… if you go to a great event that brings together well over 300 readers, writers and publishing folk who all share a love of crime fiction – and then you can’t think what to write about it on the blog? (That, incidentally, is a rhetorical question. If you feel inspired to answer it, please go and lie down quietly until the urge passes.)

Fortunately Crimefest was stuffed with people who know how to do things properly. Check out Crime Always Pays and the Bookwitch.

I do have an exclusive photo of Ian Rankin giving his acceptance speech for the Audible Sounds of Crime award (for James McPherson’s reading of ‘Exit Music’). It reveals that Ian’s speech was actually given by a blurred relative of Herman Munster whose eyes glowed red in the dark. Sadly it won’t be appearing here as I imagine he wants to keep this quiet and I can’t afford to be sued.

Meanwhile, in the unsuspecting world outside… I was going to call this section of the post ‘Down Among the Dead Men’ but probably only those compelled to singalong with the radio at Junior School will remember the song.

This is the garden/graveyard of Bristol Cathedral, almost next door to the Crimefest venue. Several inventors of fiendish crimes could be spotted here between sessions, relaxing and enjoying the produce of the cathedral teashop. Sitting down to picnic with the ancestors would have seemed perfectly reasonable to the Romans, although one assumes they’d have dined with their own relatives rather than somebody else’s.