As the dust settles – Part one
And just like that #NN19 was over! But if you weren’t able to make it or you want to re-live those criminally fabulous memories again, here’s Louise Fairbairn’s roundup of the week-end that was #NN2019!
Thursday 2 May
Noir At The Bar, The Town Wall
Hosted by Vic Watson and Newcastle Noir director Jacky Collins, this was the perfect start to the weekend – a relaxed couple of hours in a downstairs room of the Town Wall pub, listening to a dozen crime writers reading from their work (including an excellent wildcard entry). Most of the authors also appeared on panels during the weekend, so look out for more later.
We kicked off this NATB session with Derek Farrell, reading from his fourth novel, Death of an Angel, and while I know he was nervous he got into his stride in moments and had us giggling and gasping at the exploits of Danny and Caz. The pair crack me up from the moment we meet them in Death of a Diva, and Derek gave them some wonderful moments here.
Next up was Nic Parker – who went on to spend the weekend as one of the volunteer Noir Stars making sure everything ran smoothly, what a multi-tasker! She read from a new thriller which is set in California, and shows her love of horror has not deserted her despite a switch in genres with this book…
Representing Scotland was Neil Broadfoot, who read a particularly icky passage from the start of No Man’s Land, the first in the Connor Fraser series, which has just been released in paperback. Probably not one to read while you’re eating, but it certainly does grab your attention!
Judith O’Reilly has gone from her Wife In The North blog to the experiment of A Year Of Doing Good to publishing her first political thriller, Killing State. Her reading was about a killer sent on the trail of Honor Jones MP – with an intriguing twist that made us want to grab the book immediately! The second instalment is out at the end of the year.
Iceland’s Jonina Leosdottir gave us a huge change of style, with a reading from her Edda crime series which features a recently retired bookshop manager with a nose for mysteries. In the fourth book, Edda becomes an au pair, the perfect outlet for her energy – and the perfect place to find secrets to intrigue her.
Gytha Lodge gave us a taste of her debut novel, She Lies In Wait, which was delightfully creepy – a tale of a group of friends with a dark secret that comes back to haunt them. Gytha has been chosen by Val McDermid to be part of her famed New Blood panel at the Theakstons crime writing festival in Harrogate later this year, so watch out for her.
Another Icelander, Solveig Palsdottir, read from the opening of Refurrin – other than this chapter it is yet to be translated, but having heard this I hope that will happen soon. It focussed on the seemingly mundane journey of a young woman across Iceland on a turbulence-hit plane – but with hints that all may not go too smoothly when she lands.
Jarrow’s Mik Brown gave us a tale of a young woman walking home from a night out in Newcastle who really wished she hadn’t taken a shortcut… I’m sure every woman in the audience had chills at how accurately he portrayed her thoughts, and I wasn‘t the only one to jump at the end.
Next up was Ashley Erwin, a veteran of NATB events across the US and here in Newcastle, who took us to smalltown America with her “southern pulp” stylings and a tale called Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap. Part slam poetry, part Tarantino-esque chaos, she had the audience in stitches with her performance of this tale which just got crazier and crazier – including the use of flame-throwers and a rocket-launcher! Check out her website to hear it for yourself.
Following the heat of the American South was Zoe Sharp with an extract giving us an update on how her special forces soldier-turned-bodyguard Charlie Fox is doing – it’s hardly a spoiler to say things aren’t all sunshine and roses… Fans of this long-running series will not be disappointed when they pick up the next instalment.
The last of our scheduled readers was another Icelandic writer, Lilja Sigurdardottir, who read from Trap, which sees main character Sonia in Florida trying to escape the trouble she got into in Iceland in first in the trilogy, Snare. This being crime fiction, of course there is only more trouble ahead! Find out what happens next in Cage, out later this year.
Finally, there was a wildcard reader tonight – and one with a difference, as Penny Blackburn gave us three short, sharp shocks in the form of brief poems inspired by events in her life. So much was crammed into each one by her precise choice of words; they were just fabulous.
