It is that time of the month again. If you are in Bristol this evening do come along to the Shakespeare Tavern on Prince Street for 7:30pm to hear Scott Lewis and Jo Lindsay Walton. In the meantime, here are the recordings from the May event featuring Martyn Waites and Paul Cornell.

The event was a crime fiction special in honour of Crimefest, our local crime fiction convention which was due up the following weekend. Martyn does have SF credentials, of which more later, but his fiction is straight crime. In addition to his own books he writes as Tania Carver, and it is one of her books that he reads from here.

Paul, of course, read from Who Killed Sherlock Holmes, the latest in his Shadow Police novels.

And then of course we had the Q&A, which was epic. I, of course, wanted to know the story about how Martyn came to write as Tania. As you will hear, the position of women writers in crime fiction is very different from that in SF&F. Martyn gave me an idea for a panel at BristolCon.

Along the way Martyn also revealed his various SF&F credentials, including publishing a Doctor Who fanzine and featuring in a Robin Hood TV series. We also talked about a book called Great Lost Albums in which Martyn and friends invent famous albums that never were. I was particularly taken by the idea of a Kraftwerk Christmas album.

Paul talked more about the Shadow Police series. Naturally there is discussion of Holmes, and Paul’s recent episode of Elementary. There is also mention of his comic series, This Damned Band. There is, inevitably, some discussion of science fiction television series, which leads to some well-deserved praise for The Expanse.