At the end of July, the Mushens Entertainment team travelled up to Harrogate to attend the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival. It’s become an annual tradition for us, and – aside from the free books and great panels – it’s a great opportunity to catch up with our own authors, editors who work on our books, and to meet fellow crime writing fans!

Despite the gloomy weather, there was a lovely and enthusiastic contingent of Mushens Entertainment authors at Harrogate this year - we loved catching up with Laure Van Rensburg, Robert Gold, Fiona Erskine, Claire Douglas, Vanessa Savage, Kate Gray, and Anna Mazzola. We also finally met Dan Bassett in person, Waterstones bookseller and flat-lay photographer extraordinaire! 

We started our weekend by visiting the Waterstones pop-up bookshop in the Old Swan Hotel in search of Mushens Entertainment books, finding copies of The Chemical Detective series by Fiona Erskine, The Clockwork Girl by Anna Mazzola, and Girl A by Abigail Dean. One of the best parts of Harrogate is attending the brilliant panels hosted by crime writing experts - a particular favourite of ours this year was the fascinating Pride and Prejudice panel, which discussed LGBTQ+ representation in crime fiction. 

The Friday evening was our drinks and nibbles reception for Mushens Entertainment authors, before heading over to the Festival to celebrate the Dead Good Awards.

We were thrilled to have five Mushens Entertainment authors – Amy McCulloch, Laura Purcell, Claire Douglas, Laure Van Rensburg, and Richard Osman – shortlisted for Dead Good Reader Awards 2022, in multiple categories. Richard Osman won the New Kid on the Block Award for Best New Series for the Thursday Murder Club series, and Claire Douglas’ The Couple at No 9 was the winner of The Love is Blind Award for Most Twisted Couple. The titles were voted for by the public, and Richard celebrated his win by providing a free drink to whoever said “Elizabeth sent me” at the hotel bar.

On Saturday, the Mushens Entertainment team decided to try our hand at the escape room inspired by Robert Gold’s Twelve Secrets - determined to beat the previous record of 6 minutes and 14 seconds, we put our sleuthing heads together to crack the puzzle, and ended up beating the record with a time of 5 minutes and 57 seconds! 

On Saturday night, The Man Who Quizzed Twice dusted off our (slightly shaky) crime writing knowledge and attempted to win the annual - and legendary - Late Night Quiz. Hosted by Mark Billingham and Val McDermid, crime writing aficionados went head-to-head to prove who knew the most about crime writing trivia. Our team left the tent overjoyed to place solidly in the middle, despite our valiant efforts!