquiry, the Omagh Bombing, the World’s End murders in Edinburgh and the Millie Dowler and Soham murders. He was head of Physical Evidence at the UK National Crime and Operations Faculty for 10 years. He is currently working for several UK police forces and a state of Australia on high-profile murders. He is parts of the ‘Murder, Mystery and Microscopes’ team which aims to explain the real science behind popular crime fiction via a national series of public lectures.

Chris Ewan is the award-winning author of The Good Thief’s Guide to... series of mystery novels, described by the Sydney Morning Herald as ‘crime writing at its best’. His debut, The Good Thief’s Guide to Amsterdam, won the Long Barn Books First Novel Award and is published in ten countries, and the Amsterdam, Paris, Vegas and Venice editions of The Good Thief’s Guide to…have all been shortlisted for CrimeFest’s Last Laugh Award.

Born in Taunton in 1976, Chris now lives in the Isle of Man with his wife, Jo, and their daughter. Safe House, his acclaimed stand-alone thriller was a number one bestseller in 2012.

5

Helen Giltrow was born and brought up in Cheltenham and read Modern History at Christ Church, Oxford. She has worked extensively in publishing, including ten years as a commissioning editor for Oxford University Press. Helen’s writing has been shortlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger Award and the Telegraph ‘Novel in a Year’ competition. She lives in Oxford.

Mari Hannah was born in London and moved north as a child.

Sponsored by the Home Office, she graduated from Teesside University before becoming a Probation Officer, a career cut short when she was injured while on duty. Thereafter, she spent several years working as a film/ television scriptwriter. During that time she created and developed a number of projects, most notably a feature length film and the pilot episode of a crime series for television based on the characters in her book, the latter as part of a BBC drama development scheme.

She lives in Northumberland with her partner, an exmurder detective. In 2010, she won the Northern Writers’ Award. She has had four novels published: The Murder Wall (which won the Polari prize), Settled Blood, Deadly Deceit and Monument to Murder.

Jason Goodwin is a novelist, historian and traveller, winner of the JLR/Mail on Sunday Prize for On Foot to the Golden Horn, and of the Edgar Award for Best Novel his first Yashim mystery, The Janissary Tree. His books include: The Gunpowder Gardens: Travels in China and India in Search of Tea and Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire (‘perhaps the most readable history ever written about anything’: Time Out). His latest history is Greenback: The Almighty Dollar and the Invention of America.

Sophie Hannah In 2006, awardwinning poet Sophie Hannah turned her hand to crime fiction with Little Face, which introduced the world to detectives Charlie Zailer and Simon Waterhouse.

There have been eight novels since, and the rest is history.

It’s an appropriate term, as each story has concentrated as much on exploring the hidden past of its heroine as it has on the recurring police protagonists.

Alison Graham is a columnist, critic and TV Editor at Radio Times. She is one of the judges for the 2014 Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award.

John Harvey They say that everyone has a book in them, but John Harvey has had more than a hundred. Born in 1938, this highly-acclaimed writer has been publishing for nearly forty years, including novelisations, poetry, westerns and crime, picking up several major awards along the way, including the CWA Diamond Dagger for a Lifetime’s Contribution to the crime genre. His most famous creation, DI Charlie Resnick, first appeared in 1989’s Lonely Hearts, which was named by The Times as one of the hundred greatest crime novels of the century.

This year will see Resnick’s swan song in the highlyanticipated Darkness, Darkness.

Jane Gregory handles sales to publishers in the UK and USA as well as to film and television and some foreign territories.

Before setting up as an agent, Jane was a Rights and Contracts Director for publishers. She is a co-founder of ‘The Orange Prize for Fiction’ and is on the programming committee for the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival.

Terry Hayes is an English-born screenwriter, producer and author best known for his work with Kennedy Miller. Hayes was originally a journalist who worked for a time in New York.

He met director George Miller when he did the novelisation of the script to Mad Max (1979).

He and Miller got on well and the director subsequently hired Hayes to help on the script for Mad Max 2 (1981).

Hayes went on to become an in-house writer for Kennedy Miller, working on the scripts for all their subsequent mini-series. He also wrote the script for Dead Calm (1989). Hayes subsequently moved to Hollywood. In 2001,

In the past Jane has been on the Virago advisory panel, co-founded ‘Women in Publishing’ and has produced and directed several publishers’ pantomimes.

Elly Griffiths was born in London in 1963. She worked in publishing for many years. Her crime novels are set in Norfolk and feature Dr Ruth Galloway, forensic archaeologist. She lives in Brighton with her husband, an archaeologist, and their twins.

6

Sarah Hilary lives in Bath with her husband and daughter, where she writes quirky copy for a well-loved travel publisher.

She’s also worked as a bookseller, and with the Royal Navy.

An award-winning short story writer, Sarah won the Cheshire Prize for Literature in 2012.

No Other Darkness is her second novel, after Someone Else’s Skin which is being published in 2014.

he was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Best Screenplay for his work on From Hell. His debut novel, I Am Pilgrim was published by Transworld Publishers on 18 July 2013.

Elizabeth Haynes’ debut novel, Into the Darkest Corner, won Amazon UK’s Book of the Year in 2011 and Amazon’s Rising Star Award for debut novels.

Her subsequent books include Revenge of the Tide and Human Remains Elizabeth’s next novel, Under a Silent Moon will be published by Sphere in ebook in October 2013 and then in paperback in April 2014.

Antonia Hodgson was born in Derby and studied English at the University of Leeds. She has worked in publishing for over fifteen years and is Editor-inChief at Little, Brown UK. When she is not writing or working or watching Game of Thrones she enjoys reading eighteenthcentury murder confessions in the British Library.

She does not react well to people who say The Smiths are depressing.

Elizabeth grew up in Sussex and studied English, German and Art History at Leicester University. She is currently taking a career break having worked for the past seven years as a police intelligence analyst. Elizabeth now lives in Kent with her husband and son, and writes in coffee shops and a shed-office which takes up most of the garden. She is a regular participant in, and a Municipal Liaison for, National Novel Writing Month - an annual challenge to write 50,000 words in the month of November.

Alan Judd was born in 1946 and trained as a teacher but instead became a soldier and diplomat. He is now a full-time writer, contributing regular current affairs articles to various newspapers, most frequently the Daily Telegraph, as well as writing regular book reviews and acting as the Spectator’s motoring correspondent.

Natalie Haynes is a writer and broadcaster. She appears on BBC Radio 4 as a presenter of documentaries and she is a reviewer of books, films, plays, television and art on Saturday Review and Front Row. She has judged the 2012 Orange Prize (now the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction) and also judged the 2013 Man Booker Prize..

Natalie was also a stand-up comedian for 12 years, and was the first woman ever to be nominated for the prestigious Perrier Best Newcomer Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. She retired in 2009 to spend more time writing.

Her first novel, The Amber Fury, is out this year.

He is the author of several novels drawing on his military and diplomatic experience, the first of which, A Breed of Heroes, was later filmed by the BBC. The Devil’s Own Work, a literary ghost story inspired by Judd’s meeting with Graham Greene, won the Guardian Fiction Award.

Erin Kelly read English at Warwick University and has worked as a freelance journalist for over ten years. She has written for publications including Psychologies, Red, Easy Living and Mail on Sunday YOU magazine. Her first novel, The Poison Tree, drew comparisons to Daphne Du Maurier and Barbara Vine, and was recently adapted as two-part dramatisation for ITV. Erin’s second novel, The Sick Rose, was published to great acclaim in 2011, and was followed in January 2013 by The Burning Air. She lives in London with her husband and young daughter.

David Hewson is a contemporary British author of mystery novels.

His series of mysteries, featuring police officers in Rome, led by the young detective and art lover Nic Costa, began with A Season for the Dead, has now been contracted to run to at least nine instalments by British, American, European and Asian publishers. The author’s debut novel, Shanghai Thunder, was published by Robert Hale, in the United Kingdom, in 1986. In June 2011 it was announced Hewson will write the novels based upon the first two series of the Danish TV series The Killing.

Simon Kernick is a British thriller/crime writer now living in Oxfordshire with his wife and two daughters. He attended Gillotts School, a comprehensive in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire.

Whilst he was a student his

Hewson left school at 17 and joined a local newspaper in the north of England. He was later a news, business and foreign reporter for The Times, and features editor of The Independent when it was launched in 1986.

He served as a board member of International Thriller Writers Inc. for four years until 2009.

7

Laura Lippman With a career including 12 years at the Baltimore Sun, Laura Lippman is now one of the most acclaimed novelists in America today.

Since the publication of What The Dead Know each of her hardcovers has hit the New York Times bestseller list. She has been awarded every major prize in crime fiction and is a recent recipient of the first ever mayor’s prize. She lives in Baltimore, New Orleans and New York City with her family. After I’m Gone is Laura’s nineteenth novel.

jobs included fruitpicker and Christmas-tree uprooter.

He graduated from Brighton Polytechnic in 1991 with a degree in humanities. Kernick had a passion for crime fiction writing from a young age and produced many short stories during his time at polytechnic. After graduating Kernick joined MMT Computing in London in early 1992, where a relative was the Chairman and Managing Director. Kernick was a key member of the sales team and was very highly regarded. However, he left the company after 4 years in the hope of trying to secure a publishing deal. Despite interest from a number of publishers Kernick was unable to secure a deal, so he joined the sales force of the specialist IT and Business Consultancy Metaskil plc in Aldermaston, Berkshire in 1998 where he remained until he secured his first book deal (The Business of Dying) in September 2001.

His novel Relentless was recommended on Richard & Judy’s Summer book club 2007. It was the 8th bestselling paperback, and the best-selling thriller in the UK in the same year.

Anya Lipska is a TV producer & screenwriter who has made everything from hard-hitting current affairs shows like BBC Panorama and Channel 4 Dispatches, to documentaries on science, history and the arts.

Jake Kerridge writes on arts and books for a number of publications including the Telegraph and takes an unhealthy interest in violence and murder as the Telegraph’s crime fiction critic.

She has filmed teams building amphibious vehicles on Scrapheap Challenge, delved into the Renaissance mind for Monty Don’s Italian Gardens, and explored sexual interaction between early man and our Neanderthal cousins.

She lives in East London with her husband Tomasz and is currently working on the second novel in the Kiszka & Kershaw series.

Lynda La Plante is a prolific novelist and screenwriter, Lynda La Plante CBE’s breakthrough came in 1983 with the television series Widows. Her awardwinning career since includes a string of best-selling novels and hit shows, such as Trial and Retribution and – of course – Prime Suspect, which introduced the public to the instantly iconic and hugely influential character of Helen Mirren’s Detective Jane Tennison. Famous for her meticulous research, in 2013 La Plante became the first non-scientist to be awarded an Honorary Fellowship with the Forensic Science Society, while this year she announced plans to return to her most famous character in the novel Tennison, a prequel to the Prime Suspect series.

Malcolm Mackay was born and grew up in Stornoway where he still lives. The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter, his much lauded debut, was the first in the Glasgow Trilogy, set in the city’s underworld. How a Gunman says Goodbye is the second in the series. The concluding book, The Sudden Arrival of Violence was published in January 2014.

David Mark has been a journalist for fifteen years, including seven years as crime reporter with Yorkshire Post in their Hull office. His first novel, the Hullbased The Dark Winter, was published to much acclaim last year and featured on the Richard and Judy Booklist. The second in the series, Original Skin, was published in the spring.

He is the Festival’s Reader-in-Residence and recently visited libraries across the North to discuss Val McDermid’s A Place of Execution.

Mark Lawson was born in London in 1962. He has worked for the Universe, the Times, the Sunday Times, the Independent, the Independent on Sunday and, currently, the Guardian, where he is a cultural columnist and television critic; he has won many awards for his journalism.

Peter May is one of Scotland’s most prolific television dramatists, he garnered more than 1000 credits in 15 years as scriptwriter and script editor on prime-time British television drama. He is the creator of three

He is also an award-winning broadcaster, best known as host of BBC Radio 4’s Front Row and BBC2’s Newsnight Review. His interview series Mark Lawson Talks To ... runs on BBC4. He has written one non-fiction book and four works of fiction. A new novel, The Deaths will be out later in the year.

8

Denise Mina is the critically acclaimed Glaswegian author of nine novels. She also writes short stories and in 2006 wrote her first play. She is a regular contributor to TV and radio. The End of the Wasp Season won the prestigious Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award in 2012.

major television drama series and presided over two of the highest rated serials in his homeland before quitting television to concentrate on his first love, writing novels.

Born and raised in Scotland he now lives in France.

His novels have a large following in France. He is the recipient of several French literature prizes and has been nominated and shortlisted for several others.

The Blackhouse, the first of the Lewis Trilogy, had its worldwide premier publication in France as L’Ile des Chasseurs d’Oiseaux.

Steve Mosby was born in 1976 in Horsforth, Leeds. He went to University there and then spent a few years temping around, doing the usual menial and unfulfilling jobs for small amounts of money. He is the author of seven novels – The Third Person, The Cutting Crew, The 50/50 Killer, Cry for Help, Still Bleeding, Black Flowers and The Dark Room.

Val McDermid was born in Kirkcaldy. She graduated in English at St Hilda’s College, Oxford – the first from a Scottish state school to do so - before going on to be an award winning journalist for sixteen years. Her first novel was published in 1987.

The popular ITV series Wire in the Blood, based on McDermid’s books and starring Robson Green as Tony Hill, ran for six series.

Juliet Mushens is an Agent in the UK Literary Division of The Agency Group. Before becoming a literary agent, Juliet worked in fiction marketing and editorial at HarperCollins, after reading History at Cambridge. Juliet represents a bestselling list of fiction and non-fiction writers in every area except writing for under-10s and diet books. She was picked as a Bookseller Rising Star in 2012 and was shortlisted for the Kim Scott Walwyn Prize in 2013.

Val is a lifelong Raith Rovers Football Club supporter and at the start of June 2011 was appointed as a Director on the board. Val’s other loves in life include walking on the beach, cars and music. She writes full time and divides her time between Cheshire and Northumberland.

Her books have been translated into more than 30 languages, with over two million copies sold in the UK and over 10 million worldwide.

She has written 25 bestselling novels; The Vanishing Point – her latest novel - is her 26th. Val recently had her first children’s book published – My Granny is a Pirate! She was also a Celebrity Mastermind champion in 2012!

Stuart Neville’s first novel, The Twelve, was one of the most critically acclaimed crime debuts of recent years. It was selected as one of the top crime novels of the year by the New York Times and it won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for best thriller.

His second and third novels, Collusion and most recently Stolen Souls have both been published to widespread praise, confirming his position as one of the most exciting new crime authors writing today.

Melanie McGrath is the author of critically acclaimed, bestselling non-fiction (Silvertown and The Long Exile) and won the John Llewelyn-Rhys/Mail on Sunday award for Best New British and Commonwealth Writer under 35, for her first book Motel Nirvana. She writes for the national press and is a regular broadcaster on radio.

Melanie lives and works in London. White Heat is her first novel.

Louise Millar was brought up in Scotland. She began her journalism career in mainly music and film magazines, working as a sub-editor for Kerrang!, Smash Hits, the NME and Empire.

She later moved into features, working as a commissioning editor on women’s magazines.

She has written for Marie Claire, Red, Psychologies, Stella (Telegraph magazine), the Independent, the Observer, Glamour, Stylist and Eve. She lives in London with her husband and daughters.

James Oswald is the author of the Detective Inspector McLean series of crime novels. Currently there are two available, Natural Causes and The Book of Souls. He has also written an epic fantasy series, The Ballad of Sir Benfroin as well as comic scripts and short stories. In his spare time he runs a 350 acre livestock farm in North East Fife, where he raises pedigree Highland Cattle and New Zealand Romney Sheep.

9

S. J. Parris is the pseudonym of Stephanie Merritt. Born in 1974, she has worked as a critic and feature writer for a variety of newspapers and magazines as well as radio and television.

She currently writes for the Observer. Her first book Heresy was shortlisted for the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Award 2010. She has had four novels published to date; Prophecy, Heresy and Sacrilege, which was a Sunday Times Bestseller in 2012.

Her fourth novel, Treachery will be out later this year.

the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. He was pilloried on breakfast television, beat Oprah Winfrey to a major scoop, has interviewed three prime ministers, spent time on Death Row in the USA and dispensed polio drops in the backstreets of India. His gritty crime novels are set on the mean streets of contemporary Glasgow. His first novel, Random, was shortlisted for the 2010 CWA New Blood Dagger and longlisted for the 2011 Crime Novel of the Year. He is also the author of Snapshot, Cold Grave and Witness the Dead.

Ian Sales has been in the police service for 20 years and has taken part in many high profile investigations during his time attached to a Specialist Crime Department. Ian is now part of a dedicated team training detectives both nationally and internationally and was, also, an associate lecturer at the City University’s Centre for Investigative & Police Sciences.

Tony Parsons is a British journalist broadcaster and author. He began his career as a music journalist on the NME, writing about punk music. Later, he wrote for The Daily Telegraph, before going on to write his current column for the Daily Mirror. Parsons was for a time a regular guest on the BBC Two arts review programme The Late Show, and still appears infrequently on the

Ian lectures on the prestigious City University’s MA in Crime Writing and has written a number of articles on crime writing and interviewed prolific writers in this field for a number of publications. During his time as the media liaison officer, Ian assisted with numerous popular TV Police Documentaries.

successor Newsnight Review; he also briefly hosted a series on Channel 4 called Big Mouth.

He is the author of the multi-million selling novel, Man and Boy. Parsons had written a number of novels including The Kids, Platinum Logic and Limelight Blues, before he found mainstream success by focussing on the tribulations of thirty-something men. Parsons has since published a series of best-selling novels – One For My Baby, Man and Wife, The Family Way, Stories We Could Tell, My Favourite Wife, Starting Over and Men From the Boy. The Murder Bag is his first crime novel.

Ian has also worked alongside top crime writer Jake Arnott on the script development for a film due to go into production this year. Ian now acts a technical advisor to a literary consultancy to assist crime writers in bringing that real sense of authenticity to their crime writing.

Kevin Sampson is the author of eight novels - Awaydays, Powder, Leisure, Outlaws, Clubland, Freshers, Stars are Stars and The Killing Pool - and a work of nonfiction, Extra Time. He lives and works in Liverpool.

Sarah Pinborough is the British author of five horror novels and her sixth, Feeding Ground, is due out from Leisure books in October 2009. Her short stories have appeared in several anthologies and she has also written a Torchwood novel Into the Silence for BBC Books (May 09). She is currently working on A Matter of Blood, the first of a supernatural thriller trilogy for Gollancz, which will be in all good UK book shops in 2010.

Bill Scott-Kerr Following an early career working in bookselling and publishing at Pan Macmillan, Bill Scott-Kerr joined Transworld Publishers in 1994 as Editorial Director for Corgi and Black Swan. He was promoted to Publishing Director in 1997, to Deputy Publisher in 2003, and stepped up to the coveted role of Publisher across all Transworld imprints in 2006.

Sarah has twice been short-listed for the British Fantasy Award for Best Novel and when she’s not writing she can normally be found laughing with friends and drinking wine, probably with a cat in her lap.

Craig Robertson A former journalist, Craig had a 20year career with a Scottish Sunday newspaper before becoming a full-time author.

He reported on major stories including 9/11, Dunblane, the Omagh bombing and

Bill is the only editor in the world to have acquired all of Dan Brown’s books up to and including The Da Vinci Code. He also edits Frederick Forsyth, Andy McNab, Gerald Seymour, John O’Farrell, Monica Ali, General Sir Mike Jackson, Robert Goddard, Rowland White, Billy Bragg and Tom Bradby.

10

James Smythe is the author of the Wales Book of the Year Fiction Award (2012); The Explorer (2013); and The Machine (2013). In January 2014, Harpercollins will publish the first sequel to The Explorer, The Echo.

He currently writes a continuing series of articles for the Guardian called Rereading Stephen king, and he teaches creative writing in London.

In his role of publisher of Transworld, he is also responsible for, among others, Sophie Kinsella, Terry Pratchett, Bill Bryson, Joanna Trollope, Richard Dawkins, Jilly Cooper, Lee Child, John Irving, Stephen Hawking, Danielle Steel, Ben Elton and Tess Gerritsen. He was voted Editor of the Year at the British Book Awards in 2006.

Stav Sherez is the author of The Devil’s Playground (2004) - which was shortlisted for the CWA John Creasy Dagger Award - The Black Monastery (2009) and A Dark Redemption which launched his highly acclaimed Carrigan and Miller series. The second book in the series, Eleven Days, is published this year. You can find him on twitter @stavsherez.

Cath Staincliffe was brought up in Bradford and hoped to become an entomologist (insects) then a trapeze artist before settling on acting at the age of eight. She graduated from Birmingham University with a Drama and Theatre Arts degree and moved to work as a community artist in Manchester where she now lives with her partner and their children.

Mel Sherratt has been a selfdescribed “meddler of words” ever since she can remember.

After winning her first writing competition at the age of eleven, she has rarely been without a pen in her hand or her nose in a book.

Cath is the author of the acclaimed Sal Kilkenny mysteries. Looking For Trouble launched private eye Sal, a single parent struggling to juggle work and home, onto Manchester’s mean streets. It was short listed for the Crime Writers Association’s John Creasey best first novel award, serialised on BBC Radio 4, Woman’s Hour and awarded Le Masque de l’Année in France.

Since then, Cath has published six further Sal Kilkenny mysteries. Cath is also a scriptwriter, creator of ITV’s hit police series, Blue Murder, which ran for five series from 2003 - 2009 starring Caroline Quentin as DCI Janine Lewis. Blue Murder has been sold around the globe in places as diverse as Fiji, Iceland and Yemen. Cath writes for radio and created the Legacy drama series which features a chalk-and-cheese, brother and sister duo of heir hunters whose searches take them into the past lives of families torn apart by events. Cath was short-listed for the CWA Dagger in the Library in 2006. She is an avid reader and reviews for ‘Tangled Web’ and ‘Deadly Pleasures’.

Since successfully self-publishing Taunting the Dead and seeing it soar to the rank of number one bestselling police procedural in the Amazon Kindle store in 2012, Mel has gone on to publish three more books in the critically acclaimed The Estate Series.

Mel has written feature articles for The Guardian, the Writers & Artists website, and Writers’ Forum magazine, to name just a few and speaks regularly at conferences, events.

She lives in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, with her husband and her terrier, Dexter (named after the TV serial killer, with some help from her Twitter fans), and makes liberal use of her hometown as a backdrop for her writing.

Helen Smith is a member of the Mystery Writers of America, The Crime Writers Association and English PEN. She travelled the world when her daughter was small, doing all sorts of strange jobs to support them both – from cleaning motels to working as a magician’s assistant – before returning to live in London where she wrote her first novel. She’s the author of Alison Wonderland, Being Light, The Miracle Inspector and the Emily Castles mystery series as well as children’s books, poetry and plays.

Nick Stone was born in Cambridge, England in 1966.

When he was six months old he was sent to live with his grandparents in Haiti, where he remained for the next four years.

Nick returned to England in 1970, where he has lived on and off ever since. In 1996, Nick returned to Haiti for the first time in twelve years, which inspired his first novel, Mr Clarinet.

Upon publication in 2006, Mr Clarinet was a critical and commercial success, winning several international awards including, in the UK, the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, for best thriller of the year, the International Thriller Writers Award for best first novel, and the Macavity Award for best first novel, in the USA, both in 2007. The French translation, Tonton Clarinette, won the public-voted SNCF Prix du Polar in 2009.

11

Luca Veste is a writer of Italian and Scouse heritage, married with two young daughters, and one of nine children. He is currently studying Psychology and Criminology at University in Liverpool.

Nick’s subsequent books are King of Swords (2007) and Voodoo Eyes (2011), both featuring Max Mingus, the central character from his debut. The books are notable for being out of sequence (King of Swords is a prequel to Mr Clarinet, Voodoo Eyes the sequel) and different in construction one from the other.

Nick’s new novel, The Verdict (2014) is a marked change from his previous work, in that it is a legal thriller, set in contemporary London and told in the first person.

His debut novel - Dead Gone is released by Avon/HarperCollins in December 2013/ January 2014. Part psychological thriller, part police procedural, it introduces the detective pairing of DI David Murphy and DS Laura Rossi.

Callum Sutherland served in the Metropolitan Police for over thirty years. The majority of his service was as a Detective investigating a wide spectrum of major crime around London.

Whilst serving on the murder squad in the early nineties he became interested in forensics and took up a post as a Crime Scene Investigator dealing with murder, unexplained death and mass disaster scenes in both the UK and abroad.

Tom Vowler British writer Tom Vowler’s story collection, The Method, won the Scott Prize in 2010 and the Edge Hill Readers’ Prize in 2011. His debut novel, What Lies Within, is set on the uplands of Dartmoor, and his second, That Dark Remembered Day, is out now. Tom is an associate lecturer at Plymouth University, where he’s studying for a PhD. Represented by Ed Victor, he’s co-editor of the literary journal Short FICTION and occasional all-rounder for the Authors Cricket XI.

After retirement from the police Callum decided to divert his career path into the world of film and television drama. He has worked for Lynda La Plante as a researcher and advisor for her television shows and books and also advised on a number of other UK crime related dramas. Although now primarily involved in the world of fiction, his role requires that he keeps up to date with the latest forensic technology and policing practises. He is the current Vice President of the Forensic Science Society whose offices are based in Harrogate.

Martyn Waites is the author of fifteen novels. He is best known for the critically acclaimed, award-nominated Joe Donovan series (The Mercy Seat, Bone Machine, White Riot, Speak No Evil) which is soon to be reissued. With his wife he writes an internationally bestselling thriller series under the name Tania Carver. They have written five novels so far: The Surrogate (shortlisted for the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year award), The Creeper, Cage Of Bones, Choked and the latest, The Doll’s House. He has recently completed Angel Of Death, the official sequel to Susan Hill’s The Woman In Black.

Tony Thompson is the bestselling author of Gangland Britain and Gangs, and is widely regarded as one of Britain’s top truecrime writers. He has twice been nominated for the prestigious Crime Writer’s Association Gold Dagger for Non-fiction, winning the coveted title in 2001 for his book The Infiltrators. He is the former crime correspondent of the Observer and appears regularly on both television and radio as an expert on matters of crime. Michael Forwell featured prominently in his excellent book ‘Reefer Men: The Rise and Fall of a Billionaire Drug Ring.

SJ Watson’s brilliantly-crafted and internationally-bestselling debut has won numerous awards, while a forthcoming film, starring Nicole Kidman and Colin Firth, can only expand its audience and acclaim. Prepare to delve deep as two of the brightest new stars in psychological crime fiction attempt to get into each other’s heads and see what makes them tick.

Lavie Tidhar was raised on a kibbutz in Israel. He has travelled extensively since he was a teenager, living in South Africa, the UK, Laos, and the small island nation of Vanuatu. Tidhar began publishing with a poetry collection in Hebrew in 1998, but soon moved to fiction, becoming a prolific author of short stories early in the 21st century. His latest novels are Martian Sands and The Violent Century. Tidhar lives with his wife in London.

Tim Weaver is the author of the David Raker series. He is a Top 10 bestseller in print, and an ebook #1 on both Kindle and the Apple iStore. His novels have been selected for the Richard and Judy Book Club and nominated for a National Book Award. His latest Raker thriller, Fall from Grace, is out on August 14.

12

Louise Welsh is a writer living and working in Glasgow, Scotland.

Tom Wood was born in Burton Upon Trent in Staffordshire, England, and nows lives in London. He is the author of The Hunter (aka The Killer), The Enemy, The Game and the e-book novella Bad Luck Berlin.

She is the author of six novels: The Cutting Room (2002), Tamburlaine Must Die (2004), The Bullet Trick (2006), Naming the Bones (2010) The Girl on the Stairs (2012) and A Lovely Way to Burn (20th March 2014). She’s also produced many short stories and articles and written for radio and the stage including a libretto for opera. Louise was writer in residence for The University of Glasgow and Glasgow School of Art from Nov 2010 until April 2012.

2014 Programming Committee Steve Mosby was born in 1976 in Horsforth, Leeds. He went to University there and then spent a few years temping around, doing the usual menial and unfulfilling jobs for small amounts of money.

He is the author of seven novels – The Third Person, The Cutting Crew, The 50/50 Killer, Cry for Help, Still Bleeding, Black Flowers and The Dark Room.

Nicola White grew up in Dublin and New York. She graduated from Trinity College and lived in London and Belfast before moving to Glasgow to work as a contemporary art curator. She later joined the BBC, where she produced arts documentaries for television and radio.

N.J. Cooper is an ex-publisher, past Chair of the Crime Writers’ Association, and lifelong Londoner. She writes for a variety of newspapers and journals and contributes to many radio programmes such as Woman’s Hour and Saturday Review. In 2002 she was shortlisted for the Dagger in the Library, an award that ‘goes to the author whose work has given most pleasure to readers’.

She now lives on a peninsula in the Clyde estuary, between a picturesque sea loch and a submarine base.

In The Rosary Garden is published by Cargo.

Lucie Whitehouse was born in Warwickshire in 1975, read Classics at Oxford University and now lives in Brooklyn, New York.

She is author of The House at Midnight and the TV Book Club pick The Bed I Made.

Jane Gregory handles sales to publishers in the UK and USA as well as to film and television and some foreign territories.

Before setting up as an agent, Jane was a Rights and Contracts Director for publishers. She is a co-founder of ‘The Orange Prize for Fiction’ and is on the programming committee for the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival. In the past Jane has been on the Virago advisory panel, co-founded ‘Women in Publishing’ and has produced and directed several publishers’ pantomimes.

Jodie Whittaker was born in 1982 in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, England as Jodie Auckland Whittaker. She first came to prominence for her work in the film Venus (2006).

Since then she has starred in the films St Trinian’s, Good, St Trinian’s 2 and Attack the Block.

She has also starred in the television series Tess of the D’Urbervilles , Wired, Return to Cranford, Marchlands, Broadchurch, and The Assets.

David Mark has been a journalist for fifteen years, including seven years as crime reporter with Yorkshire Post in their Hull office.

His first novel, the Hull-based The Dark Winter, was published to much acclaim last year and featured on the Richard and Judy Booklist. The second in the series, Original Skin, was published in the spring.

He is the Festival’s Reader-in-Residence and recently visited libraries across the North to discuss Val Mc Dermid’s A Place of Execution.

Laura Wilson was brought up in London and has degrees in English literature from Somerville College, Oxford, and UCL, London. She lives in Islington, London, where she is currently working on her twelfth novel.

She is the crime fiction reviewer for the Guardian newspaper, and teaches on the City University Crime Thriller Novel Creative Writing MA course.

13

Val McDermid was born in Kirkcaldy. She graduated in English at St Hilda’s College, Oxford – the first from a Scottish state school to do so - before going on to be an award winning journalist for sixteen years. Her first novel was published in 1987.

The popular ITV series Wire in the Blood, based on McDermid’s books and starring Robson Green as Tony Hill, ran for six series.

Val is a lifelong Raith Rovers Football Club supporter and at the start of June 2011 was appointed as a Director on the board. Val’s other loves in life include walking on the beach, cars and music. She writes full time and divides her time between Cheshire and Northumberland. Her books have been translated into more than 30 languages, with over two million copies sold in the UK and over 10 million worldwide.

She has written 25 bestselling novels; The Vanishing Point – her latest novel - is her 26th. Val recently had her first children’s book published – My Granny is a Pirate!

She was also a Celebrity Mastermind champion in 2012!

David Shelley was publisher at Sphere, the commercial imprint of Little, Brown. As well as overseeing the imprint, he was editorially responsible for authors including Jeff Abbott, Mark Billingham, Alex Gray, Gregg Hurwitz, Jesse Kellerman, Val McDermid, Nelson DeMille and Christopher Ransom.

In 2011 David Shelley became a publisher at Little, Brown Book Group. Ursula MacKenzie, C.E.O of Little, Brown, said this of Shelley, “David Shelley has been central to the fantastic success Little, Brown has enjoyed over recent years… he has spearheaded all our digital publishing, an area in which we excel.”

Keep up to date with all the festival news by following us @TheakstonsCrime.

Join the conversation online #TOPCRIME2014

Returning 16 - 19 July 2015 Old Swan Hotel, Harrogate

Featuring: M.C. Beaton, Arnaldur Indriðason, Sara Paretsky

Place a deposit at the 2014 reception desk or call: 01423 562303 www.harrogateinternationalfestivals.com/crime

sponsors

www.Theakstons.co.uk