Heron Literature Festival – An Evening of Crime with J.C. Briggs & Matthew Booth

J.C. Briggs – ‘Detective Dickens Solves the Case’
Jean Briggs talks about her crime stories featuring the great Victorian novelist turned sleuth. Jean taught English for many years in schools in Cheshire, Hong Kong and Lancashire. She now lives in a cottage in Cumbria.

‘The Murder of Patience Brooke’ is the first novel featuring Charles Dickens as a detective and his partner, Superintendent Sam Jones of Bow Street. The idea of Dickens as a detective came about when she read Dickens’s articles about the London police in his periodical Household Words.

Dickens was fascinated by police investigation and by murder, in particular – there are plenty of murderers in his writing, and Dickens is credited with the creation of the first literary detective in Inspector Bucket who solves the murder of Mr
Tulkinghorn in Bleak House.

The second in the series is ‘Death at Hungerford Stairs’ (2015), and the third, ‘Murder by Ghostlight’, set in Manchester and London, was published in 2016. You can check out Jean’s website or follow her on Twitter or Facebook.

Matthew Booth – How Cosy Was The Golden Age Of Detective Fiction?
Does the crime fiction of Agatha Christie and her contemporaries deserve its reputation of being sanitised and formulaic? Or is there something more sinister at its heart…?

Matthew Booth delves into the dark heart of the traditional whodunit to discover the answer.

Matthew Booth is a writer of historical crime fiction, as well as being a short story writer and radio scriptwriter.
As an expert in crime and supernatural fiction, Matthew has provided a number of academic talks on such subjects as Sherlock Holmes, the works of Agatha Christie, crime fiction, Count Dracula, horror fiction and the facts and theories concerning the crimes of Jack the Ripper.

He is a member of the Crime Writers Association and is the primary editor of its monthly magazine, Red Herrings.

Matthew Booth is the author of the Everett Carr Mysteries, a series of Golden Age-style 1930s whodunits, as well as the Alex Priest crime novels, featuring a private eye based in post-WW2 London.

His books are available at Carnforth Book Shop, Amazon and Waterstones.

Tickets: Non-members: £8 Members: £6 Under 18’s: £6

To book, click here. (Booking fees apply)