THEAKSTON OLD PECULIER CRIME WRITING FESTIVAL 2023 – PREVIEW

NOTE: This article is a republication- Source: On: Yorkshire Magazine (by Sarah Morgan).

If you were on the edge of your seat during Happy Valley and feel there’s a huge gap in your life now that Catherine Cawood’s hung up her taser, fear not, because here’s something that may help fill it – and what’s more, like the ex-police sergeant’s adventures, it’s also happening in Yorkshire.

Yes, we’re just a few months away from the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, which this year is celebrating its 20th anniversary.

Once again it will be held in Harrogate’s Old Swan Hotel, and will feature a wealth of talented writers. Many of them are household names (including Val McDermid, one of the event’s founders), while others will be less familiar – but all of them promise to keep visitors entertained from July 20th-23rd.

Chairing the festival this time is Vaseem Khan, the award-winning author of the Baby Ganesh Agency series and the Malabar House novels, who says: “My late father and I used to watch Poirot together. Neither of us could have imagined that, decades later, I would chair a Festival so closely connected to Agatha Christie.

“Unmissable”

“It is a privilege and a delight to chair the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, doubly so as the first British Asian crime writer to do so, triply so to take the helm of the world’s most important crime festival in its 20th anniversary year.

“Working with the amazing Festival team, we have brought together an Avengers Assemble line-up of crime writers, showcasing the broad and bloody church that crime fiction represents.”

Big names heading to Harrogate include Vera creator Ann Cleeves, SA Cosby, Jeffery Deaver and the Child brothers Lee and Andrew of Jack Reacher fame. Lisa Jewell and Ruth Ware also team up for an unmissable event.

Plus, Christie biographer and historian Lucy Worsley rather fittingly drops by to chat about the Queen of Crime in the hotel where she famously stayed in 1926.

It would surely be a crime to miss it!