#OnLymeCrime

A brief round-up of some festival excellence!

Cancelled IRL, Lyme Crime found a virtual home this past weekend – now you can relive the mayhem, murder and most interesting chats via the festival’s YouTube channel and you’ll find the fantastic Noir At The Bar (hosted by Vic Watson and Simon Bewick of VNATB fame), featuring loads of exclusive readings of just-published and not-yet-published works over on the VNATB archive page. Here’s a quick guide to those panels:

A double shot of Scotch
McIlvanney award nominees Douglas Skelton and Neil Broadfoot discuss writing from a Scottish perspective and how life after lockdown will never be the same for them – or the characters they bring to life…

Planes, Trains and Pick-Up Trucks
Mark Edwards and Ed James talk about setting books in America and the research trips they undertook to get it right… which almost ended in disaster.

Train Noir
SJ Holliday and Mason Cross discuss their most recent novels, both of which are set on trains, talking about the journeys that inspired them and how this particular form of travel lends atmosphere, momentum and claustrophobia to a thriller.

Music, mystery and Du Maurier
Crime writers Syd Moore and Olivia Isaac-Henry discuss the value of Creative Writing MAs, their love of Northern Soul and the haunting appeal of Daphne Du Maurier.

Dark Days and Bright Nights
Lilja Sigurðardóttir and Quentin Bates talk about exporting Iceland’s very own flavour of crime fiction into English. Comes with a side order of elves and witches.

Not So Cosy Now
Rachel Ward and Derek Farrell are proud to have their work described as cosy. They’ll be sharing their views on how contemporary cosy novels can also be the most subversive – the perfect way to look at evil in our society in a balance of light and dark.

The Business of Death
Paddy Magrane talks to Doug Johnstone about the inspiration behind A Dark Matter and its follow-up, The Big Chill, his compelling and darkly comic novels featuring the Skelf family, three women running a funeral director’s and a PI firm in Edinburgh.

Multiple Murder
Does the genre choose the author or can the author call the shots? Marnie Riches, Michelle Davies and Roz Watkins discuss.

Race & Criminal Justice
George Floyd’s death has sparked widespread anger and protest in the US and UK over police abuse. This panel will look at some of the issues relating to racism and criminal justice, in the US and the UK, including discrimination in death penalty cases in the US.
Panelists: Kenneth Reams – artist, social justice activist, writer and the youngest person to be sentenced to execution in Arkansas history when he was aged 18, in 1993. Kenneth is still on Arkansas’ death row and has spent 27 years in solitary confinement. Kenneth will be speaking from his cell at the event. George Kendall – leading death penalty and civil rights attorney at Squire Patton Boggs, New York. Shamik Dutta – partner at Bhatt Murphy and specialist in civil claims and public law challenges against the police; Executive Committee member of the London Anti-Racist Alliance. Moderator: Samantha Knights QC – barrister and adjunct professor at University of Miami.

Noir at the Bar
A host of top crime and thriller talent join forces to celebrate OnLyme Crime, preview new work and celebrate the Noir From The Bar anthology which collects 30 of the world’s best crime writers in a collection with all profits going to NHS charities. (See the pic at the top of the page for the line-up.)

Setting the Pace
When a book becomes a rollercoaster. Thriller authors Alex Knight and Tony Kent reveal the secrets to writing a page-turner.

Monsters in our Midst
Tammy Cohen, Cass Green and Amanda Jennings discuss long-buried secrets, monsters hiding in plain sight, and why crime readers and writers are drawn to the darker side of family life.

Character vs Plot: The Showdown
Devilish twists and turns. Compelling, believable characters. The very best fiction is always rich in both. But should crime fiction lean slightly more towards one or the other? Join Lucie Whitehouse, Fiona Cummins and Caz Frear as they tackle the literary ‘chicken-egg’ conundrum. What comes first, character or plot?’

Characters on the Couch – We Know You Know
Erin Kelly and psychotherapist Paddy Magrane delve deep into the psyches of Marianne, Jesse, Helen and Honor, the lead characters from We Know You Know, Erin’s psychological suspense novel about mental health, motherhood and betrayal.

New blood, new stories
Stephanie Wrobel, Robin Morgan-Bentley and Will Shindler, discuss their debut titles, what drew them to crime, and what readers can expect from them in the future. Moderated by Amanda Jennings.

Law & Order: Lyme Regis – Two Cops. Two Lawyers. One Judge. Five Writers
Lisa Cutts, Neil Lancaster, Tony Kent, Imran Mahmood and His Honour Judge Nigel Lithman QC discuss writing crime from a cop and lawyer’s point of view

The Mindful Detective
A conversation between author Laurence Anholt and his actor daughter, Maddy Anholt about Laurence’s Mindful Detective series, featuring a Buddhist cop who feels too much for his own good. Maddy narrated the recent audiobook version of the first title in the series, Art of Death, so father and daughter discuss characters, voices, the setting of the novels in the Jurassic Coast and meditation.

50 Shades of Noir
Polar opposites Neil Broadfoot and Derek Farrell discuss bonding over a shared love of crime and wine and how seeming opposites can have much in common. (Check out what Derek had to say about writing and #OnLymeCrime on his visit to TGWATCB recently)