Published June 17, 2016 by Katherine Cowdrey – The Bookseller
The Dead Good Reader Awards shortlists have been announced, featuring Val McDermid, Lee Child and Peter James along with Robert Galbraith, C L Taylor and Stuart MacBride.
The six awards, created in collaboration with the Dead Good community to celebrate “unique elements” in crime writing, are nominated and voted for by readers that will be presented at the Theakstons Old Peculiar Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate in July.
Up for The Dead Good Recommends Award for Most Recommended Book is Career of Evil (Little, Brown), the third novel by J K Rowling’s pseudonym “Robert Galbraith”; Die of Shame (Little, Brown) by Mark Billingham, also a recent finalist for the Crime Writers’ Association Dagger in the Library; psychological thriller In Her Wake (Orenda) by Amanda Jennings; The Missing (Avon) by C L Taylor, described by Fiona Barton to have “an agonising twist”; Tastes Like Fear (Headline) by former bookseller Sarah Hilary who won Theakstons Crime Novel of the Year 2015; and debut Untouchable Things (Legend Press) by Tara Guha, which was authored on the 2014 Luke Bitmead Bursary.
The Tess Gerritsen Award for Best Series shortlists the Jack Reacher series by Lee Child, who recently confirmed he would be continuing the series under a new contract with Transworld to fans’ delight, and the Roy Grace series by Peter James, who is on his 11th novel in the series Want You Dead (Macmillan). Also shortlisted are Sarah Hilary’s Marnie Rome (Headline), Stuart MacBride’s Logan McRae (HarperCollins), Elly Griffiths’ Ruth Galloway (Quercus) and Marnie Riches’ George Mackenzie (Maze) series.
THE “Queen of crime”, Val McDermid is to be honoured for her outstanding contribution to fiction, it has been announced.
Val is very deserving of this accolade in the pantheon of legendary crime authors
The former journalist, whose works have sold 10 million copies in 30 languages and been adapted for television, will receive the award at an annual Theakstons Old Peculiar Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate this summer. The gong has previously been given to authors including Ruth Rendell, PD James and Inspector Morse creator Colin Dexter.
Announcing the news, judge Simon Theakston said: “As a writer, she is rightfully known as the Queen of Crime. Val is very deserving of this accolade in the pantheon of legendary crime authors.”
Originally from Kirkcaldy in Fife, McDermid was the first Scottish state school pupil to win a place at St Hilda’s College, Oxford, where she read English.
Author acclaimed as the ‘king of the police procedural’ by judge of crime writing award previously taken by authors including Elmore Leonard and Frederick Forsyth.
“King of the police procedural” Peter James has won the Crime Writers’ Association’s highest honour, the CWA Diamond Dagger.
Given in the past to some of crime writing’s biggest names, from Elmore Leonard to Frederick Forsyth and Val McDermid, the Diamond Dagger is for a career of “sustained excellence”, and for a “significant contribution” to the genre. James is best known for his series about detective superintendent Roy Grace, who investigates a serial killer targeting young women in Brighton in You Are Dead, his 11th and most recent outing.
Peter James. Photograph: Stephen Lawrence