Giveaway treat for audience at crime fiction event

[John Dean]

Audience members attending a specially-organised night of crime fiction during Kirkcudbright Book Week will be given a free copy of a 100-page deluxe brochure exploring crime fiction across the British Isles.

The brochure has been put together by the expert team at publisher The Book Folks, which has four of its authors attending the event.

In Conversation with the Book Folks Crime Writers will take place on Wednesday March 6 at the Selkirk Arms in High Street at 7pm (Tickets £8).

Taking part will be Traude Ailinger, Ian Robinson and James Davidson, with the event chaired by fellow best-selling Book Folks crime writer John Dean.

Publisher Erik Empson said: “We were lucky enough to tour the British Isles recently and got a sense of the breadth of talent we have in this genre. I’m delighted to share those reflections with readers and shine a light on exceptional writers.”

Born in Reutlingen, Germany, Traude Ailinger fell in love with Perthshire during a visit to Scotland and returned to the area to settle and bring up her children in 1994.

Since 2003, she has been teaching English as an Additional Language at Strathallan School in Perthshire and in her spare time became a crime writer.  In 2020, The Edinburgh Murders series was created, relating the adventures of DI Russell McCord and journalist Amy Thornton.

Ian Robinson spent twenty-seven years in the Metropolitan police, the majority as a Detective Sergeant within the Specialist Operations Command. He specialised in Child Protection and was part of a Major Investigation Team that targeted abusers and investigated the murder of children. His last seven years were spent in the Covert Policing Command where he managed a specialist covert unit dedicated to the detection and disruption of organised criminal networks across London and the UK. Today, he concentrates on his popular crime novels.

James Davidson is a novelist based in Liverpool, who previously spent a decade teaching in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. He won the First Novel Prize in 2019. In 2022, he completed a master’s degree in creative writing at LJMU. His debut crime novel Outcast Sister was published by The Book Folks in 2023.

Former journalist John Dean has had twenty-three crime novels published and is the creator of the DCI John Blizzard and DCI Jack Harris series.

More information on events and authors taking part in Kirkcudbright Book Week, which runs between March 4-10, can be obtained www.kirkcudbrightbookweek.org

Tickets, including for free events which require them, can be acquired via Eventbrite at www.eventbrite.co.uk or you can follow the link direct from  www.kirkcudbrightbookweek.org at https://www.eventbrite.com/cc/kirkcudbright-book-week-2024-2757849