Body in the Garden Festival 26-27 October

Adelaide is, well, different. Where else would you find a free festival combining gardening and crime writing, staged amid the fronds of the Botanic Gardens on a blue-skied weekend when unidentified human remains are found in the fireplace of a South Australian farmhouse?

I missed the Ned Kelly Awards this year on account of their being in Brisbane, headquarters of the vicious Newman gang, so this was a great opportunity to catch up with some of the crime fiction colleagues – to wit: Tony Cavanaugh, whose deeply creepy Sunshine Coast novel ‘Promise’ should be banned by the Noosa Tourist Association; Gabrielle Lord who was wearing Gardenia Passion by Annick Goutal like it should be worn; Michael Robotham, talking about his sensational gut-gripper ‘Watching You’. Barry Maitland was there, too, but I didn’t get a change to talk to him. Also Paul Bangay, who I wanted to ask which kind of bodies make the best compost but didn’t. Derek Pedley, an Adelaide journo who writes true crime, gave a fascinating account of the suburban murder plot he unpicks in his ‘Dead By Friday’.