Hakan Nesser is a Swedish author, best known here for his Van Veeteren series, but he's written 'about 30' crime novels in total, though not all are available in English (so brush up on your Swedish!) His latest book - The Living and The Dead in Winsford - is a bit of a move away from 'straightforward' crime, more an exploration of what happens when someone makes a bad decision and on the spur of the moment acts wrongly.
Michael Robotham is an Australian thriller writer, now on his tenth novel - Life Or Death carries the tag-line "Why would a man escape from prison the day before he's due to be released?" - and don't you just want to know why? I certainly do! Read more about it here on Michael's website.
I hope Wiley Cash won't mind me referring to him as the rookie of the threesome - from North Carolina, USA, he was in Nottingham to promote his second novel This Dark Road To Mercy, and again you can find out more on the author's website
The first part of the evening was taken up by each of the authors introducing themselves informally and here it became apparent that crime writers do have a sense of humour. We've witnessed this before where events have staged multiple crime writers together and we felt like we,
as the audience, had been properly invited to a party as it were. You come away from this kind of event really feeling like you truly met the author you went to see but wanting to find out books by the others - almost out of a feeling of loyalty!
There were smiles and sympathy for Wiley as he arrived in the UK but his luggage hasn't - he did go on to compliment Nottingham on the availability of affordable and readily available clothing.
Several questions were put to them to answer individually before the questions were opened up to the floor. This was followed by a very informal book signing - this is something we hadn't really seen before. The author normally sits behind a desk and then is approached formally by a queue - this time the authors were wandering around and meeting people and then signing books on the first available surface.
An excellent evening that had us leaving the event rather later than planned after a truly excellent evening.
Waterstones run these events all around the country, although authors tend to do the odd store here and there but if you keep an eye on their website there may well be a chance to meet and chat with your favourite author somewhere near to where you live.
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