It's festival time for authors and a chance for them to meet their readers. Steve Pratt talks to Harrogate crime writing supremo Mark Billingham about bringing life to book...

ACTOR and comedian turned writer Mark Billingham says it’s “like organising the best party in the world”. A celebration, he might add, that has its roots in crime and murder most foul.

He’s chair of Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival for the second time and the man responsible for putting together the fourday programme of authors and events.

The guest list celebrating the tenth year of the biggest crime writers gathering in the country includes Jo Nesbo, Harlan Coben, John Connolly, Kate Mosse, Peter Robinson, Peter James and Ian Rankin.

“It’s great to get the writers you admire and like, and to invite new writers and give them experience,” says Billingham, creator of the Tom Thorne crime novels.

“The infrastructure is in place so all I do is turn up with lists of writers and themes we might have,” he says. “As chair, you need to be gregarious and not afraid to ask people to do things – and I suppose I’ve always been that.

“Everyone who’s been chair has brought something different to the festival, a different flavour and atmosphere which reflects their personality and tastes.”

The festival is one where writer and readers are under the same roof, and mix socially outside the author events and panel discussions.

“People enjoy the atmosphere. Writers meet their readers, readers meet the writers, writers get to know other writers. People are all mucking in together for the whole weekend,” he says.

“One of the ways we’ve been able to measure just how popular the festival is, seeing that many writers not programmed to appear come anyway to meet their friends and other writers.”

With some 80 authors featured in the programme, isn’t he worried they’ll run out of crime writers to invite? “There’s fresh blood coming through every year,” he says. “And we do something called Dragons Pen in which new writers can pitch a novel to agents and publishers.

There’s never going to be a shortage of crime writers.”

He doesn’t see the need for non crime writing guests. “You wouldn’t have the same atmosphere.

Crime writers are the party animals and tend to know how to have a good time,” he says.

They’re not out to stab each other in the back.

“It’s not fiercely competitive, it’s a very nice group of writers to be part of. There’s never that sense with crime writers that in order to do well another person has to do badly.”

One death that will be talked about is the potential demise of the printed word, killed by new technology like e-books. “We’ll be discussing how we’ll read our crime fiction in ten years time – the so-called death of the book.

“That will be a controversial panel. The last thing anyone wants is to sit through is a panel where everyone is pleasant to each other. It’s nice for them if it gets a little feisty.”

He doesn’t subscribe to the literary snobbery that has people turning up their nose at books on screen rather than the printed page. “I’m not a Luddite, I don’t care how they are read. My worry is what it does to the quality of the writing.

I do start to worry that books have been devalued when you can buy one for less than the price of a cup of tea.”

Before turning to crime writing, Billingham was an actor and stand-up comedian. He had small roles in TV crime shows like The Bill and Juliet Bravo, and he helped form the Bread and Circuses socialist theatre company. Followers of BBC series Maid Marian And Her Merry Men may recognise him as the Sheriff of Nottingham’s guard Gary. Since his first crime novel, Sleephead, was published in 2001 he’s stopped acting. “I had a walk-on part when they televised my books, but I ended up on the cutting room floor,” he says.

He hasn’t abandoned comedy entirely. “When I do a book event I’ll do ten minutes of cheap jokes before I start reading something very dark from the books,” he explains. “Not all writers are performers, but increasingly you have to be.”

• Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival runs from July 19-22 at the Old Swan Hotel, Harrogate. Box Office: 01423-502-116 harrogateinternationalfestivals.com/crime