National Crime Reading Month kicked off with simultaneous launches in London, Belfast and Edinburgh – appropriately in one of Waterstones flagship stores in Piccadilly; No Alibis, an independent bookshop, and in Edinburgh Central Library.

In London, our partners The Reading Agency brought two of their Quick Reads authors Dreda Say Mitchell MBE and Louise Candlish to chat to the fabulous Abir Mukherjee in a fascinating and hilarious discussion. Preceding them, NCRM Director Sam Blake chatted to Andrew Hunter Murray about genre and the breadth of crime fiction, which is the main theme for this year’s NCRM. Andrew’s dystopian crime novel The Sanctuary came out on 1 June.

In Belfast, NCRM Northern Ireland Ambassador Steve Cavanagh and Brian McGilloway chatted to a packed house, hosted by David Torrans in his famous bookshop, and in Edinburgh, Dr Noir (aka Jacky Collins) discussed all things forensic with Professor Jim Fraser, one of our Scotland Ambassadors – to another full house.

Events continued in London at the British Library on 2 June with Mark Billingham and Victoria Selman joining author Kate Jackson whose How to Survive a Classic Crime Novel formed the theme for the evening, hosted brilliantly again by Abir Mukherjee. Over 150 crime lovers braved the train strikes to celebrate the start of NCRM at what was a fabulous event.

The crimereading.com site now lists over 130 events happening right across the UK and Ireland, online and in person, with huge support from libraries – there is something for everyone, and events can be searched by location so you can find one near you. Launch events alone brought almost 300 crime lovers together with some of the UK and Ireland’s biggest authors – Steve Cavanagh’s star studded online event reaching another 150!

Use the #PickUpAPageTurner hashtag on social for all your book news and we’ll do our best to share from the CWA accounts!