Dead Good Reader Awards Shortlist 2016

The UK crime fiction website Dead Good announced its shortlist of nominees in 6 categories for the 2016 Dead Good Reader Awards. Readers anywhere can vote for their favorites HERE. Winners will be announced on July 22 at Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate, England. 

The Dead Good Recommends Award for Most Recommended Book:
• Career of Evil, by Robert Galbraith (Little Brown)
• Die of Shame, by Mark Billingham (Little Brown)
• In Her Wake, by Amanda Jennings (Orenda)
• The Missing, by C L Taylor (Avon)
• Tastes Like Fear, by Sarah Hilary (Headline)
• Untouchable Things, by Tara Guha (Legend Press)

The Tess Gerritsen Award for Best Series:
• Jack Reacher, created by Lee Child (Transworld)
• Roy Grace, created by Peter James (Macmillan)
• Marnie Rome, created by Sarah Hilary (Headline)
• Logan McRae, created by Stuart MacBride (Harper Collins)
• Ruth Galloway, created by Elly Griffiths (Quercus)
• George Mackenzie, created by Marnie Riches (Maze)

The Linwood Barclay Award for Most Surprising Twist:
• Disclaimer, by Renee Knight (Transworld)
• The Ice Twins, by S.K. Tremayne (Harper Collins)
• I Let You Go, by Clare Mackintosh (Sphere)
• The Kind Worth Killing, by Peter Swanson (Faber & Faber)
• Little Black Lies, by Sharon Bolton (Transworld)
• When She Was Bad, by Tammy Cohen (Transworld)

The Papercut Award for Best Page Turner:
• Broken Promise, by Linwood Barclay (Orion)
• Career of Evil, by Robert Galbraith (Little Brown)
• Follow Me, by Angela Clarke (Avon)
• The Girl in the Ice, by Robert Bryndza (Bookouture)
• In a Dark, Dark Wood, by Ruth Ware (Vintage)
• Splinter the Silence, by Val McDermid (Little Brown)

The Hotel Chocolat Award for Darkest Moment:
• Behind Closed Doors, by B.A. Paris (Mira)
• The Darkest Secret, by Alex Marwood (Sphere)
• In the Cold Dark Ground, by Stuart MacBride (Harper Collins)
• Little Boy Blue, by M.J. Arlidge (Michael Joseph)
• The Teacher, by Katerina Diamond (Avon)
• Viral, by Helen Fitzgerald (Faber & Faber)

The Mörda Award for Captivating Crime in Translation:
• Camille, by Pierre Lemaitre (MacLehose Press)
• The Crow Girl, by Erik Axl Sund (Vintage)
• The Defenceless, by Kati Hiekkapelto (Orenda Books)
• I’m Travelling Alone, by Samuel Bjork (Doubleday)
• Nightblind, by Ragnar Jonasson (Orenda Books)
• The Undesired, by Yrsa Sigurdardóttir (Hodder & Stoughton)


HT: J. Kingston Pierce, The Rap Sheet

Arthur Ellis Award Winners for Crime Writing in Canada

Crime Writers of Canada announced the 2016 Arthur Ellis Award winners. Congratulations to All

Best Novel: Peter Kirby, Open Season, Linda Leith Publishing

Best First Novel: Ausma Zehanat Khan, The Unquiet Dead, Minotaur

The Lou Allen Memorial Award for Best Novella: Jeremy Bates, Black Canyon, Dark Hearts, Ghillinnein Books

Best Short Story: Scott Mackay, The Avocado Kid, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

Best Book in French: Luc Chartrand, L'Affaire Myosotis, Québec Amérique

Best Juvenile/YA: Stephanie Tromly, Trouble is a Friend of Mine, Kathy Dawson Books

Best Nonfiction: Dean Jobb, Empire of Deception, Harper Collins Publishers

The Dundurn Unhanged Arthur for Best Unpublished First Crime Novel: Jayne Barnard, When the Flood Falls

CWC also announced the 2016 Grand Master Winner Eric Wright. Eric Wright wrote eighteen crime novels, in four different series, as well as novels, a novella, and a memoir. Eric’s first novel, The Night the Gods Smiled (1983), won the first Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Novel, the John Creasey Award from the Crime Writers’ Association (CWA), and the City of Toronto Book Award. The Kidnapping of Rosie Dawn (2000) won an Arthur and was nominated for an Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America (MWA). His writing career spanned over forty years and his contribution to Canadian crime writing was, without question, immense. This was recognized in 1998 when Eric received the Derrick Murdoch Award for lifetime contribution to Canadian crime writing. Eric Wright passed away in October, 2015, shortly after being notified that he had been selected for the Grand Master Award. Eric continued writing until shortly before his death, and in May 2016, Cormorant Books released The Land Mine, a historical novel loosely based on Eric’s own childhood in World War II London.

Crime Writers of Canada was founded in 1982 as a professional organization designed to raise the profile of Canadian crime writers from coast to coast. Members include authors, publishers, editors, booksellers, librarians, reviewers, and literary agents as well as many developing authors.

The Crime Writer and Gun Control: Guest post by Matt Rees

Today I welcome award winning author Matt Rees. Matt Rees was born in Newport, Wales in 1967, and has lived in Jerusalem since 1996. As a journalist, Rees covered the Middle East for over a decade for the Scotsman, then Newsweek and from 2000 until 2006 as Time magazine's Jerusalem bureau chief.  His first book was a non-fiction account of Israeli and Palestinian society, Cain's Field. He published the first novel featuring Palestinian detective Omar Yussef, The Bethlehem Murders, in 2007, which won the CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger award. He blogs and podcasts at www.mattrees.net. Get a free ebook of his crime stories here

Matt Rees:

The Crime Writer and Gun Control

I’ve only fired a gun on a single occasion, though guns have frequently been pointed at me. In my writing, I’ve blown away many a bad guy and just as many good guys.

I write crime fiction. In crime fiction bad things happen. Often involving guns. It’s much like life. Except that it’s not.

Every time there’s a mass shooting, like Elliot Rodger’s murder of six people May 23, I go through the manuscript of my latest novel and take a long, hard look at myself. Most writers—like TV producers or movie directors—are quick to deny any connection between the violence that appears in their art and real violence. I don’t think of crime fiction readers as a particularly dangerous bunch, but still I’m not so glib.

Perhaps that’s because I’ve seen a lot of actual violence, as a war correspondent. I mentioned that people had pointed guns at me. Here’s a brief list: Hamas gunmen in Gaza, PLO militiamen in Hebron, Israeli soldiers all over the place (including one who pointed the barrel of his tank at me), Hizballah gunmen in southern Lebanon and Beirut and the Bekaa Valley, a mysterious Iraqi guy in Jordan, and a couple of people whose identities I still don’t know in Nablus, West Bank. You get the idea.

Winston Churchill wrote that “nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.” I can vouch for that too. (Nablus again, where I found myself running through narrow casbah alleys to escape gunfire whose source I simply couldn’t see). It’s one reason why there’s violence in crime fiction. It isn’t only that bad guys use violence. Crime fiction also gives us a sense of the Churchillian buzz, as if the violence was directed at us and we were escaping it, like our novel’s hero.

Many of my experiences on the wrong end of a gun barrel came when I was a foreign correspondent for Time Magazine during the Palestinian intifada from 2000 to 2006. Afterwards, I wrote four crime novels about a Palestinian sleuth named Omar Yussef. I made sure that my hero was too aged and infirm to take the path of violence that attracted so many of his compatriots. I wanted him to face down the gunmen without the option of blowing him away. That’s far more inspiring.

I’ve thought hard about the way I write about guns, and I’ve examined other thriller writers’ approaches too. Certainly I think it’s possible for writers to glamorize violence and gunplay. A recent Brad Thor email newsletter included a “gear” link to a snazzy jacket in which you’re invited to carry your iPad, iPhone and handgun, as though a Glock were just another yuppie gadget. I'm prepared to accept that the photos of the "Alpha Jacket" may be tongue-in-cheek, but I very much doubt it.

I’m about as sympathetic to gun glamor as I am to techies who describe the screens of their Apple devices as “beautiful.” Like cellphones, guns are functional, not beautiful.

I decided not long ago I ought to know what that function feels like. I had never even fired a gun. I went to a basement range in Jerusalem and rented a range of weapons. It was truly fascinating to feel the difference between the popping reports of a 9 mm and the heavy kick of a Magnum, which actually hurt my thumb after cocking it a few times (poor baby.)

My trainer got very excited and decided to give me a treat. He clipped a Glock inside an Israeli Tabor conversion. My pistol was suddenly transformed into an assault weapon with a red laser sight. Hitting the center of the target with that gun was easier than typing this sentence. Wherever the red dot went, so did the bullet. Many times I had wandered through conflict zones, knowing that there were gunmen about and blithely figuring they wouldn’t shoot and if they did they’d probably miss. I started to imagine that red dot on my body and it made me more than a little queasy.

Now I’m working on a new series about a US agent. Unlike my Palestinian sleuth, this guy will be armed. The Isla Vista killings—and the many less-publicized school shootings since—remind me yet once more that I have to examine the ethical framework for everything my main characters does. After all, an actual government agent must answer for his conduct every time he draws his weapon. So should a fictional one.

I want to be sure that no reader will come away from my books with the idea that violence is just a lifestyle option, let alone a heroic one. Even in fiction.