This time next week CrimeFest 2013 will be in full swing. There’s a mouth-watering programme with lots of international writers as well as British writers whose works are set on international shores.

They include: Quentin Bates (Iceland), Xavier-Marie Bonnot (France), Roberto Costantini (Italy), K.O. Dahl (Norway), Jeffrey Deaver (USA), Thomas Enger (Norway), Ragnar Jonasson (Iceland), Pierre Lemaître (France), Adrian Magson (UK/France), M J McGrath (UK/Arctic), Derek B. Miller (Norway), Barbara Nadel (UK/Turkey), William Ryan (UK/ Russia), Jeffrey Siger (US/ Greece), Yrsa Sigurðardóttir (Iceland), Dana Stabenow (USA/ Alaska), Valerio Varesi (Italy), Robert Wilson (Spain/Portugal/Africa), Anne Zouroudi (UK/Greece). A full list of writers with further details is available here.

The winner of the first Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year will also be announced at the CrimeFest Gala dinner on Saturday night. I have my posh frock at the ready and am looking forward to the occasion very much.

The award was set up in memory of Maxine Clarke, who blogged as Petrona and was an expert in Scandinavian crime fiction. The 2013 shortlist, compiled on the basis of Maxine’s reviews, is as follows:

PIERCED by Thomas Enger, tr. Charlotte Barslund (Faber and Faber)

BLACK SKIES by Arnaldur Indridason, tr. Victoria Cribb (Harvill Secker)

LAST WILL by Liza Marklund, tr. Neil Smith (Corgi)

ANOTHER TIME, ANOTHER LIFE by Leif GW Persson tr. Paul Norlen (Doubleday)

Synopses of the novels with extracts from Maxine’s reviews can be found at the wonderful ‘Petrona Remembered’ blog. Karen Meek has also set up two polls over at ‘Eurocrime’: ‘which novel do you want to win the Petrona Award 2013′ and ‘which novel do you think will win the Petrona Award 2013′. The polls are open until 29 May.

I’ll be tweeting from CrimeFest using the following hashtags: #CrimeFest and #CrimeFest2013. The only difficulty now is deciding which of the panels to attend – they all look so good…