By LIz Fielding
The first book in her much-loved Maybridge Murder Mystery series, Murder Among the Roses, won the US Kiss of Death’s annual Daphne du Maurier Award for Mystery and Suspense 2025. The third, Murder in Bloom has been nominated for the British People’s Book Prize. All books in the series are now available in paperback, digital and audio.
Liz will shortly be heading off to the historic city of Bristol for this year’s CrimeFest, The International Crime Fiction Festival – Where the Pen is bloodier than the Sword.
The line up this year is spectacular with a featured guests including Andrew and Lee Child. Mark Gatiss (who created Sherlock with Steven Moffat, and appeared as Mycroft Holmes) will be appearing on a panel to talk about Bookish, a soon to be released crime drama set in 1946 London.
Gatiss is starring as the whip-smart and debonair Gabriel Book: a maverick consultant detective to the local police. The thousands of books that line the shelves of his shop provide him with all the knowledge he needs to solve even the most puzzling of crimes. Oh, and joy, there will be a book!
Chris Chibnall, creator of that landmark crime drama Broadchurch will be there. His debut crime novel, Death at the White Hart, has just been published, and he will be joining Moderator Lee Child (Reacher), Barbara Nadel (The Turkish Detective), Barry Ryan (Agatha Raisin) and Matthew Sweet (Bookish) for Sunday’s ‘Lights! Camera! Murder: Adapting For and From Film and TV’.
This year’s Ghost of Honour is John le Carre and his sons Simon Cornwell and Nicholas Cornwell (under his author name Nick Harkaway) will be there. Nick will be talking about his new Smiley novel, Karla’s Choice.
To add to the excitement, the Crime Writer’s Association will be announcing the short list for this year’s Dagger awards.
But that isn’t all. There will be dozens of panels of crime writers during the four days of the convention. Big names, international names and debut authors talking about their books and happily answering questions from the audience. Liz will be fan-girling Lindsay Davis of the fabulous Roman era “Falco” books. Here’s the full list of authors who will be attending.
Liz will be appearing on a panel called The Gifted Amateur: When Murder if Your Hobby to talk about her own gifted amateur sleuth, Abby Finch.
The panel will be moderated by T E Kinsey, author of the Lady Hardcastle Mysteries which are set in Edwardian Gloucestershire and star Lady Hardcastle and her lady’s maid, Florence Armstrong – former spies and now amateur sleuths
Also on the panel will be J M Hall and Alison O’Leary, who sleiths are ably assisted by their feline companions and Leigh Russell, who has a vast backlist of titles, but will, in this instance be focussing on her Poppy mysteries, a small but highly intelligent dog who had her first outing in Barking Up the Right Tree.
CrimeFest, takes place from Thursday May 15 to Sunday May 19 at the Mercure Bristol Grand Hotel. Book tickets on their website.
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