Bad Sydney Crime Writers Festival

Overview

Fancy yourself the next Agatha Christie or Arthur Conan Doyle? Spend your days listening to My Favorite Murder and watching Making a Murder? Have a morbid fascination with true crime? If you answered yes to any of these, this festival might be right up your dimly lit alley.

Bad is Sydney's only festival dedicated to all things crime writing, and it's back for its second year with a morbid — and fascinating — lineup. Kicking off the three-day fest — running from Friday,August 31 to Sunday, September 2 — is a huge true crime-themed 'pub trivia' quiz, hosted by award-winning author Candice Fox, where you'll battle it out against some of the nation's top true crime writers (and maybe all those Netflix binges will finally pay off).

Over the next two days, you'll be able to head to a host of conversations and Q&As with ex-armed robber Carl Synnerdahl — who successfully convinced prison officers that he was blind — investigative journalist Joanna McCarthy, forensic psychiatrist Donald Grant, former judge Brian Knox and former detective and author Duncan McNab, among others. Authors Adam Shand and Mark Morri will also discuss and compare the underworlds of Sydney and Melbourne, while Nerida Campbell and Michael Duffy will explore Australia's prohibition era.