The Crime Fiction Fair is for readers who want to get closer to the genre than the blurb on the back cover. Here, crime fiction, suspense, interviews, conversations, talks, and book sales fill FÆNGSLET in Horsens, so the setting is not just a backdrop, but part of the atmosphere.
The programme may include meetings with Danish and international crime writers about current books, but also conversations with professionals from the real world of crime. Forensic doctors and investigators are among the kinds of people who can give the genre a more concrete and less polished edge.
The fair uses several of FÆNGSLET’s rooms as stages and exhibition areas. Names such as Trykkeriet, Snedkeriet, Gymnastiksalen, Arresten, and Indergården say something about the place before anyone even turns on the microphone. It is a literature festival where you can move from book stalls to author interviews and still be surrounded by the heavy framework of the former state prison.
Today, FÆNGSLET is a museum, cultural venue, and experience site, but the buildings still clearly bear their former function. During the Crime Fiction Fair, that history is not explained in detail everywhere; rather, it lies like a dark undertone beneath the conversations about guilt, clues, and motives.
