North-east crime writing fans were able to get insight from their favourite authors with the return of the Granite Noir festival.
In-person events were back and held in venues across Aberdeen, which included discussions, workshops and performances.
The sixth festival enjoyed an attendance of almost 7000 people together with an additional 3000 visits to the Grit in the Granite exhibition at the Music Hall and Lemon Tree.
The local audiences were swelled by visitors from as far afield as Germany and Ireland while people dropped in from all over the UK ranging from London, Liverpool and Lincoln.
Audiences for the seven events which were livestreamed online tuned in from Norway, Switzerland and Canada making it a truly international event.
One of the showcase discussions was A Sense of Place held in the Lemon Tree on Sunday evening.
It featured Granite Noir ambassador Stuart MacBride and fellow authors Alan Parks and Marion Todd who talked to broadcaster and writer Sally Magnusson about how location shapes their stories.
MacBride’s books feature Aberdeen detective Logan MacRae and a series in the fictional town of Oldcastle; Parks locates his detective Harry McCoy in 1970s Glasgow and Todd’s DI Claire Mackay’s stories are set in and around St Andrews.
During the discussion Magnusson asked Parks why Glasgow during that time period was so important to his lead character and the plot.
He said: “It’s the place I know best and it is somewhere I have been really interested in.
“I used to live in a village when we were wee and we used to go on the bus to Glasgow and where I lived nothing ever happened, so when we went to Glasgow it was all very exciting.
“I always find it incredibly fascinating, so that was why I wanted to write about Glasgow and also the time it is set is I was about 10 or 11 and everything then has always been very vivid in my mind.”
Magnusson went on to ask how the places they choose end up shaping the characters they then create.
Todd said of St Andrews: “It can be very divided in terms of town and gown and there can be tensions between the student population and the residents.
“Having written the sixth book now I’m starting to have a problem with where I am going to kill people! I’ve killed someone in the stories just about everywhere in the town and the surroundings.
“When I was thinking where I was going to set a crime novel I thought St Andrews is such an attractive town but it’s almost like the world in miniature because everything is there, it is so international there’s the students, the golfers, the tourists and the locals and like anything that’s kind of beautiful on show if you scratch beneath the surface all human life is brought into view.
“I love the possibilities of this very small town geographically and physically but there’s a richness there that can be exploited.”
MacBride was asked if he had more freedom with a fictional town than with his stories set in the Granite City.
He said: “I know by how I have laid out the town the kind of people that will come from those places.
“If I need somebody to fill a role in the story then I will pretty much automatically know which part of the town they will come from.
“I have occasionally mixed up places in Oldcastle and Aberdeen when writing.
“In some of my books I like to give addresses because if the police are talking about raiding a property they will say where they are going to raid.
“So what I will do is I will extend a street say by another 50 houses or I will make up a road that fits within the pattern of the streets that surround it.
“Oldcastle gave me the opportunity to create a place that really reflects the structure of the story as well.”
The discussion provided an enlightening look into the processes the authors go through to create their stories and construct their highly successful book series enjoyed by loyal fans.
There was a chance for them to ask their own questions and they were able to meet the writers following the event.
Granite Noir welcomed more than 60 speakers including Ann Cleeves, Jenni Fagan, forensic anthropologist Professor Sue Black and Norway’s bestselling crime writer Kjell Ola Dahl.
Audiences also enjoyed hearing about debut novels from Ewan Gault, Leela Soma, A J West, Rosie Andrews and Oyinkan Braithwaite.
Dr Julia Shaw and Sofie Hagan examined the case of Helen Priestly, a child who was killed on Aberdeen’s Urquhart Street in the 1930’s, in a live recording of their popular Bad People podcast, and Ten Feet Tall productions, an Aberdeen-based theatre company, staged performances of a specially commissioned play Witch Hunt in the atmospheric Kirk of St Nicholas.
In addition to a wide range of crime fiction events, audiences enjoyed escape room activities in the Music Hall, a fast and furious adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles in His Majesty’s Theatre and a rousing closing concert of criminal tunes from the BBC Big Band.
The Grit in the Granite, a free exhibition in The Music Hall and Lemon Tree which shone a light on the darker side of Victorian Aberdeen with documents and photographs drawn from the Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire Archives, attracted national attention.
Granite Noir is produced by Aberdeen Performing Arts on behalf of partners Belmont Filmhouse, Aberdeen City Libraries and Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire Archives.
Aberdeen Performing Arts chief executive, Jane Spiers said: “It has been wonderful to see so many people out enjoying our first ‘in person’ Granite Noir in two years, and to welcome viewers to our live streamed events.
“Last year’s virtual festival showed us that the sky is the limit with people tuning in from all corners of the world, but there is only one place for Granite Noir and that is right in the heart of Aberdeen.
“The granite sparkled all weekend as we welcomed international best‐selling authors, Scotland’s finest and the very best emerging home‐grown talent from right here in the north-east.
“It was wonderful to reconnect and to feel the sense of community that we’ve missed so much over a packed weekend of author panels, films, escape rooms, exhibitions, theatre and music. We are so happy to be back.
“A huge thank you to our authors and audiences who joined us in Aberdeen from across the UK and Europe to make it so memorable.”
Granite Noir 2022 is supported by Aberdeen City Council and Creative Scotland and EventScotland.
Related story: The Hound Of The Baskervilles brings bags of laughs to His Majesty’s Theatre in Aberdeen
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