A grilling for crime authors Pauline Rowson, Peter Lovesey and Simon Brett at the Festival of Chichester


On 8 July I was delighted to take part in an event entitled Under Interrogation held at Chichester Library as part of the celebration for the Festival of Chichester with fellow crime writers Peter Lovesey and Simon Brett.

The three of us gave the capacity audience of fifty five a flavour of how we research, plot and write our crime novels.  

 

Felicity Masters introducing the panel at Chichester Library

 Peter Lovesey and I talked about our detectives and how they differed.  My DI Andy Horton is fit and fearless, a real action man, a maverick cop who doesn't conform and who is always slightly on the outside. While Peter's detective, Peter Diamond, is older and more set in his ways, a 'dinosaur' as Peter Lovesey described him who doesn't embrace technology.  Simon Brett told the audience why he chose instead to feature amateur sleuths in his novels, his reason that he knows nothing about police procedure!

Pauline Rowson and Peter Lovesey


We also discussed locations for our crime novels.  The DI Andy Horton series is set in Portsmouth, the Solent and the Isle of Wight, an area I know well and where I live which is great help when researching.  Portsmouth is also a vibrant waterfront city with great contrasts, rich and poor, historic and contemporary and its urban landscape contrasts sharply with the rural one of the Isle of Wight five miles across the Solent.  The sea also almost takes on the role of a character in the Horton series.

Peter Lovesey sets his Diamond series in Bath where he once lived, so he knows it well and Simon Brett has chosen to set his novels in fictitious Fethering which is somewhere in West Sussex amid the rolling  countryside of the South Downs.
 

Pauline Rowson, Peter Lovesey, Simon Brett


We discussed many aspects of crime writing and the audience asked us questions.  This was followed by a book signing.  It was a highly enjoyable evening. My thanks to Chichester Library for organising it and to the audience who gave up the opportunity to spend a glorious summer evening in the outdoors in order to listen to us.

Pauline Rowson, Peter Lovesey, Simon Brett at Chichester Library



 

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