This year at Theakstons 2019 Mari Hannah has brought together three authors that have chosen to focus their books upon areas of the crime genre which very rarely get the recognition needed to show the breadth and psychological damage that crime can have on the public.
Erin Kelly’s 2018 book, He Said/She Said was longlisted for last years crime book of the year and focussed primarily upon the crime of rape. Coupled together with Eva Dolan’s DI Zigic series that focusses upon a hate crime specialist and Belinda Bauer’s Snap which focussed on burglary, this panel shows that the world of crime can be more nuanced than a detective just going after a murderer.
The themes of a novel can often be what makes you go back to read more, but in the case of Eva Dolan the theme of disability hate crime in her third book, After You Die, really made her stand out to me as an author willing to touch areas that other authors just haven’t examined yet. The way in which Erin Kelly used the ordeal of a rape victim at a trial to underpin her novel really showed the psychological impact and the skill involved in portraying this in a thought provoking way that was not insensitive to the plight of survivors. Bauer’s Snap was all the more interesting because despite burglary being a common crime, it is one that isn’t often focussed on in crime fiction, although it does sometimes feature as a side story, rather than a main plot point.
I’ll be curious to see why they all chose to use this approach when compiling their characters, but I suppose to find this out I will have to wait until Theakstons itself.
Photo courtesy of the Harrogate International Festivals site.
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