Launching a fresh Bloody Scotland

There was a woman reading outside the Golden Lion hotel. Reading is good, but not necessarily on a mobile phone in the middle of Stirling’s King Street. And then someone prodded me with a ‘prodder’ on the stairs up to the ballroom. I’m thinking they are getting ready for the crime writers in mid-September, 15th to 17th. Don’t miss it!

Having learned last year that I am actually allowed to sit down, I went and got myself a chair, borrowing from the ballroom set up for the event after the launch speeches. There was mingling, and then director Bob McDevitt introduced the new programme. He’d cut off his Covid hair. He welcomed the festival committee, finally together again. Mentioned sponsors and new venues. The library and Trinity church having joined the Albert Halls and the Golden Lion. And ‘we have serial killers.’ How could you resist?

I had noted the woman sporting hair like Marnie Riches – without being Marnie – and she turned out to be radio’s Nicola Meighan, the chair for the Ambrose Parry event. She was a most excellent chair, with excellent hair.

So was the chair I returned to the ballroom after use, on which I might have happened to put the teaspoon I found on ‘mine.’ Not to worry, the people who found it disposed of it more sensibly, and then they started chatting to me which was very nice of them. A piece of advice; if you start writing crime novels in retirement, having a chatty wife who strikes up conversations is really useful. AJ Liddle was a Bloody Scotland debut writer a few years ago, and has just published his third crime novel, all set in Georgia (the one in the east). He lived there for 15 years, so I’d say he knows it well. They had just returned from Shetland Noir, which had been very good. (Just to be on the safe side I checked that AJ had not been at school with the Resident IT Consultant. You never know.)

As I said Nicola was a great chair. She asked Ambrose – i.e. Marisa Haetzman and Chris Brookmyre – all the right questions, without them even seeming like questions. So, Marisa had never harboured ambitions to write at all, having seen what it was like when Chris did it. But after a masters in history of medicine about ten years ago, finding the birth of chloroform fascinating (I suppose for an anaesthetist it would be…), and wanting to read a book about Simpson who made the discovery, by having his family sit round the dinner table sniffing chloroform until they passed out; Chris pointed out that if it hasn’t been written, then you have to write it yourself.

‘You embrace the power of fiction’ and are allowed to make things up, as Nicola said. Marisa feels she is like a mentor to the two main characters, who are members of the Simpson household. Chris felt that if they found this interesting, then perhaps more people would. And it did give them something to talk about during the pandemic.

They wanted to write about a woman in medicine, which in 1853 wasn’t really a thing. It’s taken them four books to get to this point, and they said the new book Voices of the Dead is lighter, although it features dismemberment. They laughed.

Marisa feels like a protective mother to one of the characters. When she started writing about Raven he was much nicer, until Chris forced him to be darker. Chris knows to wait until Marisa is in a good mood before introducing an idea he’s had. It’s crucial that they write separately, and then they have meetings where Chris talks and Marisa makes notes. And then they edit in the same document and Marisa described sitting there seeing how her lovely sentence she was so proud of was deleted.

Education was seen as damaging to women in the 19th century, and middle class women were expected to marry. They have been accused of modern day feminism, but can prove that these ideas existed a long time ago. Marisa has realised it is easier to spread information through popular fiction, and has given up on wanting to write non-fiction. But she has a list should anyone need it…

This was a great event and a great start to Bloody Scotland. We have to wait three months for the rest, but an early look at the programme tells me it’s going to be worth it. I have eight things I want to see. (More if I had a time-turner.)

You can buy tickets now. Though Crime at the Coo is probably long gone.