Portsmouth MysteryFest 2019

Earlier this year, I went to my first event at a literary festival, which those who know me will probably be surprised that I've managed to live this long without having gone to one!

Portsmouth BookFest, a literary festival, held in libraries in Portsmouth, and I went to a couple of events they held.  One was Afternoon Tea with Deadly Dames, which was a talk from 4 female authors of crime fiction!  

They had some prepared questions, and they each took turns answering them.  It was an interesting mix of indie published forensic murder mystery (Carol Westron), what looked to be popular crime books (Sue Fortin), gay historical mystery (Charlie Cochrane), and historical crime (Nicola Slade).  

The other was Portsmouth MysteryFest, which was held in Portsmouth Central Library, and was an all day event.  Yes, an entire Saturday of murder mystery lovers, all in a room together!

The audience was mostly female, and there was a series of talks, on subjects such as 'Bodies in the Library' by Jennifer Palmer (whom I'd love to link, but I can't find a page for her!), how a lot of crime novels have things happening in libraries, including bodies being found there.  The examples were books such as Agatha Christie, 'The Body in the library', and Simon Brett, 'The Liar in the Library' (which I've reviewed!).

Speaking of Simon Brett, he gave a monologue called 'Lines of Enquiry', which was taking a humours look at police procedurals, and all of their cliches.

Because I was at a book event, I felt it would be wrong if I didn't buy anything, so I came away with three books, which felt a bit rude, as I had to choose between all of the authors who had come to the event!

I chose:

The Terminal Velocity of Cats by Carol Westron, who was at both events, and is a police procedural.

The Devil's Daughters by Diana Bretherick, which is a historical crime book.

The Detective's Daughter by Lesley Thomson which is a daughter looking into a crime her father investigated.

I've not read any of them yet, but they're now on my lovely 'To Be Read' trolley, in my office!

If you're interested, and to be fair to all of the author's and others who gave their time, here's the timetable for the day!

Panel 1 'In the Reviewers' Hot Seat' Authors Diana Bretherick, Donna Fletcher-Crow, Leigh Russell, Sally Spedding and Carol Westron asked questions by Mystery People Reviewers Dot Marshall-Gent and Jennifer Palmer.

'Research for Crime Writers' where Judith Cranswick discussing her lessons of how much research you need to do versus the amount of research you need to put in the book!

Simon Brett's monologue 'Lines of Enquiry'.

Panel 2 'Single Offender or Serial Killer?' Authors Jeff Dowson, Christine Hammacott, Graham Minette, Lesley Thomson and Linda Regan (moderator as well), discussed stand-alone crime novels versus series.  Series authors said it meant their characters can grow, stand-alone didn't get bored of the characters.  This is an over-simplication, as not everyone would fall into one of these two camps, but we know that Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan-Doyle definitely did!

'Authur Conan Doyle's real life investigations' - Laura Weston discussed the two cases that Conan Doyle looked at,  They were the cases of George Edalji and Oscar Slater.

Dot Marshall-Gent talked about 'Victorian crime writing', mentioning Catherine Crowe, who wrote Susan Hopley, for which there is an argument that it's the first detective novel!

And last but not least, Jennifer Palmer talked about 'Bodies in the Library!'