At a personal level, it’s been a more uneven year.  Just over a year ago, for reasons that will be evident to anyone who’s read the interview tucked away in the back of ‘Trust No One’, my life changed dramatically (having already been changing fairly quickly for the last couple of years for related reasons).  It’s now slightly back on an even keel, but this year has been one of stepping into what feels like unknown territory.  At the same time, I’ve probably been out more in the last 12 months than for a good few years, in the company of both my sons and some good friends.  There were some memorable evenings of music – the Decemberists at the Manchester Academy and Half Man Half Biscuit at the Ritz, for example.  But the best two evenings were both in London.  The most remarkable was the Nic Jones tribute concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, featuring a short but stunning set from Nic himself, very ably supported by his son Joe.  That was Nic’s first solo performance for around 30 years, and I’m delighted to see that he and Joe are now playing at next year’s Warwick and Towersey Folk Festivals.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed that he and Joe might consider making some recordings as well.

The other very different remarkable evening was the one off performance by Jerry Seinfeld at the O2.  I went partly because No 2 son is a massive ‘Seinfeld’ fan, and partly because I thought it might be my one chance to see arguably the greatest stand-up comedian of his generation (more of that in a minute).  Observational comedy has become a rather tiresome genre these days, but Seinfeld was not only the best live comedy craftsman I’ve seen (with the possible exception of the worlds-apart Frankie Howerd, many years ago) he was also consistently interesting and thought-provoking.  A terrific evening.

My reading experiences have been rather more muted this year, maybe because I’ve spent so much of it writing (I tend to prefer not to read too much crime fiction while I’m trying to write it).  The books that have stuck in my head are a fairly diverse bunch – Greil Marcus’s astonishing collection of writings on Bob Dylan, Michelle Paver’s atmospheric ghost story ‘Dark Matter’, Ted Lewis’s 1970s Northern noir, ‘Jacks’ Return Home’, Allan Brown’s exhaustive and often hilarious account of the making of the film, ‘The Wicker Man’, and – currently – a re-discovering after many years of  Robert Aickman’s short stories.

The new year promises – well, work on the edits of the new book, thoughts about a next book (including possibly getting back to the unfinished Nergui book that’s been languishing while Alex Walters possessed me), and a whole series of interesting domestic and logistical challenges.  Shouldn’t be boring, anyway.  Hope it’s good for the rest of you.

There’ve been some nice reviews from, amongst others, Keith B Walters (no relation, as far as I’m aware, honestly) on his Books and Writers blog, crimeficreader’s It’s a Crime blog, Maxine Clarke on Eurocrime, and Nick Quantrill in the Hull Daily Mail.  Many thanks, all, for the kind words.

Right, now I’m back, more posts to follow…

The book’s received a very generous couple of reviews on the It’s a Crime.. and Books and Writers blogs, for which I’m deeply grateful.  And you might (or might not) also be interested to read this piece of the KIller Reads website, which tells you far more than you ever wanted to know about my musical tastes…

There’s no question, though, that times are tough and getting tougher for independent bookshops, and it’s difficult to see how they can regain the ground being lost.  If such bookshops have a future, they clearly have to provide offerings that are distinct from those of their larger competitor.  They can’t compete with Tesco, Asda or even Amazon on price, and it’s difficult for them to compete with Amazon even on ease of use or availability of stock.  But over the summer I came across a couple of examples of shops which seemed to offer something different.

The first was the excellent bookshop at Salts Mill, at Saltaire near Bradford.  For those who don’t know, Saltaire is a Victorian ‘model village’ originally created by the industrialist Titus Salt.  It’s now a World Heritage Site and well worth a visit. Salts Mill was the original mill, which in the late 1980s was bought by the late entrepreneur, Jonathan Silver, and established as a gallery devoted to Silver’s friend and former schoolmate, the artist David Hockney.  It now houses a terrific collection of Hockney’s paintings, as well as a selection of restaurants and retail outfits.  For various (non-writing) reasons I’ve had some dealings with the Mill over the summer and so had time to explore its offerings.  The whole place is fascinating, but I was particularly struck by the quality of the bookshop.  It has the advantage of occupying a beautiful space in the Mill and it’s very well laid out – a thoroughly enjoyable place to browse.  But the real strength of the shop lies in the range and diversity of its stock.  It has all the items you’d expect – books on Hockney, Saltaire and the local area – but an awful lot, both fiction and non-fiction, that you probably wouldn’t.  The result is that you (or at least I) constantly find yourself thinking: ‘Oh, that looks interesting’ or ‘I’ve read something about that’.  The other result is that you (or at least I) find it impossible to come away without buying something.  And, more importantly, something that I almost certainly wouldn’t have found through Amazon.  Having met the Silver family members who now run the Mill, I can see that it’s a labour of love as well as a commercial enterprise, and that shows through in the bookshop as well as in the rest of their offerings.

The second example is the Bakewell Bookshop in Derbyshire.  I’ve lived on the edges of the Peak District for a large part of my life (discounting aberrant periods in London and Cambridge) but for some reason, despite driving through the town on  regular basis, hadn’t visited Bakewell properly for years.  A couple of weeks ago, I found myself in the town and, intrigued by its website, made my way to the bookshop.  From the outside, it looks pretty much like your typical small-town bookshop.  Inside, though, it has a range of stock which, while clearly tailored to the passing tourist trade, also manages to be intriguing and eclectic. And it’s not just a bookshop – it also sells records and CDs (and, as we know, if there’s one area of retailing in a more parlous state than independent bookshops, it’s independent record stores), a wonderfully disparate mix of folk, blues, country, psychedelia and, in the words of their website, ‘weird stuff we like’.  It was full of items that were either new to me or which I’d never seen in a physical shop, many with neatly hand-written descriptions and recommendations from the owner.  Suffice to say that, between me and my sons, we spent – well, I’m slightly embarrassed to say how much.  More to the point, everything we bought, including CDs bought largely on the owner’s recommendation, was pretty wonderful.  I’m told that his main criterion for stocking items is quite simply whether he likes them himself.  On that basis, I’ll happily trust his judgement when I make a return visit, which won’t be long.  Apart from anything else, I want that Sandy Denny mug.

I don’t know what lessons it’s possible to draw from these two examples.  Both enjoy the big advantage of being situated in locations that attract a passing tourist trade, so they potentially have a more captive market than most bookshops.  But both seem to me to have made a real effort to offer something that can’t be found in Tesco or Amazon – or, for that matter, Waterstone’s at present.  It’ll be interesting to see whether James Daunt can translate the similar virtues of Daunt Books into a high street offering.  If so, I suspect it’s these kinds of bookshops that will provide the model.

Speaking of which, the big news for me this week was the the first advance copies of ‘Trust No One’ arrived in the post.  After months of exchanging electronic drafts of the manuscript and then pdfs of the proofs and the cover, getting first sight of the actual physical book is always an exciting moment.  And particularly so in this case as the good people at Avon have really done a terrific job with the new book – great cover, beautifully produced and even an exclusive interview with the mysterious Alex Walters.  I’ll be very interested to find out all about him.

The book’s published on 1 September and should be available from all good bookshops, on-line retailers, the Kindle store and, all being well, some of your better supermarkets.

You won’t be surprised to hear that I gave permission pretty much straightaway.  The outcome of all this is that Tsatsral has now completed the translation and the book is due to be published in Mongolia in the next few weeks.   I’m delighted to find that, as an outsider writing about a very different country and its culture, I didn’t get it completely wrong!  Tsatsral has promised to send over a copy of the book – I can’t wait to see it.  In the meantime, I wish her every success with the publication.

On a more serious note, I was interested both by Madeleine Albright’s assessment of Mongolia as a ‘model nation’, and by this perhaps more disturbing story from the UB Post.  All Albright says, all democracies face challenges.

I simply wanted to chance to see Nic Jones performing in  front of an audience again, in however limited a way.  I suppose, on the basis of reports of the Sidmouth concert, I’d expected an emotional evening – a respectful and high quality tribute from a selection of Nic Jones’s peers and proteges with perhaps a little contribution from Nic himself singing along with his former Bandoggs colleagues, the excellent Pete and Chris Coe.  Nothing startling, perhaps, but a fitting tribute to Nic Jones and his remarkable contribution to the folk world.

Well, we got that, certainly.  The first set was splendid – a series of Nic’s songs performed by a cast ranging from folk luminaries such as Martin Carthy and Ashley Hutchings through established performers such as Damien Barber, Tony Hall (who played on Nic’s seminal Penguin Eggs record) and Jim Moray, through to new talents such as Hutchings’s son, Blair Dunlop.  All terrific stuff – Barber and Hall playing ‘Barrack Street’, Jackie Oates and Belinda O’Hooley performing a stunning version of ‘Annachie Gordon’, the marvellous Anais Mitchell singing ‘The Drowned Lovers’.  And the first half ended with the recreated Bandoggs – Nic, Pete and Chris Coe, and Damien Barber and Johnny Adams standing in for the late Tony Rose – performing a fine set of familiar songs.

So far, so good.  I hadn’t really expected that Nic himself would perform except as part of the Bandoggs ensemble.  But then, remarkably, Nic Jones’s still slightly frail figure made its way forward to the microphone, Belinda O’Hooley sat herself behind the piano, and Nic announced that he was going to sing ‘Thanksgiving’, a strange and moving song by Rick Lee that once formed part of Nic’s live sets.  It was an extraordinary moment.  I’ve had been happy to hear Nic Jones sing anything, anyhow, even if his performance had been unremarkable.  But somehow, despite his frailty, despite everything that had happened to him, his performance surpassed everything else I heard last night.  His voice lacks some of its old power, but he’s still an amazing singer – a beautiful tone, perfect phrasing, and a remarkable ability to inhabit the song as if he’d written it.  I was left breathless.

And that was only the start.  Nic moved centre-stage to perform with his son, Joe, who’s perfected his father’s glorious rhythmic guitar-style.  It was a short but brilliant set.  They began with ‘Rue the day that ever I married’, claimed as supposedly a favourite song of Nic’s wife, Julia, who has clearly been a massive support and inspiration to father and son.  Then, in characteristic Nic Jones style, they subverted the whole evening by performing, quite brilliantly, ‘Fake Plastic Trees’, a song by Nic’s favourite band, Radiohead (he was also sporting a Paranoid Android teeshirt).  And they concluded with a heart-stopping version of one of Nic’s best-known songs, ‘Ten Thousand Miles’.

I’d have happily sat and listened to anything by Nic Jones.  But this was one of the most beautiful and moving live performances I’ve ever witnessed.  Against all the odds, Nic Jones remains a truly remarkable singer, his voice and vocal style perhaps even more moving than in his hey-day.  He’s unlikely to want to face again the travails of regular performance, but perhaps some enterprising producer could at least persuade him and Joe to make some recordings together.  I’d buy it like a shot, and I suspect it would become my CD of whatever year it was released.

The last time I saw Nic Jones perform was more than 30 years ago, a short but superb set at a charity concert in Cambridge, not long before his appalling accident.  For me, last night felt like the closing of a circle – another short set, even more brilliant. We’ve both been through a lot in the meantime in our separate lives, but Nic’s glorious music has been a constant in mine.  I notice that someone’s now posted a clip of his performance of ‘Ten Thousand Miles’ on YouTube, so you can find a flavour of the night here.