A CrimeFest round-up

Of the many fascinating CrimeFest posts in the blogosphere, you might like to read Meg Gardiner's entertaining accounts of her experiences, including her interrogation by Zoe Sharp - who managed to extract from Meg the story of how she spent a day in a police patrol car when in high school and nearly got caught in a bank robbery. Thank heavens for Meg's mother and her shopping trolley!
You might also like to stop by and read Martin Edwards's recount of one of the top-two panels, on forgotten authors. I am not intrinsically interested in forgotten authors per se (I have too many vying for attention on my shelves as it is) but this session was fascinating, and I've noted down the recommendations. (The reason I liked this panel and the translators' panel the best were because the discussion was about books in general, rather than the particular authors' books.)
Michael Walters has had a biphasic (so far) recovery from CrimeFest, which you are welcome to share. He pays tribute to that excellent author, John Harvey, as well as writing approvingly of the two panels mentioned in the previous paragraph.
Zoe Sharp has not written about CrimeFest yet, so far as I can tell, but given the number of photographs she was taking, it is probably worth keeping an eye on her site. Rafe McGregor, another charming author whom I met for the first time in Bristol through his kindly joinining our quiz team and contributing more than I did to our winning total (but not as much as Martin Edwards it has to be said), has a blog but has only mentioned the meeting in passing. (Interesting blog, though.)
Declan Burke comes the closest I have yet read to breaking ranks and almost (but not quite) accusing the whole thing of being a marketing exercise. He admits that he attended only one panel (other than the two in which he participated), and then only for 20 minutes and because he was in Ali Karim's wake at the time. Writers taking about writing aren't very interesting, says Declan. Might this herald the turn of the reader, next year?
Of course, there is plenty to read on all the usual blogs: Euro Crime, Crime Scraps, Rap Sheet, Shots (some very good posts from the meeting by Ayo), Detectives Beyond Borders (a somewhat idiosyncratic take), and so on. Forgive the lack of linking (here's a blog search for CrimeFest, so you'll see that there are lots of posts to choose from!).  Friend Feed also has many links and some chat about the meeting.
P.S. I was going to include a picture in this post, but could not get the new Typepad dashboard system to see it.

Comments

[Euro Crime (Karen M)]

Many thanks for pointing out the above links. Very useful.

[cfr]

Murderati.com is also a place to keep a look out for Zoe, on Thursdays, every other week. For that week, she posts the start of her post on her own site and does a longer post on murderati.

[Murderati]

Hi Maxine

Thank you for the mention. I went straight from CrimeFest to Mayhem in the Midlands, but I'll be sorting and posting pictures from both events on this weekend's blog.

Cheers

Zoë Sharp
www.zoesharp.com