November Monthly meeting with Andy Griffee -crime writer
What does the Golden Age of crime fiction mean to you? Our speaker this month explained that in the 1920/30s the golden age included authors such as Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy L Sayers and of course Agatha Christie in the UK and Raymond Chandler in the USA. Now we are experiencing another ‘golden age’ with crime fiction in 2017 outselling all other genres that year, for reasons that would be discussed later.
If you’re a fan of crime fiction like me Andy suggested authors from the top subgenres of ‘crime noir’, despite none being included in the Sunday Times 100 greatest novels of the 21st century. See the list at the end for recommendations. This brought us to his genre of ‘canal- noir’ which luckily for him is not a crowded market. Crime fiction set on over 5000 miles of British waterways is limited to a few titles, because, Andy believes, that organisations such as the Canals and Waterways trust and Hoseasons holiday company would prefer to promote boating as a happy wholesome family activity. But as he showed it’s a perfect setting; many disparate users who all dislike each other, and a great place to dispose of bodies; serial killers known as canal pushers may have operated in Manchester in the early 2000s and the Smiley Face Murders in the USA in the late 90s.
Andy’s first experience of a canal holiday as a child was not a happy experience but since then trips on the waterways in the Midlands have inspired his novels, the first being title of course CANAL PUSHERS.
A successful crime novel relies on the 3 Ps-Place-- People--Plot , so Andy explained and went on to describe his foray into novel writing after retiring from a career in journalism and management at the BBC . His place is the setting of the canals and waterways, so the stories based on the boat ‘Jumping Jack Flash’ can move around the UK and now into Europe as his latest is set in Amsterdam. The people are journalist Jack Johnson and sidekick Nina Wilde, and of course a dog! As to plot- murders are usually driven by one of emotions of either fear, greed, desire or hatred.
When Andy was successful in finding a publisher, he needed the outline of his second book to prove he had more than one book in him, and he explained how his writing technique had adapted over the years from a ‘panster’ (flying by the seats of his pants) to not quite a planner- may be more of a planster! He writes ‘office hours “and has produced 5 books over the last 5 years. He encouraged us by showing it’s never too late to write quoting Thoreau “How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live!”
And as for the answer to the conundrum of why we are experiencing the 2nd Golden Age of crime fiction… Andy thinks that just as the first followed on after World War One and the Great Depression, dark periods in history, so the second followed a similar time in our history after Brexit and then the pandemic and global instability. In crime fiction we know that generally speaking justice will be done, the case will be resolved, and the villain nearly always gets caught or gets their comeuppance and that doesn’t always happen in real life unfortunately.
After the meeting Andy was happy to take Q&A and then sign copies of his books. More details available here https://andygriffee.co.uk
Sally Whyte
Speaker Coordinator.
Recommended crime genre authors
- SCOTTISH NOIR: Ian Rankin, Val McDermid, Ann Cleeves, James Oswald
- DOMESTIC NOIR : Gillian Flynn, Paula Hawkins
- SCANDI NOIR : Jo Nesbo, Henning Mankell, Stieg Larsson
- HISTORY NOIR : CJ Sansom, Philip Kerr, Robert Harris, Lindsey Davis
- INDIAN NOIR : Abir Mukherjee, Vaseem Khan
- OUTBACK NOIR : Jane Harper, Peter Papathanasiou
- COSY CRIME: Grantchester series by James Runcie, Richard Osman