From handshake to hug – at Bloody Scotland 2023

I simply couldn’t resist the opportunity of saying ‘Fletcher Moss, I presume?’ so had to start off this year’s Bloody Scotland with Alex Gray’s New Crimes, where she talks to new crime writers. She receives so many proofs every year that her house is in danger of collapsing. This year Alex – who apparently is the daughter of a seventh daughter – talked to Fulton Ross, who might be some sort of elf, to Jo Callaghan who knows about AI, and to Alex Hay (I like the rhyming!) who’s into historical heists. And then there’s the ‘thuggish looking deputy headteacher’ who was previously Fletcher Moss, but now writes as Martin Griffin, his real name. I think, anyway. He recognised me and we shook hands and we laughed about his long ago lack of book signing capabilities. It went better this time.

Next I trotted over to the Albert Halls where I denied all interest in Alex Gray several times, on the grounds I’d just seen her. But once I looked at the programme, and also discovered I didn’t seem to have the tickets I needed for my next event, I realised their eagerness in wanting to offer up Alex was that she was the one chatting to James Oswald, with a bit of help from Jonathan Whitelaw.

Unfortunately someone was sitting on my chair when I entered, but I sent witchy thoughts and eventually he moved. Before Alex and James were let loose, it was time for the two minutes in the spotlight from a new writer, reading from their first crime novel. In this case Axl Malton with Cries of Joy. (Took me a while to get his name right…)

You don’t want to watch television with James. He sits there with his notebook, ‘writing is a compulsion, it’s a terrible thing.’ According to James, if you plot, then that’s already been written and no good for when he wants to write. He has a whiteboard in his study, and he forgets his characters’ names. He’s less keen on swearing, but doesn’t mind violent murders. He gets depressed by the news and doesn’t read true crime. If it weren’t for copy editors he’d keep repeating the same clichés over and over.

Alex believes the police – especially in Scotland, who are different – are fine people. All large organisations, including the police, have rogues. And having chatted to lifers in prison, they do not look for inspiration for crime in fiction; reading is purely entertainment.

At the signing after, I was pleased to see that Axl got to sit with James and Alex. And I was glad I caught James before the queues took over, so I could say hello before I was driven home for dinner and a rest, before returning to the Albert Halls for more.

Val McDermid and Abir Mukherjee chatted and joked for an hour, and we all had fun. In fact, it was such fun and the hour was perhaps a little longer than they ordinarily are. Luckily the very determined Ann Landmann was on door duty and let Abir know it was time to stop. Eventually he heeded her, giving everyone enough time to prepare for the next event. I occasionally struggle with hearing things, and had they not handed out the first two chapters of Val’s new book, I’d have come away under the impression the title is Past Lines. It’s not. It is Past Lying. (I have an appointment at the Hearing Clinic this week…) But, as always, great fun to listen to these two talk.

The evening ended with the only slightly delayed event of CrimeMaster, very ably run by C L Taylor and ‘Little’ Luca Veste. (Because Vaseem [Khan] wasn’t there.) The five contestants were Abir Mukherjee, Gytha Lodge, Mark Billingham, Mark Edwards and Susi Holliday. They all brought bribes; some better than others. Then we were treated to the sight of them competing on a sunny Stirling square (last year), proving it’s not really possible to write a – very – short story while running. As for the running in general and crawling through tunnels and jumping over obstacles; well that didn’t go well either.

But the worst came at the end. They had to spell the title of a book with the help of alphabet pasta in tomato sauce, without using their hands. It was disgusting but they all lowered their little faces into the troughs, I mean plates, of pasta. A couple cheated by using each others’ hands. Yeah, I know. It was fun. Even without Vaseem. At least for the audience. I think there was a winner. Possibly Mark Billingham.

This kind of thing is not terribly literary. But it has entertainment value.

Let’s hope Vaseem will be back next year.

The next day was ladies’ day. As chair Jenny Brown pointed out, there were more of us in the audience. On stage we had three ladies; her and Karin Smirnoff and Denise Mina. Both Karin and Denise have recently written books featuring detectives originally invented by men, Stieg Larsson and Raymond Chandler. Similar idea, but they came at it quite differently. Denise of the weird clothes (they are glorious!) likes research and has looked very carefully into LA and all that she needs to know. She also mentioned a Nordic coach trip ( sounds unlikely, I know) where people were told to get off to admire the views and engage in small talk. In Glasgow everyone talks to everyone.

Karin, on the other hand, did no research. She paid someone to do it for her. Although that might have backfired. Being a Swede and from the north of the country as well, she doesn’t like chatting. In her own quiet, non-assuming ways, Karin was actually quite funny. I’d been intending to introduce myself to her at the signing, but felt disinclined to disturb Karin’s Swedish silence, and left her to her queue of fans. After all, why would two Swedes chitchat such a long way from home?

The last day, Sunday, we went to the last panel of the weekend. The ballroom at the Golden Lion was packed to the rafters; a complete sellout. Barry Hutchison, aka J D Kirk, appeared with Marion Todd and Colin MacIntyre, chaired by Caro Ramsay. I’ve never seen quite so many seats in there, and was grateful for my chair in the far corner next to the marble column. I may have rested my head on it when things got a little too ‘Jo Nesbø-ish’ at times.

Marion was a fun new acquaintance for us, who seems to like murdering people in St Andrews. And Barry – aka J D – was pretty relaxed about his writing. He does no research, which is why he murders on home ground where he knows what’s what. He writes 4000 words doing 12,000 steps (he writes on a treadmill thingy). Or some such numbers.

It was clear quite a few people were there for him, issuing stern instructions on not killing any [more] dogs. After some parting words from Gordon Brown, we went to queue outside. The first man in line for Barry hauled six paperbacks out of his rucksack. That’s proper dedication, that is. The queue was long, so I had to wait for my hug, but I got it in the end.

So that was a pretty good Bloody weekend in Scotland, and with some luck Vaseem will be back next year…

Liking Hoon

At first I didn’t. Like him, that is. He turned up as a side character in J D Kirk’s DCI Logan books (of which I have only read four, so far…) and he confused me. I never like that. It was as if I should have known who he was, but it has struck me that I couldn’t very well have, as the Jack Logan books I was reading were the first ones. He went round being unpleasant and the other characters didn’t much care for him.

When I heard he was getting his own series of books I felt it was one way to get rid of the man.

Always – well, almost always – willing to learn something new though, I downloaded Northwind, the first Hoon thriller. I discovered I liked him. His take on shoplifting was a novel one. Always get a birthday card too. There is too much effing, but it’s what makes Hoon Hoon. He drinks too much. Also Hoon. But he can control his needs if he must. Mostly.

Former Detective Superintendent Robert Hoon is both a former police officer and a former soldier. He’s not much liked by his old colleagues. No longer officially with the police, he clearly can’t go round solving crime the traditional way, which leaves him with a favour for a friend, and he goes about it in his own inimitable style.

I don’t usually go straight on to the next book when coming to the end, but both J D Kirk and Bob Hoon are quite persuasive, and luckily I had already bought the second book*, Southpaw, meaning there was nothing stopping me from continuing reading. (*It was on offer.)

DCI Logan will have to be careful. I just might like Hoon better.

The Second Stranger

The heroine in Martin Griffin’s The Second Stranger is hellbent on getting on her plane to Chile by the end of her last night working in a deserted hotel in the Scottish Highlands. I found Remie perhaps a little too fixated on this, not realising quite the bad situation she has landed in.

But then I don’t know how I’d react if the snow storm outside suddenly delivered an injured policeman to my front door, warning about a dangerous criminal on the loose. And then a second injured policeman using the same name a couple of hours later. It’s an interesting conundrum. Which one is the detective and which one is the escaped murderer?

Using my judgement and staying aware of double and even triple bluffs, I made my choice. Remie isn’t too sure. Both are plausible.

An adventurous night follows as she tries to stay on the right side of both men, wanting to remain safe so she can be on that plane to Chile in the morning.

I noticed several of the little clues planted, but missed a considerable number more that might have alerted me to further interesting developments. But lessening the thrill isn’t what the reader should be after. This is very much in the vein of those films where the hero/ine finds themselves in one scrape worse than the one before, soldiering on while being absolutely exhausted.

I couldn’t stop reading this book, which is one of the debuts at this year’s Bloody Scotland.

Stateless

Elizabeth Wein makes me very happy. I love the way I feel when she moves into the between-the-wars period, even when I can’t avoid thinking about what her characters will have to face in just a couple of years’ time (this book is set in 1937). There is something magical about a period when people have all this hope, after that other war.

Stateless is about one person’s wish to promote peace, trying to make it happen when twelve young pilots from as many European countries are brought together in a flying race, where they will travel and talk and hopefully overcome the memories from the Great War. Except there is a fatal incident on the first leg of the race, with just one witness.

The witness is Stella, the British competitor, who already feels she needs to tread carefully, being both the only female pilot, but also the holder of a Nansen passport, meaning she is stateless.

This makes the race dangerous. Who might be next? And who was behind the first incident? The pilots are young and some are hot-headed. Many are scared because of the political situation in the various countries they visit; different for each in each place. Can they make friends, and can they stay alive while trying to find out what’s happening?

Flying is Elizabeth’s strength, and it’s not only this topic that makes her books stand out, but it’s the way the reader learns what the pilot can see – or not see – from the cockpit, because the wings are in the way, or some other thing. You learn how to be less visible if you are being chased by another plane. And you find out – if you didn’t already know – about the political issues of the day; the civil war in Spain, Mussolini’s Italy, the early days of Hitler’s Germany, about being jewish. Immoral music, even.

And the friendships? Enough to make my hair stand on end. Nothing is quite as you’d expect. This Europe of one for all and all for one is exciting. I still haven’t made my mind up as to whether things were more promising then, or now.

At least now you have Stateless to read. Don’t make any other plans until you’re done.

Shelving it

Bookcases have been coming and going at Bookwitch Towers. This last week has seen several carryings in and out, both here and at Daughter’s new abode. (Well, one can’t always get the right configuration on a first try, can one?)

Until now I have stashed Son’s books – by which I mean those he has translated – on the low shelf behind my armchair. But the books have sort of outgrown that space. I don’t know how that happened. Maybe I washed the shelf and it shrunk?

So we were discussing what to do, and it seems that the Resident IT Consultant’s Scottish collection will be going upstairs, just like one of the new-to-us bookcases. And then we will display the Nordic Noirs in a more prime position than behind me.

That was when the postman called today. He huffed and puffed a bit, but not too much because he’s a very nice postman.

He was delivering two copies of a children’s Space encyclopaedia on which Daughter has been the specialist consultant. (See, we don’t have just the one consultant any longer!) And because there were two copies, it seems that us old people get to hold on to one. It needs a shelf to live on.

The book is Children’s First Space Encyclopedia by Claudia Martin. It’s the kind of book I’d have liked as a child, and which I might have got for Offspring at the right age too. It features the unnamed Goldilocks and dwarfs and giants, as well as a really large telescope. It is not the consultant’s first, nor her last, but at least she’s not going at the same speed as her brother.

I wonder how long there will be space – hah – for both space and murder on this new prime shelf? Not long I suspect.

Miss Graham’s [Cold] War [Cookbook]

We’ve got used to books where we are all terribly pleased the Allies won WWII. And it’s quite obvious, really – isn’t it? – that the victors take over and they run things, while the losers put up with it. Especially if you are the victorious one. And the British were quite decent and everything worked out for the best.

Well, there’s much that’s wrong with this picture, and I’m glad to report that Celia Rees deals with these tired clichés in her adult book about Miss Graham and her cookbook, back in Germany in 1946. To begin with, I found it refreshing to have a heroine – neither young, nor old – who drinks and has sex, in a way that we’ve got used to female heroines not doing [back then]. In fact, Edith Graham is quite normal, in a way that fits in with both modern thinking, but also doesn’t feel wrong for the 1940s.

And the British… well. They ‘know’ they are right and the Germans ‘had it coming.’ But they are not very nice. Nor are the Americans, and it goes without saying that the Russians are all wrong. We see the victors eating and drinking really well, while the Germans are quietly starving on the sides. Perhaps not those who ‘had it coming’ but more the normal civilians.

Edith is in Lübeck to look after education, but she has also been involved in a couple of sidelines, doing bits of minor (?) spying for the Military, and also for someone else. She does this with the help of her recipe collection, which turns out to be a useful hobby.

She makes friends, but also plenty of enemies. Above all, she learns that all is not simple and that even close friends are doing the wrong thing and not always for the right reason.

In a way I already knew this, but I still feel my eyes have been opened. And the book has probably forever ruined similarly set books where the Allies are the heroes.

There are a couple of unusual twists to the story, at least one of which I could sense from the beginning, while not quite sure how it would work out. I’ll leave you to enjoy the book, and to see what you think will happen.

(I believe the words ‘cold’ and ‘cookbook’ have been dropped from the paperback edition. I would like to think that they have also edited the surplus of ‘Teirgartens’ I was disturbed by. Or not. German is a foreign language, after all.)

Not smelling us

Yes, Bernardine Evaristo really did regret not being able to smell us, as well as see us, and hear us, last night at the book festival. The audience was there for her Black Britain, Writing Back event with Judith Bryan, S I Martin and Nicola Williams, but the authors themselves were not.

Bernardine would be my ideal English professor and she can teach me anytime. Although, it seems not how to pronounce incomparable, which she admitted she’d been getting wrong until very recently when her husband pointed it out. She’s the one selecting the ‘black novels’ that are being republished by Hamish Hamilton, after first appearing in the 1990s.

I freely admit to never having heard of the authors she had invited yesterday. All three were interesting and had a lot to say, about themselves and other black authors, why they wrote what they did, and how they got there.

Judith sat in front of a nicely curated bookcase as she talked about her novel Bernard and the Cloth Monkey, and read a short piece from it, about a young couple meeting for the first time after getting to know each other by writing letters (!), after finding each other in a lonely hearts column. The book won her the Saga Prize, and she talked about attending writing classes at City Lit where she met Andrea Levy, among others.

[Steve] S I Martin sticks to writing about black Britain before 1948. He wants to show readers that this country has had black people living here for hundreds of years. His novel Incomparable World is set in the London of 1786, and whereas he’d hoped it would be discovered by black readers, he reckoned it mostly ended up on coffee tables in Hampstead. But that was fine, too. Bernardine said she feels his books would be perfect for becoming films, and Steve said he’s still waiting.

Barrister Nicola Williams wrote her legal thriller Without Prejudice about a black, female barrister, and she did so from midnight to four in the morning every night for nine months. (The audience question was when she slept. Between four and eight, apparently…) Nicola read the bit where her character goes back to her old, failing secondary school to give a talk about her success thanks to the school, but changing it to ‘despite’ her school. This went down well with the students. Nicola’s inspiration was reading John Grisham.

Asked who they grew up reading, the answer was mostly American authors. For closer to home now, two of the authors mentioned Luke Sutherland (from Blairgowrie) as their black Scottish inspiration, and Jackie Kay is much admired. And Judith managed a charmingly muddled senior moment when looking for a name and a place, and finding neither. I’m glad I’m not the only one!

This was another book festival event I most likely wouldn’t have chosen to go to in person in ‘the olden days’. Being able to sit at home and run the mouse down the list of events and picking – almost at random – yields some fantastic experiences. And when reading time becomes plentiful, I know what to look for.

Fake News

‘I’ll send out a copy of Fake News too’, said the publisher in response to my comment that while C J Dunford’s new YA title looked quite promising, I didn’t have a lot of May left in which to read it. But she clearly knew what she was doing, guilting me into finding more reading time.

Only joking! Once Fake News was here, I could tell it was a book for which May had to be stretched a little. But it has caused me much trouble, I have to tell you. The first afternoon when it was lying on my table, to be picked up by my hands, I had to – twice – remove it from the hands of the Resident IT Consultant, who, unbidden, declared it looked really good. And as I was racing through the book, I attempted to stop for little breaks every now and then, but it was actually impossible to stop. I closed the book and opened it again within seconds.

This is an intelligently written story – which will be why a certain somebody thought it was an adult novel. Let me just say it takes much more to write quite so sensibly and entertainingly for a YA audience. Partly set in a school, and also in the bedrooms of the four children involved, it doesn’t sink to the usual levels of such tales.

Three teenagers, one 11-year-old (he’s so clever he’s been moved up a few years at school) and a dog, decide to give the world some more fake news. Just to prove it can be done and that we are gullible. They do it for several good reasons, or I wouldn’t have approved. And there are aliens.

Possibly the aliens were why things happened the way they did, but that was also a lot of fun. And can you believe teenagers are so young these days they haven’t watched ET? GCHQ might have been involved. And eco-warriors. A creepy wannabe journalist, some surprisingly decent teachers at school, and the question of whether pink and purple go together.

Fake News is so much fun. You too will want to read it, even if there is very little May left. You can have June.

See you at the launch tonight?

Kissing frogs

When we were in the front garden a while back, with the Resident IT Consultant doing the gardening and me sitting comfortably, issuing instructions, the neighbour next door gave us two frogs. I suspect they were ours originally, and we do have a tiny pond they can live near.

Those are not the frogs I am kissing. Wouldn’t dream of it. But it struck me, not long ago, as I was contemplating what to read and why, that it’s a bit like kissing frogs, to see if they will turn into princes. Sometimes you have to kiss quite a few frogs, to find a book worth spending your time on. (This might be a mixed metaphor. I am hazy about those, but I suspect frogs and books are not interchangeable.)

So, I kiss fewer frogs these days, and am not able to bother with quite a few of them, even if they really are princes, deep down. And far too many have no blue blood in them at all.

Not sure how our frogs are doing, as I’m rarely out there searching for them. At the time we had a lot of frog spawn, however. Whether they will grow up into handsome princes, I have no idea.

Once a week Daughter has online tea with some friends/colleagues. On some occasion the chat turned to books (one can never be certain those academic types actually read…) and one of them mentioned she’d loved a Swedish thriller recently. Some more digging revealed a title and the mention of two authors, which in turn made me sort of, nearly, remember something. She had read it in Dutch, as the English version isn’t out yet. It will be, though, seeing as my inkling confirmed that it’s one of Son’s translations.

This week he received his copies of another Swedish crime novel – Gustaf Skördeman’s Geiger – which is out sooner. Both of these books have been much talked about, enough so even I could hear it and be a little aware of things.

And both Daughter and Son have recently sent off copies of their theses to GP Cousin, who was foolish enough to ask to read them. Those books are definitely not frogs. At all. I know, because I have read them. One a bit more closely than the other, but I pride myself on believing that I understood more than GP will. (Which is unkind, because he is a boy and he is four years older than I am, so…)

Some books actually are about frogs. They can be quite good too.

Baby, it’s cold out there

‘Do you even know what that is?’ Daughter asked as I read out loud from the television guide, suggesting that Saturday afternoon we could have watched Ice Station Zebra.

Would I suggest something without knowing; without meaning it?

I swiftly informed her about the film, whose novel it was based on and that the Alistair MacLean book was far superior. But the film would still have been worth watching. Again. Can only have seen it three or four times.

This was confirmed by friends on social media, who did actually watch yesterday, and I felt I had sort of missed out. Even if I can watch later. But I’m glad that at least people my age are still enjoying these ancient adventure thrillers. And there was nothing wrong with Where Eagles Dare, which both Offspring have watched.

I probably won’t reread the MacLeans. Although the reason I gave up at whatever point, must have had more to do with me moving on as the books moved in a different direction. I suspect I favour the WWII and Cold War stories.

And if I may say so, one good side to the lack of new programmes and films has been that there is so much old stuff offered again. Things that would usually have been hidden away in the middle of the night if it ever came to light again. I like seeing films again.

Again.