Author Events Enjoyed by Book Chat

The team at Hastings Library Book Chat enjoy a good author talk, so the festival circuit is always on our radar.

At our latest catch-up, one of one reader had recently had a wonderful time at the Auckland Writers Festival. It was good to hear about some of the events that were on offer, most of them featuring authors of books we’ve passed around the table at Book Chat.

Among the standout sessions was a panel showcasing Scandinavian authors. This included Lars Mytting who we love for his historical novels The Sister Bells trilogy. Our reader missed out on the interview with Lars on his own but saw him in the panel with a group of other Nordic writers, which was an excellent way to find new authors to try. Antti Tuomainen was a find (Rabbit Factor trilogy), as was Hanne Orstavik (author of Love and Ti Amo).

Another brilliant session was with Ian Rankin (Rebus mystery series), who charmed the audience with his yarns about his writing life, and also the historian Ben MacIntyre who has a new book called The Seige. This is the heart stopping story about the 1980 attack on the Iranian Embassy in London where gunman held 26 people hostage, and the SAS planned a daring rescue. Our reader hadn’t read a lot by David Nicholls, but enjoyed hearing about the background to his recent romantic comedy and bestseller, You Are Here.

Kiwi authors also took part in some amazing sessions, among them Gavin Bishop, who we saw at last year's HB Readers and Writers Festival, and Damien Wilkins who had just won the Ockham Acorn Award for Fiction (Delirious). The session Bringing the Past to Life was a panel event featuring two well-known New Zealand authors, Monty Soutar and Catherine Chidgey – both much admired at Book Chat – along with recent discovery, the Australian Robbie Arnott, whose novel Dusk was a stunning read.

While we were all terribly jealous of our reader’s festival experiences, a smaller scale event was reported on by two of our readers. This was the session run by Wardini Books at Hastings War Memorial Library on May 14, with Michael Bennett and Dervla McTiernan in conversation with bookseller, reviewer and writer, Louise Ward.

It was a treat to hear about Michael’s latest book featuring his detective, Hana Westerman, in a new mystery called Carved in Blood. Hana has left the force when a murder close to home has her back on the hunt for a killer. Again, we have the brilliant pacing that has made Michael such a successful screenwriter, with some smart dialogue and the treatment of Māori by the legal system a continuing theme.

Dervla McTiernan may be a new author to many, but her Cormac Reilly series set in Galway is well worth checking out. The latest in the series is called The Unquiet Grave and has Cormac investigating the discovery of a “bog body”, which turns out to be a much more recent death than first suspected. Woven in is a cyber-crime subplot, while our beleaguered police sergeant gets shoulder tapped for a job that won’t make him popular. The disappearance of his ex-girlfriend’s husband has him offering to help and adds even more complications.

It was so interesting to hear about the background to these books and to discover how much in common the two authors had when it came to ideas and process. And such as treat to have a pair of high-flying mystery authors visiting Hastings and a full-house at Hastings Library.

Hastings Library Book Chat meets on the third Wednesday of the month in the Wattie Room at Hastings Library, at 10:30 - all welcome.

Posted by JAM

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