John Finnemore talks to Mick Herron

BBC Radio 4 sketch writer John Finnemore discusses his first venture into crime fiction in conversation with one of the UK’s greatest crime writers Mick Herron.

Finnemore’s The Researcher’s First Murder is a murder mystery puzzle based on the Cain’s Jawbone puzzles written by Edward Powys Mathers under the pseudonym Torquemada in the 1930s. A prize of £15 was offered to the person who could solve the puzzle. The idea was revived in 2019. Finnemore won the prize for solving a new puzzle. He has now written a successor puzzle. A body is found stabbed in a locked room. Readers must solve the puzzle by rearranging a set of 100 cryptic picture postcards.

Finnemore is an award-winning writer and performer for radio, television and stage. He has written and performed in his own sketch shows on BBC Radio 4 and is a winner of the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain Award for Outstanding Contribution to Writing. He has also contributed a Jeeves and Wooster story for a new compilation Jeeves Again.

Herron is the author of the multi-award-winning Slough House thrillers, as well as the Oxford-based Zoe Boehm series, both of which have been made into major television series, starring Gary Oldman and Emma Thompson respectively.

Part of the festival’s crime fiction programme.