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jemck at 10:19am on 23/08/2007
jemck at 10:19am on 23/08/2007The St Hilda's crime weekend was everything it promised to be. Companionable, fun, intellectually stimulating, informative (especially the illustrated talk by the Rev.Dr William Dolman, HM Coroner for North London) and all that kindathing.
The theme this year was Strong Poison. So as well as the aforementioned coroner there were talks by Rosemary Rowe on writing crime set in the Roman Empire, where yes, poison was a preferred method of remote murder but where, no, people hadn't yet realised storing wine in lead containers resulted in inadvertent poisoning. Toxic Language was a fascinating talk by Danuta Reah on the way words are used to create effect, in fiction and in fact, namely the James Bulger case and that of Louise Woodward. As she said, there are lies, damned lies and the Daily Mail. The take on 'family, a most corrosive poison,' by American writers Dorothy Cannell and Margaret Maron was also most illuminating. PD James spoke about the differences between Golden Age detective fiction and the modern genre, and between them, Natasha Coooper and Jill Paton Walsh offered up two complementary talks on Dorothy L Sayers' Harriet Vine character, who was of course, tried for her life in the novel Strong Poison. And oh, so much more.
Val McDermid gave the conference lecture on Imperfect Murders and that was quite fascinating. And yes, we did also chat over wine in the SCR about That Article. Happily, you can find her responses to the story and to the way it was covered over at The Guardian website. The interview had already been planned and when all the hoo-haa broke, the journo Julie Bindel naturally ran with it.
Now, I really must get back to making sure I reach this week's word count*, since I've shipped the sons off to my mum's. So in the meantime, for any of you who are also crime fans (and I always find a significant overlap between fantasy/SF readers and mystery fandom, check out Mystery Women. It's an excellent resource, and a really fun group of girls. And chaps. Andrew Taylor can often be seen at St Hilda's proudly wearing his Mystery Women t-shirt.
*word count? Aha, all will be revealed in due course...
The theme this year was Strong Poison. So as well as the aforementioned coroner there were talks by Rosemary Rowe on writing crime set in the Roman Empire, where yes, poison was a preferred method of remote murder but where, no, people hadn't yet realised storing wine in lead containers resulted in inadvertent poisoning. Toxic Language was a fascinating talk by Danuta Reah on the way words are used to create effect, in fiction and in fact, namely the James Bulger case and that of Louise Woodward. As she said, there are lies, damned lies and the Daily Mail. The take on 'family, a most corrosive poison,' by American writers Dorothy Cannell and Margaret Maron was also most illuminating. PD James spoke about the differences between Golden Age detective fiction and the modern genre, and between them, Natasha Coooper and Jill Paton Walsh offered up two complementary talks on Dorothy L Sayers' Harriet Vine character, who was of course, tried for her life in the novel Strong Poison. And oh, so much more.
Val McDermid gave the conference lecture on Imperfect Murders and that was quite fascinating. And yes, we did also chat over wine in the SCR about That Article. Happily, you can find her responses to the story and to the way it was covered over at The Guardian website. The interview had already been planned and when all the hoo-haa broke, the journo Julie Bindel naturally ran with it.
Now, I really must get back to making sure I reach this week's word count*, since I've shipped the sons off to my mum's. So in the meantime, for any of you who are also crime fans (and I always find a significant overlap between fantasy/SF readers and mystery fandom, check out Mystery Women. It's an excellent resource, and a really fun group of girls. And chaps. Andrew Taylor can often be seen at St Hilda's proudly wearing his Mystery Women t-shirt.
*word count? Aha, all will be revealed in due course...
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