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Episode details

Radio 4,26 Aug 2013,30 mins

Harrogate Crime Writing Festival

Front Row

Available for over a year

With Mark Lawson, who reports from this year's Harrogate Crime Writing Festival. Ruth Rendell and Jeanette Winterson discuss their friendship, which began when Winterson was a house-sitter for Rendell in 1986. The writers also discuss crime plots, exercise regimes and mammoth book signing sessions. Kate Atkinson turned to crime-writing with Case Histories, which has become a TV series with Jason Isaacs playing private investigator Jackson Brodie. Atkinson reveals her reluctance to call herself a crime-writer and why she often comes up with titles before stories. For the second year running Denise Mina received the Novel of the Year award. But there were times when she feared her winning book wouldn't be published. Mina discusses rewriting her book in a weekend. Val McDermid, Erin Kelly, David Mark, Steve Mosby and Nicci French - husband and wife duo Nicci Gerrard and Sean French - discuss debut writers and JK Rowling's The Cuckoo's Calling, writers' block and tweeting, pure evil and taking inspiration from real life events. In front of an audience, Stuart MacBride, Catriona McPherson, Manda Scott and Cathi Unsworth reflect on how crime novels of the future could change, in the light of new technology and online developments. Producer Claire Bartleet.

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