Stephanie Barron--Jane and the Waterloo Map

 DEBORAH CROMBIE: What could be more fun than being in London while reading a book about

Jane Austen in London?

And not just Jane Austen, but a fictional Jane brought so inventively to life, and solving mysteries! That has been my treat, as I was fortunate to bring to London with me a copy of Jane And the Waterloo Map, the thirteenth Jane Austen novel by Stephanie Barron. I have loved these clever tales of Jane's adventures since the very first book, and with this one I've had the pleasure of following in Jane's footsteps, both real and imagined.

Here's Stephanie to tell us about Jane and the Waterloo Map.

STEPHANIE BARRON:

Two hundred years ago this past Christmas, Jane Austen was staying with her brother Henry at his house in Hans Place, London—not far from the present-day Harrods. She was there in part because Henry was ailing, and he was her favorite brother. He’d lost his wife a few years earlier, and now, as Jane celebrated her fortieth birthday, they were two middle-aged siblings supporting each other through the wretched autumn of 1815. Wellington had narrowly won the Battle of Waterloo six months before, at enormous human cost to both the Allied and the French forces, but as a result of Napoleon’s fall and the end of hostilities on the Continent and in America, tens of thousands of military men returned to England in want of jobs. The economy tanked. Henry Austen was a banker and a militia payroll agent. Runs on all three branches of his bank ruined him by the turn of the year, and he was declared a bankrupt.



23 Hans Place, by Laurel Ann Nattress, www.austenprose.com





I’m filling in this backstory for two reasons: It’s the basis of my thirteenth Jane Austen mystery novel, Jane and the Waterloo Map (Soho Crime, February 2, 2016), but it’s also important to understanding, I think, so much of Jane Austen’s work. Although she was concerned about Henry’s health and that of his bank, Jane was really in London for entirely personal reasons during November and December of 1815. She was proofing the typeset pages of her fourth novel, Emma, which was published by John Murray two hundred years ago.

Dedication page, Emma





Murray was taking a chance on Emma. He was accustomed to putting out books by sweeping British male authors—Lord Byron and Sir Walter Scott being two horses in his stable. Jane’s previous book, Mansfield Park, hadn’t equaled her early success with Sense and Sensibility or Pride and Prejudice. And in a poor economy, people were less likely to spend their pence on books. From Jane’s letters that fall we know Murray tried to take advantage of her—offering to buy Emma’s copyright only if she sold him the rights to her backlist as well. She refused, retaining the rights to Emma, financing the book’s publication at her own expense, and according Murray a ten percent commission for his trouble. Unusual enough as a lady novelist, she had now become a woman of business as well.

I find Austen’s commentary on the vagaries of publishing fascinating, of course—the more things change, the more they stay the same. (Murray went on to remainder Austen’s books four years after her death, another personal slight familiar to contemporary novelists.) But when I sat down to write about this period in her life in Waterloo Map, I felt a stronger kinship with her than ever before. That sensation was due entirely to Emma.

Readers of mystery fiction like to argue the merits and names of the first true detective novelists. Some invoke Sheridan Le Fanu, others Wilkie Collins, still others Edgar Allen Poe. But for me, the first novel of detection will always be Emma. Austen’s cleverness in disguising a tale of duplicity, betrayal, false witness and eventual social redemption as a lighthearted romance is one reason I chose her for the role of fictional detective myself.

I’m not the only writer to recognize the mystery genre’s conventions in Austen. The Great Dame, as I like to think of her—P.D. James—outlined them in a lecture entitled “Emma Considered as a Detective Story” that she gave to the U.K.’s Jane Austen Society in 1998. One suspects that Dame P.D. continued to mull the parallels between Austen and murder fiction for years before she gave way to temptation and wrote her pastiche on both, Death Comes to Pemberley. Emma is apparently the story of a self-absorbed young woman of birth, wealth and beauty, who sets out to play matchmaker among the benighted souls of her acquaintance. But in fact, Emma Woodhouse is unwittingly engaged in solving a mystery hidden at the heart of the book—nothing involving murder, but a social outrage nonetheless. Eligible and charming Frank Churchill, who should be flirting with Emma herself, has contracted a secret engagement with impoverished Jane Fairfax against the expressed wishes of his adoptive parents. By suppressing the truth, and forcing Miss Fairfax to do the same, Frank descends into a series of impostures that deceive and betray the friends and family nearest to his heart. He wounds his beloved Jane to the point of self-martyrdom. Emma, the reader’s guide through these social labyrinths, is the original unreliable detective—she misinterprets the motives, actions, and desires of everyone about her with a destructive confidence that nearly ruins all their lives. The village of Highbury is turned on its head. Only when Frank’s “crime” is revealed and justice accorded to Jane Fairfax, is order restored in Emma Woodhouse’s small Eden.

Austen’s construction of the story is both subtle and ferociously clever. The perceptive reader finds clues that generally reveal themselves only upon a second journey through the book. Evidence is analyzed and false conclusions drawn. Witnesses offer testimonies that conflict and obscure the truth. Red herrings abound. And Emma, who blithely embarked on this elaborate investigation, realizes almost too late that the most deceived and benighted person in Highbury is herself. Austen seems to be warning us that the greatest mystery we can penetrate—a word she often used--is the motivation of the human heart, which can destroy or construct as much happiness as it chooses.

Carlton House main staircase. William Henry Pyne’s History of the Royal Residences, 1818-1819.




What Jane called penetration—perceptivity and empathic understanding—are critical to both writers and detectives. It is the crux of her endurance as an author: we return to her books because they persist in revealing us to ourselves. But Jane’s penetration is also the reason I decided, two decades ago, to steal her life and voice for the main character in a series of mystery novels.

I took up with Jane when she was at a personal crossroad: she had just turned twenty-six, another wretched Christmas; she had accepted and then hastily rejected an offer of marriage from a man she did not love. She chose personal truth over comfort, risk and possible want over economic security—and had she done otherwise, we would never have known her name. She would have become Mrs. Harris Bigg-Wither instead of Jane Austen, the mistress of a fine drawing room and park at Manydown House, but not of Fitzwilliam Darcy or Emma Woodhouse.

Carlton House main hall, William Henry Pyne’s History of the Royal Residences, 1818-1819.

Over the years I have followed Jane around England, from Bath to Southampton, Chawton to Canterbury. We have grown old in each other’s company; one of us has raised two children. Waterloo Map finds Jane at Carlton House, home of the Prince Regent, a man she despises. HRH is a fan of Jane’s work—and he has ordered her to dedicate Emma to him. (This is true.) And as she enters the remarkable library at Carlton House in November of 1815, she stumbles over the body of a Hero of Waterloo....



Only I know, at this point in Jane’s story, that she has a bare eighteen months to live. Her fears for brother Henry ought better to have been kept for herself. I have no idea how many more adventures she and I will share before pain and illness close her eyes in 1817, but I relish the ones we have known thus far. She has taught me so much about penetration, that Jane—with her subtle and ferocious heart.

DEBS: The book is not out until February 2nd, but you can pre-order, and here's more to tantalize you:

November, 1815. The Battle of Waterloo has come and gone, leaving the British economy in shreds; Henry Austen, high-flying banker, is about to declare bankruptcy—dragging several of his brothers down with him. The crisis destroys Henry's health, and Jane flies to his London bedside, believing him to be dying. While she's there, the chaplain to His Royal Highness the Prince Regent invites Jane to tour Carlton House, the Prince's fabulous London home. The chaplain is a fan of Jane's books, and during the tour he suggests she dedicate her next novel—Emma—to HRH, whom she despises.

However, before she can speak to HRH, Jane stumbles upon a body—sprawled on the carpet in the Regent's library. The dying man, Colonel MacFarland, was a cavalry hero and a friend of Wellington's. He utters a single failing phrase: "Waterloo map" . . . and Jane is on the hunt for a treasure of incalculable value and a killer of considerable cunning.

And more about Stephanie:

Francine Stephanie Barron was born in Binghamton, New York, and grew up in Washington D.C, the youngest of six sisters. She graduated from Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School then earned a degree at Princeton University in European History. While there she wrote for the university newspaper which led to later jobs with The Miami Herald and The San Jose Mercury News. She gained a master's at Stanford University in history then worked with the CIA for several years as an intelligence analyst. After the publication of her first book she started writing full-time, citing John McPhee (who taught her at Princeton) and Elizabeth George as particular influences. She lives in Denver, Colorado with her children and husband.

REDS and readers, are you Jane Austen fans? Please tell us your favorites, and stop in and visit with Stephanie!

Marcia Talley--St. Hilda's Crime and Mystery Weekend

DEBORAH CROMBIE: St. Hilda's Crime and Mystery Weekend is the hidden gem of mystery conferences. If Marcia Talley weren't my friend, I'd be very tempted to commit some heinous crime born of jealousy, because she got to attend this year, and I, having been in England in May, couldn't manage another trip as soon as August. To make it up to me, Marcia is going to give us some highlights along with photos from this year and previous conferences.

(I am so cross. I found a fabulous photo the other day when was straightening my office. St. Hilda's, 1996, with Kate Charles and Marcia Talley being punted on the Cherwell by Laurie King. I meant to put it in this post but now can't find it. Apologies!!! But Marcia has plenty to share.)

MARCIA TALLEY: In the late summer of 1994, a new mystery conference made its quiet debut at St Hilda's College in Oxford, England. The brainchild of mystery author Kate Charles and the college's alumni officer, Eileen Roberts, the St. Hilda's Crime and Mystery Weekend has for over twenty years, drawn mystery lovers from all over the world to the tranquil banks of the River Cherwell.

The inaugural conference, “Queens of Crime,” focused on women mystery authors with Oxford connections, Dorothy L Sayers, Margery Allingham and Agatha Christie, an entirely appropriate topic for St. Hilda's which was, until recently, the only remaining all women's college in England. Indeed, Val McDermid is an “old girl” of the college and Margaret York was its librarian and a speaker at first conference. At the end of that first weekend, response was so overwhelming that Charles and Roberts decided to continue the conference the following year with “The Golden Age, Then and Now.” Topics in subsequent years have included “Murder in Academia,” “Men and Women in Blue,” “Partners in Crime,” “ Scene of the Crime,” and “Mind Games, Psychology, Crime and Mystery,” to name but a few.  This year, as England commemorates the centennial of the beginning of World War I, St Hilda’s remembered, too, with “Crimes of the Past: War and Other Evils.”

It is this themed approach which sets St. Hilda's apart from other mystery conferences. There's none of the usual panels of writers sitting around making thinly disguised sales pitches for their books. Speakers come by invitation only and deliver thought-provoking papers on aspects of the mystery genre relevant to the topic that year. It is the skilled moderator/chair (Edward Marsden, Andrew Taylor, the late Robert Barnard and Natasha Cooper have been tapped for this several times) who ties the papers together and ably guides the question and answer session.

Papers are delivered in the acoustically perfect surroundings of the Jacqueline duPre Music Building, and there's no overlap between sessions so no one has to miss anything. It's this aspect of learning, I think, that keeps bringing people back to St. Hilda's: We hear Julia Wallace Martin talk about the relationship between manic depression and the creative process; Val McDermid's historical overview of gays and lesbians in crime fiction; or Alan Bradley’s poignant tale about the day his father ran away from home – for good. And who could resist a talk entitled “Lord Roberts Has a Full Crate of Whisky: Stories of the Anglo-Boer War” with which Frances Brody closed out this year’s session.

It's a tribute to the quality of the conference that authors who have attended St. Hilda's as participants continue to do so even if they haven't been invited to give a paper.

The conference opens Friday night with a champagne party on the college lawn which slopes gently down to the river. Just beyond are the playing fields of Magdalen College and beyond that, the towering spires of Oxford. Andrew Taylor marvels that there is no distinction between authors and non-authors at St. Hilda’s, none of the 'them and us' quality that distinguishes many conferences—fans on one side, and performing authors on the other. Perhaps because of its size—roughly 125 attendees —newcomers are made to feel welcome and find it a good place for conversation. Nowhere is this more evident than on Saturday night when attendees gather after dinner for a wine party in the Senior Common Room. Some have been known to stay up until the wee hours, chatting away about crime fiction or anything else that strikes their fancy.

Programs are punctuated by breaks for tea, coffee and cookies, and a civilized sherry hour invariably precedes the Saturday night dinner which has featured speakers like P.D. James, Colin Dexter, and Val McDermid. I'm still laughing over the evening Simon Brett performed all twelve roles for the world premier of Lines of Enquiry, a radio play “starring Osbert Mint, Betti Morns and Bren O'Smitt.” (You work it out!) I should mention that the food is excellent, served in the elegant, wood-paneled dining room and, as a vegetarian, I appreciate the tasty vegetarian options.

Everyone lodges at the college in clean comfortable rooms where “scouts” make up your bed each morning and electric kettles and the wherewithal for making tea sit on your desk.

The return rate is high. Anne Perry said it best: “The atmosphere is civilized, physically beautiful … a gathering of old friends to discuss the things we are all interested in. It is effortlessly 'academic', one leaves feeling entertained, enriched, educated, and renewed to begin again on the art and the career we all love.”

DEBS: Here are some of Marcia's photos, captioned as best I can (while I take a break to dig through more boxes looking for my own...)

The beautiful view of the River Cherwell from the college lawns.

Marcia, Alan Bradley, and Kate Charles, 2014

Kate Charles presides over dinner at the college high table, 2011

PD James chats with an attendee as a former college principle looks on, 2011

Kate Charles and Keith Miles, 2011

Val McDermid and Ayo Onatade share a joke, 2011

 Sigh. As you can see, the weather, the setting, the company, and the crime are divine. I'm setting my sights on next year.

One more snippet--Marcia has failed to mention that she has a brand new Hannah Ives novel, TOMORROW'S VENGANCE, so I'm going to do it for her.  I got to read it early, when I was in London, and it's wonderful.

Hannah Ives is introduced to Calvert Colony, a continuing care retirement community in Maryland, by her friend, Naddie Gray, and soon meets a colourful cast of characters: Colonel Greene, the spritely war veteran, Safa Abaza, an over-zealous religious convert, Ysabelle Milanesi, who fled the Nazis when she was a girl, handsome chef Raniero and his sister, Filomena.

When Hannah signs on as a volunteer in the Memory Unit, she becomes more even more involved in the lives of the Calvert Colony residents. But events take a dark turn when one of them is found murdered. Hannah is drawn into the investigation, and soon finds herself uncovering old crimes and reigniting quarrels that know no boundaries of place or time.

Publisher's Weekly says, "Talley deals sensitively with such aging issues as consensual sex among residents, vulnerability to scam artists, declining cognitive abilities, autocratic relatives, and the importance of touch and music in providing comfort."

Reading a Hannah novel is, as always, like spending time with one of your best friends, and getting a cracking good mystery to boot.

So who's up for Oxford and St. Hilda's next year?  I'm sure Marcia will be there.

The Writers Who Made Us

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I was very saddened last week to read of the death of British crime writer Reginald Hill. Many of you may have known Hill from the television adaptation of his Dalziel and Pascoe novels. But while the adaptations were entertaining (loved Warren Clark and Colin Buchanan as Dalziel and Pascoe), those who haven't actually read Hill's novels have missed out on one of the great literary lights of our generation. (I chose this older photo as I thought the sly twinkle was so expressive of Hill's writing.)

Hill's novels are literate, witty, and complex. His prose could make me catch my breath in delight--and envy. And even after twenty years of writing detective fiction, he could twist me around his little finger with a plot. There are not many writers who are such masters of misdirection that they could leave me smacking my forehead at the reveal and saying, "Of course that's what happened! It was there all along and I just didn't see it." And I, slow-poke that I am, cannot help but be awed by a man who wrote more than fifty novels in his career, starting with the Dalziel and Pascoe novel A Clubbable Woman in 1970.

When I'm asked what writers influenced me, Hill has always been, along with PD James, at the top of the list. (Not that I think I've ever come close to writing as well as either of them, but they inspired me to try.)

Contemplating this, I began to think about my fellow Reds, and to wonder what writers made you sit up and say, "Oh, I want to do that. I MUST do that, no matter what it takes!"

We all write crime, but our books are so very different, so I'm guessing that our literary heroes and heroines are different, too.

Hallie, Jan, Rosemary, Hank, Rhys, Julia, Lucy--who inspired you to pick up your pen, glue yourself to your keyboard, stay up until the wee hours (or get up in them) to fan that spark that would one day become a novel?

And here's a dare--keep it to two, if you can!

RHYS BOWEN: Oh Deb--Reginald Hill was one of my idols too. His novel On Beulah Height was one of the best mysteries I have ever read. I hold it up as the standard to which I aspire. Apart from the ladies of the golden age the person who most inspired me to write mystery was Tony Hillerman. When I discovered his books I was blown away. I was used to polite English drawing rooms as the background for mystery. Here were books that took me to a strange and exotic place, that gave me insights into a new culture and were terrific stories too. I wanted to write books with that incredible sense of place.

Oh, and I have to add that I had published a couple of mysteries when I read a book called Dreaming of the Bones, by a certain Deborah Crombie, and that blew me away too. So Deb, you have been a role model as well!

HALLIE EPHRON: Well, I have to add Reginald Hill to my TBR list. My lodestars are two, and they're not mystery writers: Lucy Maud Montgomery and Louisa May Alcott. Authors, of course, of Anne of Green Gables and Little Women, respectively, and creators of two great female character who were smart, mouthy, not so beautiful, and wanted to write, Anne Shirley and Jo March.

Cheating now - the first mystery I love Love LOVED was P. D. James's An Unsuitable Job for a Woman. Cordelia Gray is the character I'm always striving to write. And the first mystery with a plot I couldn't stop raveling and unraveling was Scott Turow's Presumed Innocent.

JAN BROGAN: Well, Presumed Innocent was definitely the mystery that most inspired me and I'll read anything Scott Turow writes. The two books that influenced me most as a child, though, were Celia Garth by Gwen Bristow, like Hallie, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. Those were the books that made me want to be a writer.

LUCY BURDETTE: Keeping it to two writers is really, really, really hard. I had no awareness as a kid that I would become a writer, but I was a huge reader. One of my favorite authors was Carol Ryrie Brink, who wrote CADDIE WOODLAWN and the most fabulous and probably underrated THE PINK MOTEL. Do you remember that one? A mysterious and run down pink motel in Florida is left to a father, who brings his family to the motel to get it ready for sale. Instead, the kids get drawn into the whimsical characters who come stay in the little cottages and in the end, manage to persuade their parents to hold onto the place. Charming and mysterious with great characters.

I would have to say EB White for my second pick. His characters are wonderful too--funny and endearing and each one different from the other. Listening to CHARLOTTE'S WEB and THE TRUMPET OF THE SWAN kept my family from coming to fisticuffs on long car rides. If I could only be one third the writer that he was! And if I could cheat and add more, I would (Kenneth Grahame, Nancy Drew mysteries...you get the picture!)

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN : Oh, kind of difficult! But really thinking about this...TH White's ONCE AND FUTURE KING was life-changing for me. I bet I still think about that book once a week.. For how a story can mean more than just the story, you know?

Also, okay pushing now, but they're similar I can't choose..Edward Eager and Jane Langton's magical adventure stories.. As for mysteries..Josephine Tey's DAUGHTER OF TIME.

ROSEMARY HARRIS: I never had that one, galvanizing moment that made me go Yowza! That's what I want to do! And I rarely read a book and think I want to try to do that. I was a big fan of the Alfred Hitchcock movies - for plot and mysterious doings - and the PBS Mystery series, mostly the Peter Wimsey series. And my books couldn't be further away from them in style and tone!

If there's someone I wish I could write like - present company excluded - it would be Carl Hiassen. He can tell a story with humor, smarts, and a bit of a social conscience.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: As some of you may remember, once I conceived of the notion of being a writer, I tried my hand at science fiction. My greatest inspiration (and still one of my favorite writers) was Lois McMaster Bujold. She blithely tosses together every genre imaginable in her books: high fantasy, theology and philosophy, mystery, romance, comedy of manners, hard science fiction, American and European history - and she makes it work, in what appears to be an effortless style.

Once I decided to attempt crime fiction, my two role models became Margaret Maron and Archer Mayor. Both of them write regional mysteries with authenticity and perfect attention to detail. Margaret's books leave me feeling as if I've taken a trip to North Carolina beside a clear-eyed but sympathetic native. And after reading one of Archer's books, I always feel as if I could drive blindfolded through the part of Vermont in which he sets his story. In addition, they have three-dimensional, fully human characters that I care deeply about.

Okay, I may as well go whole hog and add one more: I wish I wrote prose like Steve Hamilton: spare, literate, poetical. I'm never going to get there, but it's a good goal to keep in front of my eyes.

DEBS: How fascinating! Turns out I was at least partly wrong about our influences being different because we write such different sorts of books.

Rhys, On Beulah Height is my favorite Hill novel, too! (And thanks for the mention of Dreaming of the Bones. I'm more than flattered to be thought of in such company...)

Hallie, I loved Little Women but liked Little Men better, when Jo was grown up and in charge of her own life. I didn't read Anne of Green Gables until I was in my twenties, and I adored the books.

Sayers, PD James, and Josephine Tey, of course. But Hank, I LOVED The Once and Future King by TH White. I went through a period in my teens where I read everything Arthurian I could get my hands on, but nothing ever compared. And Julia, I love Lois McMaster Bujold, too. I even got to do a first read of one of her manuscripts once.

BUT! I cringe to say I've never read Scott Turow. Or Caddie Woodlawn. And I am entranced by the description of The Pink Motel. And I should add Carl Hiassen, and how could I not have read Archer Mayor? And I'm behind on Margaret Maron's wonderful books....

More books going on my TBR list, obviously. And so many books I'd like to reread. I think I should have "So many books, so little time," tattooed on my forehead.

But isn't it lovely that we never run out of things we want to read, or writers who make us want to be better?

JR readers, would you have matched the writer to the books? And should we give prizes to those of us who actually stuck to two?

It's a Crime--in Oxford

DEB: Want to know the best kept secret in the crime-writing conference world?

It's the St. Hilda's Crime and Mystery Conference. It's been held every August since 1994 in St. Hilda's College, Oxford--and that's England, not Mississippi.

There's no web page. St Hilda's doesn't advertise--it doesn't need to. Because those in the know come back every year if they can, and they tell their friends . . . and now I'm telling you.

Want to have a glorious English summer weekend taking in the dreaming spires of Oxford, staying in an Oxford college, mingling with brilliant writers and speakers? A drinks reception in the college senior common room? Champagne on the lawn overlooking the River Cherwell? And the punting--well, we'll get to that.

Writer Kate Charles gives us the scoop.

KATE: The first St Hilda’s conference was organized in 1994 by Eileen Roberts, then the Alumni Affairs Officer of the college, as an activity for the college’s graduates. Eileen was (is) a great lover of mysteries/crime fiction, and the possessor of a huge collection of books in her office. The number of times they were borrowed was a clue to her that many others shared her passion, and she decided that a weekend event featuring speakers about women crime writers with Oxford connections would be well attended.

It was! Speakers at that first conference included Lindsey Davis, Margaret Yorke (once the librarian of St. Hilda’s), Kate Charles, and Sarah Caudwell. At the end of that first conference, Kate conducted a survey to see whether people would be interested in coming back another year. The response was an overwhelming yes; Kate offered to help organize it, and she and Eileen have been doing it ever since. This year will be the 18th conference.

It differs from other conferences in having a more academic tone - speakers present papers rather than participate in panel discussions. That doesn’t mean it isn’t fun, as well as stimulating!

It’s also a themed conference. Each year a different theme is selected and addressed by speakers (mostly working writers, with a few academics added in) who are invited to focus on that particular theme. Themes have included historical mysteries, academic mysteries, the police (‘Men and Women in Blue’), and other such intriguing topics as ‘Strong Poison’, ‘All in the Family’, ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’, and ‘Behind the Mask’. This year’s theme is ‘The Anatomy of Justice’.

Last year the conference paid tribute to P.D. James during the week of her 90th birthday with a gala birthday lunch. Baroness James has been in attendance a number of times over the years, as has Oxford favourite Colin Dexter. There have been far too many excellent speakers to mention!

The Sunday morning punting competition has been a feature most years, ably organized by Gillian Linscott. The champagne reception on the lawn, held the first evening (on the lawn if the weather is fine!) is always memorable. Mystery Women host a reception after dinner on the Saturday night. There is always a well-equipped book room and a group signing.

At this conference, writers (speakers and others) and readers mingle without any distinction made between them. It has the atmosphere of a large country house party - very friendly, and in the most beautiful of settings, by the river, tucked away from the tourist-ridden centre of Oxford.

Speakers this year are: Natasha Cooper (Chair), Triona Adams (on Sarah Caudwell), Martin Edwards, Penelope Evans, Jane Finnis, Frances Fyfield, Ann Granger, Bernard Knight (Guest of Honour), Val McDermid, Edward Marston, Ayo Onatade, Cath Staincliffe, and Andrew Taylor. The programme will be released in the next few days.

DEB: Although I haven't made it to St. Hilda's nearly as often as I'd like, I have some precious memories. My first year was (I think!) 1995. I was invited as a speaker, and PD James was the guest of honor. This meant that at the Saturday night dinner (which that year was held at Somerville College) I got to sit at the high table with PD James in Dorothy Sayer's college. It seemed an unimaginable honor, then and now.

(In the photo of Baroness James speaking at last year's dinner in honor of her birthday, that's Andrew Taylor on the left and Peter Lovesey on the right. Lovely guys and two of my favorite writers. I'm so sorry I missed that one.)

And the punting? I'll never forget skimming along the Cherwell, propelled by Laurie King, a veritable Valkyrie at the pole. Here, Laurie elegantly punts Marcia Talley and Kate Charles.

If you think a weekend in Oxford with terrific crime writers might be your cup of tea, you can contact Eileen Roberts at

eileen.roberts@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk


And one more picture. Who is that impossibly young writer with the glamorous Kate Charles and Marcia Talley?