Our first dedicated crime writing festival is shaping up to be a belter!

Top crime writer Mark Billingham will be headlining, topping off an exciting day of panels around all aspects of crime writing.

Mark will be in conversation with our Patron, author and serving detective, Lisa Cutts, whose latest book, Lost Lives, is being released later this year by Simon and Schuster.

The Killing Habit is Mark’s newest novel, and will be published next month. It continues the award winning series of stories featuring London based detective Tom Thorne, which includes The Dying Hours, Lifeless, Good As Dead, Time Of Death and Love Like Blood. Lazybones and Death Message both won the Theakston’s Old Peculier Award for Crime Novel Of The Year.

An acclaimed television series based on the Thorne novels was screened on Sky One in
Autumn 2010, starring David Morrissey as Tom Thorne, and a major six-part series, based on the standalone thriller In The Dark, was screened on BBC1 in 2017.

Mark became a bestseller with his debut novel, Sleepyhead, in 2001, which has since been acclaimed as one of the novels that shaped the decade. Since then, each of Mark’s novels has been a Sunday Times Top Ten bestseller. His sales total more than 4.5million copies to date, and his books are published in over 25 countries.

Mark first began his career as an actor, with credits including small-screen greats such as Dempsey & Makepeace, Birds of a Feather, Juliet Bravo and four series of cult children’s classic Maid Marian And Her Merry Men. Whilst continuing his relationship with TV through writing for a variety of shows, he branched out into stand-up comedy and worked all over the world for more than twenty years, appearing regularly at The Comedy Store, as well as on screen with Spitting Image, The Mary Whitehouse Experience and Live At Jongleurs.

He has gone on to present widely on TV and radio, hosting shows including Going Live, TV’s Favourite Detective, Passport to Murder, Mark Billingham’s Rule Book of Crime and documentaries on everything from Patricia Highsmith to Columbo. He has also showcased his peculiar and largely useless ability to retain trivia on radio and TV shows such as Quote Unquote, The Write Stuff, Pointless Celebrities, Eggheads and Celebrity Mastermind, which he won, thanks to knowing far more than is healthy about Elvis Costello. Mr Costello has now rescinded the restraining order…

We’re delighted Mark will be joining us on Saturday, October 6. The panels will run from 11am-6pm in the Rochester Community Hub, with time after each panel for signings. Read more about Mark on his website here, or follow him on Twitter @MarkBillingham

When the author day is complete, you can join us for a brand new murder mystery evening devised by theatre group Alternate Shadows, which will take place in the glorious Eastgate House, just opposite the Hub.

We’ll be announcing all our authors over the next few weeks, so do sign up to our newsletter if you’d like to be among the first to know. Tickets will be available in due course.