Saturday started bright and early with a panel on historical crime fiction. Chaired by William Ryan, it featured Jane Finnis who writes books set in Roman Britain, Edward Wilson whose spy novels have a Cold War background, Ray Celestin who writes mysteries set in the jazz age and Tom Harper who written about a variety of historical periods. The panel discussed the necessity of good historical research but also the need to make the story appealing to a modern reader.
The Writing Sympathetic Characters panel was chaired by John Gordon Sinclair and looked at the tension between writing sympathetic villains and asshole heroes. The overwhelming male nature of truly evil characters was discussed along with how more attractive villains can be in literature that their heroic counterparts.
A panel I’d been looking forward to was the Euronoir discussion chaired by Barry Forshaw. It featured the Swedish writing duo, Lars Kepler, 
Norwegian Jorn Lier Horst, Paul Johnston, whose books are set in Greece and French author Dominique Manotti. I was fascinated by the authors’ influences which included Chandler, Hammett, Christie and PD James. Lars Kepler also referenced the film, The Exorcist, as a big influence.
Two other important events worth noting. On Saturday evening, Barry Forshaw launched his excellent book Euro Noir. A review will follow on this blog shortly but it features book recommendations from all the Petrona Award judges. It’ll be, I’m sure, a valuable resource for lovers of European crime fiction.
Finally, we announced the winner of the 2014 Petrona Award at the gala dinner on Saturday evening. I can’t recommend highly enough Leif Persson’s Linda, As in the Linda Murder and it is a worthy winner. However, all the books on the short list are excellent and it was a very difficult choice. Do come back to this blog for reviews of 2015 entries.
Sarah Ward & Rhiannon Ward 
Sounds like a wonderful time, Sarah! Thanks to you and the other judges, too, for your service on the judging panel. It couldn’t have been an easy task.
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Thanks, Moira. And yes, it was a difficult task.
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Thanks for the great post, Sarah, and I’m glad it was such a successful festival. I have some catching up to do in Persson’s backlist (looks like Linda isn’t out here yet)!
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Can’t wait to hear what you think about Linda!
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Thanks, Sarah. It all sounds interesting. Euro Noir will not be available here until early October, 2014. I am looking forward to it. Always eager to read another mystery reference book.
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Yes, I’m half way through it now. It’s a great book.
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Thanks for the round-ups Sarah and a deserved winner of the Petrona Award. See you there next year. Definitely! 🙂
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Good! See you then, if not before.
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Did you mean reviews of the 2013 titles? Hee Hee – you must be exhausted after this. Keep up the wonderful work. We all love reading your reviews 🙂
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Hi – I’m about to start reading for the 2015 awards and reviews will be up in due course. Yes, all the years are very confusing!
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Sounds great – glad you had a good time. I enjoyed your roundups.
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Thanks Moira
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