Calling all crime fans! Join us for our upcoming Body in the Library crime book festival this September at Bury St Edmunds Library.
The Body in the Library is a brand-new crime-themed book festival taking place on Saturday 7 September, featuring special events with bestselling crime and thriller novelists including Louise Candlish, William Shaw, and Jack Jordan.
The festival is the third crime festival run by Suffolk Libraries following the success of Slaughter in Southwold and Skulduggery in Stowmarket. It will also include a creative writing workshop with author Kate Rhodes and a fun murder-mystery event perfect for fans of Ann Cleeves.
Tickets are now on sale for £5.00 each and are available to book online or direct from Bury St Edmunds Library. We are also running a 3-for-2 offer on tickets to see all three authors for only £10.
The full list of events is as follows:
9.30AM – Starting to Write: Creative Writing Workshop with Kate Rhodes
Ever wanted to learn how to write gripping fiction? Join us for our creative writing workshop with professional crime novelist and experienced creative writing mentor Kate Rhodes! This fun, practical workshop will introduce you to some key elements of writing fiction. You'll get the chance to consider the importance of building characters and creating a believable setting. You will also meet other aspiring writers, and gain encouragement, on your creative journey.
11.30AM – Louise Candlish
Louise Candlish is the internationally bestselling author of 17 novels and is published all over the world. Her brand-new crime drama Our Holiday, set among holiday-home owners on the English south coast, is a Sunday Times Top 10 bestseller and a Richard & Judy Book Club pick for summer.
Louise is best known for Our House, on our screens as a major four-part ITV drama starring Martin Compston, Tuppence Middleton and Rupert Penry-Jones. It won the British Book Awards Book of the Year – Crime & Thriller and was longlisted for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award, Specsavers National Book Award and several other awards. A Waterstones Thriller of the Month, it has received a Nielsen Bestseller Silver Award for 250,000 copies sold.
2PM – William Shaw
William Shaw has been longlisted three times for the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year and shortlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger, the Barry Award, The CWA Golden Dagger and the Golden Bullet.
The Sun calls him ‘a modern crime master’. Peter May has praised him as ‘a superb storyteller’, and Peter James has hailed him as ‘one of the great rising talents of UK crime fiction.’ The Times critic Marcel Berlins said: ‘William Shaw is a superb, flowing writer, both of police procedure and personal relations, and perhaps England’s most adept at using dialogue to propel his always intelligent stories.’
4PM – Jack Jordan
Jack Jordan is the global number one bestselling author of Anything for Her, My Girl, A Woman Scorned, Before Her Eyes and Night by Night. His thriller, Do No Harm, was an instant Times bestseller and shortlisted for the Most Recommended Book in the Dead Good Reader Awards. Coined the thriller of the summer for 2022, it was described as “relentlessly tense” by Sunday Times Bestseller Lesley Kara, and “Chilling and perfectly paced” by New York Times Bestseller Sarah Pearse.
The idea for Do No Harm came to Jack after undergoing a minor medical procedure where he had to be sedated and trust strangers with his welfare. After the anaesthesia wore off, Jack began scribbling his notes, wondering to himself just how iron-clad a surgeon’s oath is, and what it would take to break it…
6.45PM – Murder Mystery Event
Take part in this fun murder-mystery evening, based on the story by Ann Cleeves. Minnie Laurenson is found. Detective Jimmy Perez has been called but he is delayed on the mainland due to storms. One of the suspects standing before you isa killer and in the absence of the detective your task is to deduce which of them stabbed Minnie Laurenson.
Join us for a fun and entertaining evening. Enjoy a glass of wine, listen to witness statements, and see if you can work out who committed the murder and why!
