Crime & Justice Festival

Crime & Justice Festival - The Authors

Karen — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 11:05:24 +1000

Starting off with THE most important thing at a Writers Festival (well okay - the coffee / the food / but then the most important thing) - the Writers.

Congratulations and thanks have to go the organisers for getting them to come, but to all the authors who showed up for the Inaugural Festival. I hope, despite the smaller crowds, that they all understand how much their efforts are appreciated - firstly in writing all those books - but also in their generosity of spirit and time they spend at these festivals.

There were quite a few authors we saw sessions with - and some we missed but saw them wandering around the venue - and the best part of all was to watch the impromptue gatherings of discussions in the Book Room and around the venues - there seemed to be a lot of good natured talking going on over the weekend.

Anyway - amongst the cast of luminaries there were:

On the Fiction Side:

Lenny Bartulin
Sydney Bauer
Marshall Browne
Lauren Crow
Sophie Cunningham
Garry Disher
Robert Gott
Kerry Greenwood
Shirley Hardy-Rix
Jarad Henry
Declan Hughes
Dorothy Johnston
Jennifer Kloester
Gabrielle Lord
Barry Maitland
P D Martin
Kevin Morgan
Dorothy Porter
Liz Porter
Leigh Redhead
Michael Robotham
Angela Savage
Jason Steger
Peter Temple

On the Justice Side:

Nigel Latta
Brendan Kilty SC
International PEN
Sarah Biddulph
Malcolm Fraser
David Manne
Pamela Curr
Professor Peter McPhee
Rod Quantock
Spencer Zifcak
Diane Sisely
Brian Walters
Susan Ryan
Arnold Zable
Tina Giannoukos
Lillian Holt
Helen MacDonald
Mary Dalmau
Tim Lindsey
Simon Clews
Barry Jones
Jude Bourgnignon
Phil Lynch
Henry Jolson
Victoria Marles
Rob Stary
Susan Long
Chloe Hooper

On the totally unexpected Side:

Lloyd Jones, Peter Finlay and Malcolm Hill - a theatrical performance of Ned Kelly's Jerilderie Letter

I think you can get a picture now of why we were so excited about this Festival!

Now if you're interested - to make it easier to track Crime & Justice blatherings - you'll find all the updates via this link.

Crime & Justice Festival - The Sessions - A Conversation with Peter Temple

Karen — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 09:05:31 +1000

The best thing about getting up at a ridiculously early hour to get into the city is that at the end of it you get to spend some time in charming company. The session with Peter Temple was very much a conversation with he and Clare Forster talking about a range of things including the vagaries of plotting on whiteboards, the difficulties in trying not to repeat yourself, and the difference in writing a novel like Shooting Star and In The Evil Day. Peter Temple has a background as a journalist (which he calls an antidote to writing (I think he's partly joking / maybe totally joking - it's hard to tell :) ), and he has a particular fondness for writing dialogue. He did go through the problems in writing realistic "reading" dialogue as opposed to realistic "said" dialogue which was interesting. He also answered a number of questions from the audience and talked about the vagaries of working with film / tv adaptations of the writers work. It sounds like he's had some very nice lunches and some very sobering experiences.

Luckily I'd taken my second copy of Shooting Star to be signed as this was one of the books that he spoke about - written very quickly to get the feeling of rush and panic inherent in the subject matter, the book is one that he mentioned he thinks fondly on. I'd read it originally many years ago so was pleased to revisit it on it's re-release. It does give the reader a feeling of the intense pressure of the circumstance, and it is different from his other books - in particular The Broken Shore. If you haven't read it - give it a go.

Crime & Justice Festival - The Sessions - Crime and Humour

Karen — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 16:40:05 +1000

The final session on Saturday for us was an opportunity for a serious bit of a laugh. Robert Gott and Leigh Redhead will undoubtedly be well known to fans of local crime fiction (if not - explain yourselves!) but Lenny Bartulin is a recently released brand new author, whose first book A Deadly Business came out earlier this year. This is all about the different types of humour that work within Crime Fiction.

Robert Gott writes the William Power series - William being (in Shane Maloney's famous words) "a dickhead hero". These books are quietly, almost cunningly funny. Writing in the first person - (I'm paraphrasing Robert here) - William doesn't realise he's an idiot, doesn't realise he has no idea what's happening at all - so the comedy happens, to a large extent, in this incredible and almost total lack of self-awareness.

Leigh's Simone Kirsch is more overtly funny, mostly one would suspect because as Leigh puts it - the world of the sex-worker is frequently hilarious. It is also supportive in that all the girls know what the others are doing and having to put up with and they have a strong camaradarie. Leigh started writing to portray a more accurate portrait of women in the sex industry AND to develop a female character who was not a femme fatale, wasn't a lone wolf style PI, but a realistic sort of a woman who does what she does and gets by. Leigh is most persuasive on the nature of sex workers not all being victims - and if Leigh and her character Simone and her friends are any indication she's got a hell of a point.

Finally Lenny - new as an author, but not new to the vagaries of the book world - having worked previously in bookshops despite a rather shaky start to his first interview, his debut book is based around the world of a secondhand bookseller. He's quite a fan of the lone man / and he has got a femme fatale in this book and she's risky. His main character is part accidental detective / sometime occupier of the slightly shadier side of life. His mother wanted to know why there is a gun on the cover of his book - why not a nice bunch of flowers or a saint. He thinks there are some benefits to being the child of immigrants but heaven help him if they ever translate the book - one suspects his mother's going to be worried.

This panel was the perfect way to end a wonderful day - we wandered off on the long trip home up into the hills giggling and talking about everything we'd seen and heard on the day.

Crime & Justice Festival - The Sessions - Crime and Verse

Karen — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 11:44:48 +1000

The second session we attended on Saturday was Crime and Verse - Dorothy Porter talking to Jason Steger. Some of you may remember my stunned amazement at the joy of El Dorado - Dorothy's second crime based verse novel - at MWF last year. I'm still quietly raving about that book to anybody who will stand still for more than 10 minutes - and, as an aside, I've got to say I'm rather chuffed that after this session himself has started reading the book. SEE - I TOLD YOU IT WAS BLOODY GOOD!

Anyway - back to the session. Fascinating. Dorothy is not only a great poet, she is a marvellous communicator and by talking about the process behind writing The Monkey's Mask and El Dorado we got a real insight into the way that poetry is constructed, and then into the way a verse novel can be built. And the places that inspiration for writing crime and verse novels come from - suffice to say there's a very disconcerting man in the New South Wales prison system who may or may not know what he started with a throwaway line in a poetry class in (I think it was) Long Bay Prison one year!

For anyone who hasn't read El Dorado (and you'd better have a bloody good excuse - I'm going to start getting bolshie about this soon), the book tells the story of a child serial killer. It's told from the viewpoint of the Police Investigator and his friend Cath. It's made up of a series of short poems, pieced together to tell the story - looking at what seems, oddly enough, a series of gentle, almost kind child killings. These little poems play with your mind and switch your senses on and off with a deftness that is absolutely breathtaking.

Interestingly enough - as a side comment, later in the weekend Peter Temple was talking about his admiration for poetry - the sparesness that is required, the discipline in writing, and he was kind enough to mention that Dorothy Porter is one of his hero's later when he was signing my book for me.

She is definitely one of mine.

Crime & Justice Festival - The Sessions - Keeping It Local

Karen — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 11:31:48 +1000

I think I mentioned in my Sundays at Our Place posting that we opted to attend the vast majority of Crime Fiction panels at the first ever festival - mostly to show some support for our local authors. Next year the rest of "the Coven" are definitely going to be heavily encouraged to join us so we can spread the focus a bit more. Needless to say we would have happily attended just about every session on the weekend if we could have cloned ourselves.

But - things got off to a very promising start in the beautiful and startlingly large / light and sunny Community Room with a 10.00am panel - Keeping it Local. The participants - Garry Disher, Leigh Redhead and Jarad Henry / chaired by Jennifer Kloester - the brief to discuss Melbourne as a home for writers and a backdrop for their books (expanded to "Victoria" obviously with Garry's books set on the Peninsula).

I can't decide if it's the frisson of the idea of living in the new "mean streets" of Australia Capital or whether it's just that these authors put a very compelling argument... but there were some interesting points. The use of the "weather" as a setting. Everyone who lives in Australia will know that the ONLY topic of conversation thrown at you when you say you're from Melbourne is "oh the weather". Yes it does get cold in Melbourne, yes it gets bloody hot in Melbourne - it's because we have 4 seasons (minimum) in this town. Yes we can get all 4 in one day. What's your point........ [breathe Karen / breathe]. Anyway - one of the things that was immediately apparent in Jarad Jenry's recent book - Blood Sunset - is that the location of St Kilda is supported very much by the Weather - and the title Blood Sunset is a police term for those stinking, brain drainingly hot summer days - when the smoke from the bushfires and the sheer heat turns the sun red as it's setting. The Police know that those days and nights mean that people drink too much, and/or melt their brains in other ways - and - go feral.

Leigh talked about the nature of the Melbourne Sex industry - which is pretty overt nowadays, and how that scene and the clubs, bars, cinemas and centres around town work as settings for her books. The people in the business also inform the way she generates her characters.

Garry Disher talked about the weather - and the setting. The Peninsula isn't Melbourne - it's a long way out of the city and there's a very different community down there - but the Victorian sensibility is very evident in his books. Having said that - Garry grew up in South Australian "wheat and wool" country - part of the setting for his latest book Chain of Evidence - and his knowledge of the way that country feels was very evident in that book. But he provided some real insight into the balance between a location and a travelogue and the difficulty in remembering the time of year that you're writing in - being careful in not having his characters on a bright sunny road at 5.00pm in the middle of winter in other words.

All in all - a very interesting starting point for the festival.

Crime & Justice Festival - The Sessions - Matters of Procedure

Karen — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 09:16:02 +1000

Our midday panel on Sunday was all about police procedural novels - this time the panel members were Garry Disher, Barry Maitland and P D Martin, chaired by Marshall Browne. Each of the panel members went through the various ways that they research and put together their procedural elements. The interesting part of this panel is that each author sets their procedurals in a different country - Disher here, Maitland in the UK, Martin in the US and Browne in Italy amongst other locations.

The point that all authors made is that a police procedural isn't a procedural manual and that some artistic licence has to be taken to make the story readable, hence some adjustments on timeframes and many of the mind-bogglingly boring parts of an investigation are truncated somewhat. The level of research undertaken was again interesting - with P D Martin bringing in some massively large research books that she frequently uses (the size of these things was truly astounding - nearly as sobering as the subject matter!)

Each author went through some of the access to experience that they have used / been able to access to get the procedural elements accurate - and to reflect the attitude and experience of actual police officers and investigation team members.

Crime & Justice Festival - The Sessions - Nigel Latta's Darklands

Karen — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 10:37:24 +1000

Well .... this was one that came from out of the blue. What a session.

Nigel Latta is a forensic psychologist in New Zealand - Into the Darklands is both a book and a TV series which it seems is coming to Australia.

He's a straight talker. A very very straight talker. He works with Sex Offenders and as the covering note to the session says - his professional practice involves treading carefully through a psychological minefield to reduce offending by helping his clients to confront the consequences of their crimes and ultimately themselves.

His session was open, brutally honest, funny, confrontational and incredibly moving in places. The book was a must after listening to him speak. As is my personal thanks - that swearing thing - a revelation.

Crime & Justice Festival - The Sessions - Spotlight on Declan Hughes

Karen — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 13:19:31 +1000

I don't think that Declan Hughes is unused to the spotlight - he comes from a theatre background after all, and he's a man that's comfortable having a bit of a chat. Which was excellent for us, but I did think about whether the moderator was wondering why she bothered to prepare any questions. All she needed to do was sit back and enjoy the ride like the rest of us.

Now I do like this author's books - very very much, and I do know that the author isn't the books and the books aren't automatically the author - but it is a nice piece of happenstance when you like the books and find out the author's not a bad blokeⁱ either.

As mentioned, Declan comes from a theatre background (in the bad times in Ireland nobody is going to give you a job in the theatre so you might as well form a theatre company is sort of paraphrasing him a bit), and he has written a number of successful plays, but interestingly enough - the books don't read like play's or scripts, so he's obviously got a keen eye for the difference. And a keen eye and ear for dialogue and story telling - and really that's what this session was like - it was just a bit of good old fashioned story telling, combined with a fairly hefty dose of opinion presenting - most of which were hilarious and just about all of which it was bloody hard to disagree with.

The background to the books came out of the expected pathways - the early lone wolf PI types, but particularly memorably and something I'm really starting to understand - was the need to cast his main character (Ed Loy) in the role of the outsider / observer - but not such an outsider that he can't have some connections to the community in which he must investigate / move about. Hence the idea of Ed coming back to his native Ireland after many years in America. Clever. And interesting that the "outsider" view of the world is one in which things can be commented on / seen / acted on.

As this weekend proceeded I've finally formed up my less than sneaking suspicion about the style of books that appeal to me - this is an idea that occurred to me during last year's MWF - and by the end of Sunday I was really comfortable with how I can identify the books and the authors that particularly appeal to me. Made me happy. How's that for a cliffhanger (which is not a hint by the way - I'll post on this later when I've got the words that describe this sorted into one of those boring "sentences that make sense". It's not a skill that comes easily which is why I'm a reader!)

Crime & Justice Festival - The Sessions - Trivia

Karen — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 12:11:33 +1000

A real pity, there were very few takers (well the 4 of us) for the trivia contest. I don't know if it was at 6.00pm on the Sunday or what, but people - next year, if Readers Feast do this - you really want to participate. It's great fun and we managed to get 3 of us with the same final score, with Adam giving it a red hot go. (We think he got to the question about Leigh Redhead's books and his brain froze ;) )

Anyway we came away with a lovely box of books that Sunnie and Helen divided up between them - with some also tucked aside for Andrea and Sally when they arrive from interstate for the writers festival week.

Crime & Justice Festival - The Sessions - Writing from Life

Karen — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 10:20:31 +1000

The next session on Sunday we attended was Writing from Life - Dorothy Johnston, Leigh Redhead and Angela Savage - with Beth Driscoll - talking about life experiences which inform their writing. Interestingly all 3 writers have central female characters who tackle a range of different issues, and their books tackle issues in areas that they know well - Dorothy in Canberra - in the bureaucracy and within the sex industry / Leigh in Melbourne and the sex industry as well and Angela in Asia and the world of AIDS prevention and therefore the sex industry as well. It was interesting to hear the way that all 3 writers approach the writing of their books and the similarities and differences. Dorothy's main female character is a mother who runs, with her partner, a cyber-crime private agency, Leigh's central character is a Stripper / Private Investigator and Angela's character is a PI in Thailand. Another interesting set of observations about the observer versus the insider and the multi-layered nature of these books. Another great session - and fabulous to finally get a chance to meet Angela after the event.