Here’s the story so far – Four dashing, debonair, supremely talented young crime writers agree to change the format of their already successful touring panel. It’s daring! It’s brave! It’s astounding!

Meanwhile, Neil Broadfoot, Gordon Brown, Mark Leggatt and Douglas Skelton are doing the same with theirs.

It’s madness!

Madness, I tell you!

The brilliant Byres Road Book bonanza is back – and Four Crime Writers will be looking for that elusive plot in Hillhead Library on Saturday September 23.

The new format sees us create a crime story from scratch, while also engaging in erudite conversation.

Okay, maybe not so erudite but there will be words coming from our mouths, as well as from our fingertips.

We’re not promising they’ll be in the right order or even spelled correctly, but they will be words.

So do get along and see us. We may come this way but once!

Details below and here:

https://www.byresroadbookfestival.com/23rd-september/four-crime-writers-in-search-of-a-plot2282017

 

I am really pleased to have been invited to participate in the very first Byres Road Book Festival.

I’ll be appearing with Aline Templeton and old pal Matt Bendoris in a panel discussing Murder With A Smile.

Another pal, Mark Leggatt, will be chairing us.

It promises to be loads of fun and it’d be nice to see you all there.

Mark Leggatt, Aline Templeton, Douglas Skelton, Matt Bendoris

Mark Leggatt, Aline Templeton, Douglas Skelton, Matt Bendoris

For many years I worked on the local paper for the West End of Glasgow.

It was first the West End News, then the West End Times, then the Glasgow Guardian, when it became a free newspaper. We joked that if it didn’t change its name every few years, we got bored.

I’ve got many happy memories of the paper and the area. People I met and who I have since lost touch with. Pubs we used to drink in. Table tennis in a local church hall at lunchtimes.

It was a great period of my life and like many such periods I didn’t appreciate them fully at the time!