Lucy Atkins Interviewed by Simon Mason

Novelist and journalist Lucy Atkins talks about her latest novel Magpie Lane and its place in Oxford’s literary tradition of fictional crime.

The novel roams secret passages and hidden graveyards once haunted by fictional detectives such as Wimsey and Morse. The eight-year-old daughter of an Oxford college master disappears, and police turn to the nanny, Dee, for answers. When Dee looks back at her time at the master’s lodgings, a picture emerges of a high-achieving but dysfunctional family.

‘The word-of-mouth success of lockdown. . .Riveting, twisty, page-turning stuff’ Guardian

Atkins has written four novels. The Night Visitor has been optioned for television. She teaches on the creative writing masters degree at the University of Oxford, is a book critic for the Sunday Times, and was a judge for the 2017 Costa Book Awards. Here she talks to fellow novelist Simon Mason, author of A Killing in November.

This event is part of the festival’s crime fiction programme.