A Crime Fiction Special: with David Baldacci, Anthony Horowitz, Ann Cleeves, Vaseem Khan and many more

In this bumper episode of the Radio 2 Book Club, Jeremy Vine visits the Theakston Old Peculiar Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate. It's the world's largest crime writing festival, which welcomed over 20,000 crime fiction fans over four days, at the Old Swan Hotel (the hotel where Agatha Christie was found after she went 'missing' for 11 days, in 1926). Jeremy chats to some of the biggest names writing crime fiction today: David Baldacci, Denise Mina, Vaseem Khan, Anthony Horowitz, Ann Cleeves, MW Craven, Anthony Horowitz and Tim Sullivan. They discuss their new books, the joy of the festival, the popularity of crime fiction in the UK and how they keep coming up with murders!David Baldacci (who has sold over 200M books!) won the Outstanding Contribution to Crime Fiction Award this year - and talks about the threat of AI on writers. Vaseem Khan discusses his new series of books, which he's writing for the Ian Fleming estate, featuring the Bond character, Q.Ann Cleeves is a stalwart of this festival, and was their first writer in residence, so as well as telling us about her new novel - and working with Brenda Blethyn on 'Vera' - she also sums up what this celebration of crime fiction is all about. Tim Sullivan self-published his first books, because agents didn't want them, but is now a million copy bestselling author - and he talks to Jeremy about that journey. Denise Mina's new book asks lots of moral questions of the reader - which she gets into - as well as revealing the treats she got from Betty's. Anthony Horowitz talks about meta fiction, writing himself into his books and writing a book within a book - whilst keeping it simple! And MW Craven reveals how he started taking writing seriously after nearly dying from a tumor - and why writing his character, Washington Poe, was so cathartic! There's something for everyone in this bumper edition!