Spanish eye view: Semana Negra

The Spaniards sure know how to throw a party, and this week — which brings back the annual Semana Negra writing festival devoted to all manners genre fiction, crime and otherwise — is certainly no exception. Rebecca Pawel (who’s well familiar with the European crime front) is over there and reports back:

Jim and Carolyn Hougan, who together write as John Case, did a presentation about The Genesis Code, The Murder Artist and various other books on Sunday, talking with Justo Vasco about research techniques, writing a collaborative novel (it involves a lot of yelling), and the history of various cults, including the famous Jonestown massacre.  It was an interesting presentation, helped by the fact that Justo had actually read all of the books except one.

Denise Hamilton was also present, although I missed her presentation, and yours truly presented the Spanish translation of DEATH OF A NATIONALIST on Monday.  One of the organizers fiddling with the microphones is in his daily life a member of Gijón´s sweet and innocuous policía municipal, and a friend informed me afterwards that the chief of said policía municipal was sitting in the front row during the presentation.  I was irresistibly reminded of the line from The Blues Brothers; "We´re so glad to see so many of you lovely people here tonight.  And we would especially like to welcome all the members of Gijón´s law enforcement community…"  Actually, the police chief, Alejandro Gallo, is a writer in his spare time, and has been contributing a regular true crime column to the Semana´s daily newspaper A Quemarropa ("Pointblank" available online).  Raf (organizer/ municipal) is actually a comic/graphic novel fan.  And so the Semana (a fair which attracts over a hundred thousand people and runs for ten "days" between roughly 5pm and 5am) flourishes under the benevolent gaze and with the active collaboration of the local authorities.  This is a nice city.

The first weekend is generally devoted mostly to science fiction, so a lot more mystery stuff is forthcoming.  Incidentally, Leonardo Padura Fuentes is here,and took part in a round table about Latin American crime fiction yesterday which I missed because I was being interviewed by the local tv station, along with science fiction novelist Elia Barceló, about femme fatales in noir films. I did see Padura Fuentes discussing his new historical novel (as well as the Mario Conde books) along with a pretty cool panel of Spaniards (historical novelists all) including Pedro Galvez, Alfonso Mateo Sagasta, someone named Aguilera (whose first name I can´t remember) and Enrique Serna, moderated by Paco Ignacio Taibo II.  Also a panel about the crime novel in Latin America.  All very cool stuff.

Pawel promises more, and I’m hoping Denise Hamilton will check in with her take as well.