Friday 26 September 2008

At Clayton


Last Sunday saw another gathering of the Northern Chapter of the Crime Writers’ Association, this time at a brand new venue, the Dunkenhalgh Hotel at Clayton le Moors, which is not far from Accrington in Lancashire.

The event was organised by Roger Forsdyke and I shared a table with a number of old friends, including Roger and his wife Penny, Kate Ellis and her husband, and Meg and Percy Moss, as well as Diane Janes, whom I’d met for the second time at Windermere just three days earlier. The conversation ranged widely, as Roger – a very experienced senior police officer - discussed ‘cold cases’ (of special interest to me in view of the fact that DCE Hannah Scarlett heads a cold case review team of my invention) and ‘intelligence-led policing’ (also known as ‘gossip-led policing’.)

I asked Roger whether the transparent police bulletin boards that one often sees on programmes like Crimewatch UK are now standard issue. But he told me he’d never seen one actually used – they all appear to belong to the BBC’s Props Department - more traditional whiteboards are still the order of the day.

Roger is organising next year’s CWA conference, to be held at Lincoln. There will be plenty of guest speakers and I’m looking forward to it already. The photo of Roger, incidentally, was taken by Roger Cornwell. Roger and Jean are proprietors of Cornwell Internet, and amongst many other things they look after the CWA website, as well as the sites of many leading authors - and some publishers too. Anyone looking to engage web expertise might well benefit from hiring their services.

3 comments:

Clare Dudman said...

Ah, interesting about the transparent screen. They seem to feature in TV crime programmes too. I wonder what else is made up in these police programmes.

Unknown said...

I noticed a reference to Diane Janes in your article. I am the great grandson of one of the subjects in her book, "Edwardian Murder". I hope you can help me contact her.
Thank you
Kevin Innes Danby

Martin Edwards said...

Kevin, I'll contact Diane and let her know you have been in touch.