One of the highlights of the year for fans of crime fiction, another festival has come and gone. One of the most talked-about topics this year was the stark clash between traditional, golden-age crime books and more modern, gritty and violent books. Our very own Georgie Askew was witness to this very interesting debate...
‘Snobbery with Violence’ was our first event of the day. It consisted of a hilarious mixture of people, including a couple of authors, a Guardian journalist, an actor and a stand-up comedian. The debate was between Martyn Waites and Sheila Quigley supposedly representing the working classes, and Laura Wilson and David Roberts representing ‘posh’ people. Mark Billingham umpired.
Our author David Roberts fiercely defended the golden-age by arguing that no one wanted to read about ‘gritty realism’ but needed these golden-age books as a way of escaping the depressing news and events in the world that surrounds us.
Martyn Waites, a working class author and actor from Newcastle, argued that no one wanted to read these shallow and unrealistic books anymore, instead he believed readers want a much more realistic and in depth insight into the characters, something these golden-age novels just don’t create - he argued that readers no longer relate to this old social order and these novels are totally out of date.
Mark Billingham played devils advocate and the audience enjoyed lively banter between him and David - all in all this was a highly entertaining panel!
The debate proved so popular that David and Mark were invited onto Radio 4's Front Row show, where they discuss the topic in great detail. The show's podcast is available here.
David Thomas, a debut thriller writer, has written a personal diary of the festival published in The Sunday Telegraph, here.
This modernisation of the crime fiction genre is proving to be a very popular topic. Paul Valley of The Independent examines how far the genre has come since Agatha Christie, here.
Suggested Reading:
