If you thought getting a bunch of crime writers together would be dark and sinister, make sure you attend Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate one year and see how wrong you are.
On Friday we headed up to join eight MM Agency authors (C.L. Taylor, Mel Sherratt, C. J. Tudor, Caroline Mitchell, Nuala Ellwood, Christi Daugherty, Max Manning and Teresa Driscoll) for a weekend of fascinating panels and events based around this ever-popular and evolving genre. It was a joy to be able to spend time with so many of our incredible crime writers at the Old Swan Hotel, a venue so closely linked with the Mother of Crime, Agatha Christie.
To celebrate The Chalk Man by C.J. Tudor, due to be published in January 2018, creepy chalk men were spotted around the festival too, and hangers appeared on bedroom doors over night.
To top it all off, The Escape by C.L. Taylor, which was nominated for two Dead Good awards this year, won the Hidden Depths Award for Most Unreliable Narrator. Her fourth psychological thriller, The Escape was a No. 2 Bestseller and beat the likes of Alice Feeney, Ali Land and Sarah Pinborough to scoop the prize. Congratulations, Cally – it was richly deserved!
