Capital Crime 24 is drawing ever closer and I'm counting the days to what I have no doubt will be another hugely successful festival. It's hard to believe that until 2019, London didn't have its own festival celebrating the crime and thriller genres. I have been fortunate to attend all three previous festivals and what was already great, just keeps getting better – so this year's promises to be the best yet!
Festival directors, David Headley, Lizzie Curle and the rest of the Capital Crime team work their socks off, carefully curating each panel, as well as ensuring the event runs smoothly and is a welcoming, inclusive experience for everybody.
As well as the superb panels (it's so hard to choose which ones to attend!), there is also a crime quiz hosted by the brilliant AJ West, the Fingerprint Awards, with Paul Clayton once again announcing the winners as only he can, launch parties and this year, the Fun Lovin' Crime Writers will be performing ahead of their appearance at Glastonbury in the summer.
One of the panels I'm really looking forward to is entitled Murderous Medicine and will feature Christie Watson, Eleanor Barker-White and Ambrose Parry, with participating moderator, Suzie Edge.
About the Authors
Christie Watson
You're trained to save the lives of others. How far would you go to protect your own?
Ruthlessly ambitious Olivia, anxious perfectionist Laura and free-spirited risk-taker Anjali couldn't be more different. Yet their friendship, which began on the first day of medical school, has kept them inseparable for twenty-five years. As wild all-nighters and exam pressures gave way to the struggles and joys of new motherhood and intense jobs, their bond remained unbreakable. Years ago they promised that nothing would come between them and that they'd do anything for one another, including burying one night they have never spoken about: a drug-fuelled university party that forced them to make a deadly choice that could still destroy them.
When an eerily similar tragedy strikes involving their teenage children, everything the three women have built threatens to shatter around them. And they are left asking: just how far can you stretch a friendship before it snaps?
Eleanor Barker-White
Eleanor Barker-White holds an MA in Creative Writing from Bath Spa university. In 2017, she was shortlisted for the Janklow and Nesbit prize, and has had a number of short stories published in Best of British and The People’s Friend magazines.
She has previously worked with children and families in family courts, His Majesty’s Prison service and children’s charities, and remains fascinated by the endless capacity for human resilience. She was born and raised in Cirencester, Gloucestershire but now lives in Wiltshire with her husband and four children. My Name Was Eden is her first novel.
When Eden is rescued from the lake, her mother Lucy has a second chance.
No one knows why the 14-year-old Eden almost drowned on her way home from school. But now she’s safe, Lucy can start being a good mother. The mother she should have always been, before the loss of Eden’s twin during the pregnancy consumed Lucy, all those years ago.
But when Eden wakes up in hospital, she claims that Eden isn’t her name. That her name is Eli – the name Lucy had reserved for the unborn twin.
Could it be that all this time, Lucy’s grief has been misplaced?
Eden, it seems, is the twin who’s really disappeared . . .
Ambrose Parry
EDINBURGH, 1853.
In a city of science, discovery can be deadly . . .
In a time of unprecedented scientific discovery, the public's appetite for wonder has seen a resurgence of interest in mesmerism, spiritualism and other unexplained phenomena.
Dr Will Raven is wary of the shadowlands that lie between progress and quackery, but Sarah Fisher can't afford to be so picky. Frustrated in her medical ambitions, she sees opportunity in a new therapeutic field not already closed off to women.
Raven has enough on his hands as it is. Body parts have been found at Surgeons' Hall, and they're not anatomy specimens. In a city still haunted by the crimes of Burke and Hare, he is tasked with heading off a scandal.
When further human remains are found, Raven is able to identify a prime suspect, and the hunt is on before he kills again. Unfortunately, the individual he seeks happens to be an accomplished actor, a man of a thousand faces and a renowned master of disguise.
With the lines between science and spectacle dangerously blurred, the stage is set for a grand and deadly illusion . . .
Suzie Edge
The remarkable stories of the world's most famous body parts.
Louis XIV's rear end inspired the British National Anthem.
Queen Victoria's armpit led to the development of antiseptics.
Robert Jenkin's ear started a war.
All too often, historical figures feel distant and abstract; more myth and legend than real flesh and blood. These stories of bodies and its parts remind us that history's most-loved, and most-hated, were real breathing creatures who inhabited organs and limbs just like us - until they're cut off that is.
Medical historian Dr Suzie Edge investigates over 40 cases of how we've used, abused, dug up, displayed, experimented on, and worshipped body parts, including why Percy Shelley's heart refused to burn; how Yao Niang's toes started a 1000 year long ritual; why a giant's bones are making us rethink medical ethics; and the strange case of Hitler's right testicle.
Capital Crime 2024 will be held at the Leonardo Royal Hotel St Paul's, London from Thursday 30th May to Saturday 1st June. The full schedule is here. There are a few tickets still available but be quick because they're selling fast! Buy yours here.
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