Ruth Ware and Abir Mukherjee join Vintage writers for Crypt-based crime evening

Vintage hosted a crime showcase in the atmospheric Crypt of St Martin-in-the-Fields in London featuring authors such as Ruth Ware, Abir Mukherjee and Denise Mina.

The event on Tuesday evening (12th November) saw nine writers discuss the inspirations behind their novels, most of which will be published in 2020. Ware discussed an untitled new novel, coming in autumn 2020, while historical novelist and former accountant Mukherjee presented Death in the East (to be published on Thursday).

Debut author G R Halliday, whose Inverness-set crime series was snapped up at auction by Harvill Secker last year, spoke about the second in the procedural, Dark Water, slated for July 2020 publication. Cyprus-born Jo Jakeman discussed Safe House and Who Killed Oscar Lomas? which will be published next year.

Authors L-R Ruth Ware, A. D. Miller, G. R. Halliday, Nicholas Shakespeare, Jo Jakeman, C. C. MacDonald, Emily Koch and Abir Mukherjee

Bath Spa graduate Emily Koch unveiled her second novel, Keep Him Close,  billed as a "dark, domestic drama", scheduled for March, and Glasgow-based author Mina appeared via video link to share The Less Dead (May 2020) about power, privilege and violence against women. Actor and debut writer C C Macdonald also spoke about his novel Happy Ever After (January 2020), which he started during a Faber Academy course.

Snowdrops author A D Miller discussed Independence Square, slated for February 2020, about a British diplomat in Kiev who lost everything in a lurid scandal. Another literary thriller, The Sandpit due fpr July 2020, was presented by journalist and writer Nicholas Shakespeare, featuring a former foreign correspondent battling sinister forces in Oxford. 

Vintage said of the event which took place in the Crypt of St Martin-in-the-Fields by Trafalgar Square: “With settings from remote Cornish coastline, fraught 2000’s Ukraine and Raj era India, to the sinister domesticity of a small town nursery, it was truly a showcase that displayed the huge range of diversity that can be seen within crime fiction, a genre that mirrors societal issues and politics told via an excellent story.”