The Crime Fiction Lover Awards 2024: The Winners

 

Crime Fiction Lover have announced the winners of their 2024 awards. Congratulations to all the winners.

Book of the Year Winner: 

Midnight and Blue by Ian Rankin

Book of the Year Editor’s Choice: 

Guide Me Home by Attica Locke

Best Debut Winner: 

The List of Suspicious Things by Jennie Godfrey

Best Debut Editor’s Choice: 

Deadly Animals by Marie Tierney

Best in Translation Winner: 

Death at the Sanatorium by Ragnar Jónasson, translated by Victoria Cribb

Best in Translation Editor’s Choice: 

The Night of Baba Yaga by Akira Otani, translated by Sam Bett

Best Indie Winner: 

A Killer of Influence by JD Kirk

Best Indie Editor’s Choice: 

The Corpse with the Pearly Smile by Cathy Ace

Best Crime Show Winner: 

Ludwig

Best Crime Show Editor’s Choice: 

Slow Horses S4

Best Author Winner: 

Ian Rankin

Best Author Editor’s Choice: 

Janice Hallett

My favourite non-fiction reads 2024

This year I did not read that many non-fiction books. However, there are three books that I throughly enjoyed and were my favourite non- fiction reads this year. Anyone that is interested in Miss Marple, the history of Victorian female detectives and writing about murder should read these books. All throughly entertaining and thought provoking. They are of course in alphabetical order.

Agatha Christie's Marple: Expert on Wickedness by Dr Mark Aldridge (Publisher HarperCollins)

A new investigation from Dr Mark Aldridge, exploring a lifetime of Agatha Christie’s Miss Jane Marple. In Agatha Christie’s Marple: Expert on Wickedness,‘Agathologist’ Dr Mark Aldridge looks at nearly a century of St Mary Mead’s most famous resident and uses his own detective skills to uncover new information about Miss Jane Marple’s appearances on page, stage, screen and beyond. Drawing on a range of material, some of which is newly discovered and previously unpublished, this book explores everything about Miss Marple, from her origins in a series of short stories penned by Christie, to the recent bestselling HarperCollins collection Marple: Twelve New Stories. This accessible, entertaining and illustrated guide to the world of Miss Marple pieces together the evidence in order to tell you everything you need to know about the world’s favourite female detective.

Writing the Murder: Essays in Crafting Crime Fiction (Editors) Dan Coxon and Richard V Hirst (Publisher: Cinder House) 

There's been a murder... From the macabre tales of Edgar Allan Poe through to the locked-room mysteries of the Golden Age, to the many faces of modern crime fiction and the explosion of true crime, writers have always explored the most taboo of human transgressions: the taking of a life. What is it about murder that has fascinated us for so long? And what is it about crimes of this nature that make for such compelling fiction? Gathering an impressive line-up of suspects, Writing the Murder asks some of the finest contemporary writers to dissect their craft and analyse the place of murder in fiction. Authors such as Charlie Higson, Louise Welsh, Jessie Greengrass and Tom Mead interrogate what it means to write about this most illicit of acts, the lasting appeal of crime fiction, and offer practical advice for those looking to write seriously and convincingly about crime. An essential tool for the grizzled veteran and the fresh-faced rookie alike, Writing the Murder gives you the motive and the means to write your own tales of murder and intrigue.

The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective by Sara Lodge. (Publisher: Yale University Press)

A revelatory history of the women who brought Victorian criminals to account—and how they became a cultural sensation. From Wilkie Collins to the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, the traditional image of the Victorian detective is male. Few people realise that women detectives successfully investigated Victorian Britain, working both with the police and for private agencies, which they sometimes managed themselves. Sara Lodge recovers these forgotten women’s lives. She also reveals the sensational role played by the fantasy female detective in Victorian melodrama and popular fiction, enthralling a public who relished the spectacle of a cross-dressing, fist-swinging heroine who got the better of love rats, burglars, and murderers alike. How did the morally ambiguous work of real women detectives, sometimes paid to betray their fellow women, compare with the exploits of their fictional counterparts, who always save the day? Lodge’s book takes us into the murky underworld of Victorian society on both sides of the Atlantic, revealing the female detective as both an unacknowledged labourer and a feminist icon.

Crime in the First World War

 Why set a crime story against the backdrop of the First World War? 

There are many good reasons, of course – not least the moral ambiguity and jeopardy that war provides – but the real reason, for a writer, is that one is drawn to it. 

And in my case that began a long time ago with a handful individuals, who led me on a path that would end with Cut and Run, my new crime thriller about an injured ex-serviceman named Frank Champion who goes to back to France in 1916 to solve a murder.

I’ll start with the maiden aunts. Did you ever have a maiden aunt? They don’t make them anymore, not in the sorts of numbers that they did back then. I had three – sisters – who lived in Edmonton in North London in a house without, seemingly, a television set and where the dining table was always laden with the sort of high tea that an Edwardian would have recognised – and relished. 

Olive, Dorothy and Alice were unmarried because their would-be husbands had been killed in the First World War; young men who were part of Vera Brittain’s famous lost generation, following a conflict which claimed the lives of one in four junior officers. What’s more, for my three maiden aunts, that lost generation included their elder brother, whose photograph was framed surrounded by the flags of the allied nations, and proudly displayed on the wall on the upstairs hall.

He never came home, was all Olive would say, when I did what a five-year-old like me would do and ask about him. I dare say it was conveyed with what we would now regard as resolute understatement, but that’s what people were like then. 

Another first-hand recollection of the world of the Great War came from my grandmother who remembered seeing the Tommies going off to fight on the trains. In my memory they are waving through at the windows at her. One of her strongest recollections was being called into the playground and told to told by the headmistress that at 11 o’clock precisely that the war would end and the guns would fall silent across Europe. The joy and import in her words travelled through time. 

Then there was my grandfather – my dad’s father, who fought and was injured in the war, but survived. He was in the horse artillery and there are pictures of him in the 1970s carrying around an enormous hearing aid. A decent man, I’m told, but hard to know, my father said. What the experience taught him was that the most important job of a junior officer was to protect their men against the senior officers. Which would be hilarious if it wasn’t so tragic. And surely it informs the outlook of my book’s protagonist Frank Champion.

The final – and probably the most important – personal interaction that informs the backdrop to Cut and Runis my meeting with a Great War veteran Smiler Marshall who died in 2005, before his 109^th birthday. I interviewed him in 2000 when he was 104. 

A farrier by trade, he had joined the Essex Yeomanry after shaking hands with Lord Kitchener at a recruitment event in 1914 was a cavalryman who would fight at the Somme – and much else, serving until 1921. During our conversation, in between singing wartime songs, he told me, with tears in his eyes, about the horrors of what he’d seen, about going out into no man’s land and seeing his mates killed. He left me in no doubt that war was a dreadful, profound waste of life. 

Smiler was one of the last Great War veterans to die. He was followed by Harry Patch who died in 2009 at 111. ‘When the war ended, I don’t know if I was more relieved that we’d won or that I didn’t have to go back,’ Patch recalled in 2004. ‘Passchendaele was a disastrous battle—thousands and thousands of young lives were lost. It makes me angry. Earlier this year, I went back to Ypres to shake the hand of Charles Kuentz, Germany’s only surviving veteran from the war. It was emotional. He is 107. We’ve had 87 years to think what war is. To me, it’s a licence to go out and murder. Why should the British government call me up and take me out to a battlefield to shoot a man I never knew, whose language I couldn’t speak? All those lives lost for a war finished over a table. Now what is the sense in that?’ 

But it happened and some 900,000 British and British Empire were killed in the process, out of around 20 million worldwide.

So before the slaughter and loss of the Great War recedes from our memories and the folklore of our shared culture, joining the Crimean, Napoleonic or the Seven Years war in the archive – I wanted to bring that world back. Because it’s only a few handshakes in to our past, a great-grandfather or a maiden aunt away. And that is but a blink in the eye in time.

Cut and Run by Alec Marsh (Sharpe Books) Out Now

March 1916, The Great War rages across Europe. In the British Army garrison town of Bethune in northern France, a woman’s body is found in a park. Her throat has been cut. Marie-Louise Toulon is a prostitute at the Blue Lamp, the brothel catering exclusively to officers of the British Army stationed in the area. Wounded ex-soldier Frank Champion is brought in to investigate the crime - to find the killer believed to be among the officer corps. But almost before his investigation gets underway another woman from the Blue Lamp is killed, her throat also cut. A third prostitute, meanwhile, has gone missing. Then two more bodies are uncovered, including that of a British Army captain who appears to have taken his own life with his service revolver. But all is not what it seems… Champion must face a race against time to save the life of another woman - at the risk of dying himself.

Cut and Run by Alec Marsh is published by Sharpe Books in paperback priced £8.99 and Kindle, priced £3.99. It also available in KindleUnlimited: 

More information about Alec Marsh and his books can be found on his website. You can also find him on X @AlecMarsh and on Instagram @marsh_alec. You can also find him on Facebook.

CrimeFest to End After 16 Years

 

CrimeFest, one of the UK’s leading crime fiction events hosted in Bristol each year, has announced 2025 will be its final convention.

In a statement announcing the closure, Adrian Muller, co-founder, co-host and director of CrimeFest, said: “It is with sadness – but great pride – that we announce that our sixteenth CrimeFest, which takes place from 15-18 May 2025, will be the final one.”

Inspired by a visit to Bristol in 2006 of the American Left Coast Crime convention, the first CrimeFest was held in June 2008. CrimeFest is a convention run by fans of the genre, initially organised by Myles Allfrey, Liz Hatherell, Adrian Muller, and Donna Moore, and more recently hosted by the latter two.

Whereas most crime fiction events are invite-only, with a fixed programme of authors, CrimeFest offers a more democratic model. As a convention, any commercially published author can sign up to appear on a panel.

Adrian Muller said: “CrimeFest provides many authors with a platform they would not have been offered elsewhere in the UK. And, subsequently, readers discover and meet writers they otherwise may never have heard of. During CrimeFest, all delegates – be they authors or readers – come together as equals to celebrate the genre they love.”

Taking place across four days, each year CrimeFest showcases around 150 authors across more than 50 panels; over the years, 1,100 authors will have appeared at the event.

CrimeFest also invites Featured and Highlighted guests, securing major authors including Cathy Ace, Lee Child, Ann Cleeves, Martina Cole, Michael Connelly, Jeffrey Deaver, Sue Grafton, Anthony Horowitz, P.D. James, Lynda La Plante, and Ian Rankin.

Lee Child attended the very first convention, and was a Featured Guest at the fifth and tenth anniversaries of CrimeFest.

Lee Child said: "Sadly all good things come to an end - and Adrian Muller's Bristol CrimeFest was one of the very best things ever. It was a warm, friendly, relaxed and inclusive festival, hugely enjoyable for authors and readers alike. Myles, Liz, Donna and Adrian, their team of volunteers - and Dame Mary from Specsavers - have my sincere thanks for many delightful weekends over the years."

The event is sponsored by Specsavers. 

Co-founder of Specsavers, Dame Mary Perkins, who will be attending again next year, praised the event: “I am an avid reader and fan of the genre, and I always look forward to CrimeFest. It is so friendly, and it feels like all who go are welcomed as part of a big family, connected by a love of books, and reading. We are proud sponsors and I will miss CrimeFest and the camaraderie very much.”

Adrian added: “Thanks to the support of Specsavers, our highly valued sponsor, we introduced reduced cost Community Passes for UK school and public librarians, students and for people on benefits. In 2021 we also created an annual bursary for crime fiction authors of colour. We’ve run community projects at local schools in the community; donated books to many schools and libraries across Bristol and the UK; our anthology Ten Year Stretch and our raffles each year have raised thousands of pounds for the Royal National Institute of Blind People, and the seven awards we present each year celebrate crime fiction, non-fiction, TV and crime fiction for children and young adults – the latter two being the first in the UK. We are immensely proud of these initiatives.”

Author and co-host of CrimeFest, Donna Moore, said: “CrimeFest is a labour of love for us and our volunteers. We are immensely grateful to the authors, readers, publishers, booksellers, sponsors, volunteers, and a whole host of other people who have supported us over the years.”

The organisers promise to say goodbye “in style”, with the attendance of some big-name authors to celebrate its 16 years.

The final CrimeFest takes place 15-18 May at the Mercure Bristol Grand Hotel

 

Photo shows organisers Adrian Muller and Donna Moore with Specsaver's co-founder (and headline sponsor), Dame Mary Perkins, photo credit Gary Stratmann.

 

The Island of Lies an apology

 

I have to make an apology.

It was only meant to be a small, private joke – a bit of fun – because there's precious little of that in most crime fiction pages.

I'd just spent four years on the Faroes trilogy, writing a story which didn't shy away from the bleaker side of multiple murders. So, having brought The Fire Pit to a rather graphic and dark conclusion, I was ready for a change of mood. 

The trouble is, I've always been rather pedantic about accuracy in police procedure. My personal (and slightly neurotic) worry is that someone will read one of my books and then point out that I've made a basic technical mistake. As a result, I tend to be rather obsessive about research and getting things right. If a plot calls for someone to discover a corpse, then – for reality's sake – I usually feel obliged not to shy away from the unavoidable consequences of that situation, whether I like it or not.

But after the Faroes books I was disinclined to leap straight back into writing more grim reality, so I started to wonder whether I could dispense with that for a while. In fact, what if there was a way to write a crime novel where I didn't feel constrained by accurate procedure and realism? What if, instead, I made the rules and perhaps set the story in a fictional time and location, so no one could tell me I'd got it wrong? 

I may have had a touch of cabin-fever at the time, I suppose, but it seemed like the perfect solution to lighten the mood. 

I'd like to say "and so, before long, Citizen Detective was born", but that wouldn't be true.

I could have guessed that creating an entire society from scratch – as well as the plot of a decent murder mystery – can't be done quickly. However, I also discovered that it's really quite liberating to dispense with gritty realism and simply let your imagination off the lead for a run.

So, the world I eventually came up with was that of Citizen Detective (Grade III) Arne Blöm. He is a very small cog in the machinery which regulates an oppressive authoritarian society, perhaps not dissimilar to East Germany in the fifties or Sweden under the Communists.

Most of Blöm's working day consists of filling out forms (some realism there), padding his timesheet, and trying to avoid saying anything contentious or unpatriotic which might be overheard by the State bugs in the light fitting. But then, of course, there are deaths, which seem unrelated until Blöm is summoned to the sinister Ministry of Governance and Homeland and discovers that things are not as they seem with the State apparatus.

Generally speaking, I was quietly pleased with the book and the small alternative world I'd created. It had been fun to write, which was all I intended, but when I showed it to "a friend in the industry" they were a little sceptical.

Yes, they agreed, it was a sort of crime novel, but was it hard-boiled or comfy crime; a mystery, a police procedural and/or Scandi-noir? How would I categorise it?

Well, I supposed it was a bit of all those, I said, but that didn't help. It turns out publishers don't have a category for something which is a "bit of all of those" (with a little sardonic humour thrown in), and if it can't be categorised it's a no-go. Apparently the marketing algorithms would have a melt-down.

So.

If you're a professional writer you have to accept that the requirements of publishers and TV companies are usually pretty inflexible. If they expected you to produce a gritty noir thriller and you give them something set in a country which doesn't exist and featuring a middle-aged detective who spends much of his time worrying about the repair of his brogues, well, they're not going to be terribly enthusiastic. 

All of which I knew, so I wasn't particularly surprised or disappointed. Citizen Detective was never supposed to be more than a break from realism for my own entertainment and it had served that purpose. 

Of course, being a writer it's always nice to be read, so I told my "friend in the industry" that I'd simply set the book free on Kindle. In these wonderful egalitarian times of independent publishing that's not hard to do, so why not?

"Bad idea," says my friend. "People will think it's one of your proper crime novels and then find out it isn't. They won't be happy."

Because my friend is a wise and serious person I thought about this. But I liked Blöm; I liked the story, even if it wasn't a "proper crime novel", and it seemed a shame just to put it away in a drawer. But then it occurred to me that this might actually be an opportunity to add another layer of intrigue and misdirection to the whole world of Blöm. 

What if I never claimed to have actually written the book? Then no one would expect my usual, realistic style. Instead I could say I'd simply "translated" it from a work by a dissident, underground author named O. Huldumann, writing at the time of the events he describes. I could even add a short afterword, describing how I first "discovered" a copy of the original book (a cult classic, of course) and how little is known about who Huldumann was. 

And so that's what I did. I thought it was fun to pile construct on construct, and so did some other people who not only figured out what had gone on, but actively joined in with the Great Huldumann Mystery. They know who they are. 

Trouble is, I might have been a little more convincing than I really intended to be, because I now discover there are some people who don't realise it was all make-believe. 

So, I'm coming clean here. I'd like to apologise if anyone misunderstood, and I now wish to categorically state that Citizen Detective and The Island Of Lies are not proper crime novels (even if there's a detective and multiple deaths to be solved). And, yes, O. Huldumann is as fictional as Arne Blöm and the world he inhabits. 

Sorry.

But I still had fun and I'm not sorry for that.

The Islands of Lies by O Huldumann (Translated by Chris Ould) Corylus Books

In the midst of Capital City's November crime wave Citizen Detective (Grade III) Arne Blöm finds himself appointed as a Konstable of the State Court and tasked with the arrest and detention of a man he's pretty sure is actually dead. However, being the Detective he is, Blöm quickly discovers that his assignment to the island of Huish has more sinister undertones. Faced with a series of strange and similar deaths, Blöm dispenses with traditional methods for solving the crimes and begins to suspect that certain sections of the island's population are not what they seem, nor as harmless as they might appear…

My Favourite reads of 2024

My favourite reads this year have spanned spy thrillers, a debut novel an end of a trilogy, translated novels and a contemporary topical thriller to name few. They are as follows in alphabetical order.

The Sparrow & The Peacock by I S Berry (No Exit Press/Bedford Square Publishers)

Shane Collins, a world-weary CIA spy, is ready to come in from the cold. Stationed in Bahrain for his final tour, he's anxious to dispense with his mission — uncovering Iranian support for the insurgency. But then he meets Almaisa, an enigmatic artist, and his eyes are opened to a side of Bahrain most expats never experience, to questions he never thought to ask. When his trusted informant becomes embroiled in a murder, Collins finds himself drawn deep into the conflict, his romance and loyalties upended. In an instant, he's caught in the crosswinds of a revolution. He sets out to learn the truth behind the Arab Spring, win Almaisa's love, and uncover the murky border where Bahrain's secrets end and America's begin.

The Waiting by Michael Connelly (Orion Publishing)

LAPD Detective Renée Ballard tracks a terrifying serial rapist whose trail has gone cold with the help of the newest volunteer to the Open-Unsolved Unit: Patrol Officer Maddie Bosch, Harry's daughter. Renée Ballard and the LAPD's Open-Unsolved Unit get a hot shot DNA connection between a recently arrested man and a serial rapist and murderer who went quiet twenty years ago. The arrested man is only twenty-three, so the genetic link must be familial. It is his father who was the Pillowcase Rapist, responsible for a five-year reign of terror in the city of angels. But when Ballard and her team move in on their suspect, they encounter a baffling web of secrets and legal hurdles. Meanwhile, Ballard's badge, gun, and ID are stolen-a theft she can't report without giving her enemies in the department the ammunition they need to end her career as a detective. She works the burglary alone, but her solo mission leads her into greater danger than she anticipates. She has no choice but to go outside the department for help, and that leads her to the door of Harry Bosch. Finally, Ballard takes on a new volunteer to the cold case unit. Bosch's daughter Maddie wants to supplement her work as a patrol officer on the night beat by investigating cases with Ballard. But Renée soon learns that Maddie has an ulterior motive for getting access to the city's library of lost souls.

Karla’s Choice by Nick Harkaway (Penguin Books)

It is spring in 1963 and George Smiley has left the Circus. With the wreckage of the West's spy war with the Soviets strewn across Europe, he has eyes only on a more peaceful life. And indeed, with his marriage more secure than ever, there is a rumour in Whitehall – unconfirmed and a little scandalous – that George Smiley might almost be happy. But Control has other plans. A Russian agent has defected in the most unusual of circumstances, and the man he was sent to kill in London is nowhere to be found. Smiley reluctantly agrees to one last simple task: interview Susanna, a Hungarian émigré and employee of the missing man, and sniff out a lead. But in his absence the shadows of Moscow have lengthened. Smiley will soon find himself entangled in a perilous mystery that will define the battles to come, and strike at the heart of his greatest enemy… Karla's Choice is set in the missing decade between two iconic instalments in the George Smiley saga, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and  is an extraordinary, thrilling return to the world of spy fiction's greatest writer, John le Carré.

Hotel Lucky Seven by Kotaro Isaka (Vintage Publishing)

A luxury hotel full of assassins - what could go wrong? Nanao ‘the unluckiest assassin in the world’ has been hired to deliver a birthday present to a guest at a luxury Tokyo Hotel. It seems like a simple assignment but by the time he leaves the guest's room one man is dead and more will soon follow. As events spiral out of control as it becomes clear several different killers, with varying missions, are all taking a stay in the hotel at the same time. And they're all particularly interested in a young woman with a photographic memory, hiding out on one of the twenty floors. Will Nanao find the truth about what’s going on? And will he check out alive?

Imposter Syndrome by Joseph Knox (Transworld Publishers)

'When you’re living a lie, you find it’s best to avoid close attachments…’ Lynch, a burned out con-artist, arrives, broke, in London, trying not to dwell on the mistakes that got him there. When he bumps into Bobbie, a rehab-bound heiress - and when she briefly mistakes him for her missing brother - Lynch senses the opportunity, as well as the danger… Bobbie’s brother, Heydon, was a troubled young man. Five years ago, he walked out of the family home and never went back. His car was found parked on a bridge overlooking the Thames, in the early hours of the same morning. Unsettled by Bobbie’s story, and suffering from a rare attack of conscience, Lynch tries to back off. But when Bobbie leaves for rehab the following day, he finds himself drawn to her luxurious family home, and into a meeting with her mother, the formidable Miranda. Seeing the same resemblance that her daughter did, Miranda proposes she hire Lynch to assume her son’s identity, in a last-ditch effort to try and flush out his killer. As Lynch begins to impersonate him, dark forces are lured out of the shadows, and he realises too late that Heydon wasn’t paranoid at all. Someone was watching his every move, and they’ll kill to keep it a secret. For the first time, Lynch is in a life or death situation he can’t lie his way out of.

Guide Me Home by Attica Locke (Profile Books)

Texas Ranger Darren Mathews has handed in his badge. A choice made three years before, which served justice if not the law, means that he may now stand trial. And his mother - an intermittent and destructive force in his life - is the cause of his fall from grace.And yet it is his mother's reappearance that may also be his salvation. A black girl at an all-white sorority at a nearby college is missing, her belongings tossed in a dumpster. Her sorority sisters, the college police, even the girl's own family, deny that she has disappeared, but Sera Fuller is nowhere to be found. A bloodstained shirt discovered in a woodland clearing may be the last trace of her. And Darren's mother wants her son to work the case. Disillusioned by an America forever changed by the presidency of Donald Trump, Darren reluctantly agrees. Yet as he sets out to find a girl whose family don't want her found, it is his own family's history that may be brought painfully into the light. And a reckoning with his past may finally show Darren the future he can build.And yet it is his mother's reappearance that may also be his salvation. A black girl at an all-white sorority at a nearby college is missing, her belongings tossed in a dumpster. Her sorority sisters, the college police, even the girl's own family, deny that she has disappeared, but Sera Fuller is nowhere to be found. A bloodstained shirt discovered in a woodland clearing may be the last trace of her. And Darren's mother wants her son to work the case.Disillusioned by an America forever changed by the presidency of Donald Trump, Darren reluctantly agrees. Yet as he sets out to find a girl whose family don't want her found, it is his own family's history that may be brought painfully into the light. And a reckoning with his past may finally show Darren the future he can build.

Moscow X by David McCloskey (Swift Press)

A daring CIA operation threatens chaos in the Kremlin. Its execution is foiled by a Russian woman with secret loyalties CIA operatives Sia and Max enter Russia to recruit Vladimir Putin's moneyman. Sia works for a London firm that conceals the wealth of the super-rich. Max's family business in Mexico - a CIA front since the 1960s - is a farm that breeds high-end racehorses. They pose as a couple, and their targets are Vadim, Putin's private banker, and his wife Anna, who is both a banker and an intelligence officer. As they descend further into a Russian world dripping with luxury and rife with gangland violence, Sia and Max's hope may be Anna, who is playing a game of her own. Careening between the horse ranch and the dark opulence of Saint Petersburg, Moscow X is both a gripping thriller of modern espionage and a daring work of political commentary on the conflict between Washington and Moscow.

Hunted by Abir Mukherjee (Vintage Publishing)

You can't save your kids. But can you stop them? It's a week before the presidential elections when a bomb goes off in an LA shopping mall. In London, armed police storm Heathrow Airport and arrest Sajid Khan. His daughter, Aliyah entered the USA with the suicide bomber, and now she's missing, potentially plotting another attack on American soil. But then a woman called Carrie turns up at Sajid's door after travelling halfway across the world. She claims Aliyah is with her son and she has a clue to their whereabouts. Carrie knows something isn't adding up - and that she and Sajid are the only ones who can find their children and discover the truth. On the run from the authorities, the two parents are thrown together in a race against time to save their kids and stop a catastrophe that will derail the country's future forever.

White City by Dominic Nolan (Headline Publishing)

It's 1952, and London is victorious but broken, a city of war ruins and rationing, run by gangsters and black-market spivs.  An elaborate midnight heist, the biggest robbery in British history, sends newspapers into a frenzy. Politicians are furious, the police red-faced. They have suspicions but no leads. Hunches but no proof. For two families, it is more than just a sensational headline, as their fathers fail to return home on the day of the robbery. Young Addie Rowe, daughter of a missing Jamaican postman and drunk ex-club hostess mother, struggles to care for her little sister in a dilapidated Brixton rooming house.  Claire Martin, increasingly resentful of roads not taken, strives to make the rent and keep her teenage son Ray from falling under unsavoury influences in Notting Dale. She finds herself caught between the interests of dangerous men who may know the truth behind her husband's disappearance: Dave Lander, whose reserved nature she finds difficult to reconcile with his reputation as a violent gang enforcer, and Teddy 'Mother' Nunn, a sociopathic, evangelising outlaw and top lieutenant in Billy Hill's underworld. Drawn together through the years in the city's invisible web of crime and poverty, the fates of the broken families and violent men collide in 1958, as the West Indian community of Notting Hill's slums come under attack from thugs and Teddy Boys. For Addie, Claire, Dave and Mother, old scores will be settled and new dreams chased in the crucible of London's violent summer.

Holmes and Moriarty by Gareth Rubin (Simon and Schuster Ltd) 

Two adversaries. One deadly alliance. Together, can they unlock the truth? Sherlock Holmes and his faithful friend, Dr John Watson, have been hired by actor George Reynolds to help him solve a puzzle. George wants them to find out why the audience who comes to see him perform every night are the same people, only wearing disguises. Is something sinister going on and, if so, what? Meanwhile, Holmes’ archenemy, Professor James Moriarty is having problems of his own. Implicated in the murder of a gang leader, Moriarty and his second, Moran, must go on the run from the police in order to find out who is behind the set-up. But their investigation puts them in the way of Holmes and Watson and it’s not long before all four realise that they are being targeted by the same person. With lives on the line, not just their own, they must form an uneasy alliance in order to unmask the true villain. With clues leading them to a hotel in Switzerland and a conspiracy far greater than any of them expected, who can be trusted – and will anyone of them survive?

The Hitchcock Hotel by Stephanie Wrobel (Penguin Books)

Alfred Smettle adores Hitchcock. And who better to become founder, owner and manager of The Hitchcock Hotel, a remote, sprawling Victorian house sitting atop a hill in the beautiful White Mountains, New England. There, guests can find movie props and memorabilia in every room, round-the-clock film screenings, and an aviary with fifty crows. For the hotel's first anniversary, Alfred invites the five college friends he studied film with. He hasn't spoken to any of them in sixteen years.  Not after what happened. But who better to appreciate Alfred's creation? His guests arrive, and everything seems to go according to plan. Until one glimpses someone standing outside her shower curtain. Another is violently ill every time she eats the hotel food. Then their mobile phones go missing. You should always make the audience suffer as much as possible, right? The guests are stuck in the middle of nowhere, and things are about to get even worse. After all, no Hitchcock set is complete without a dead body.

Butter by Asako Yuzuki (HarperCollins Publishers)

The cult Japanese bestseller about a female gourmet cook and serial killer and the journalist intent on cracking her case, inspired by a true story. There are two things that I can simply not tolerate: feminists and margarine Gourmet cook Manako Kajii sits in Tokyo Detention Centre convicted of the serial murders of lonely businessmen, who she is said to have seduced with her delicious home cooking. The case has captured the nation's imagination but Kajii refuses to speak with the press, entertaining no visitors. That is, until journalist Rika Machida writes a letter asking for her recipe for beef stew and Kajii can't resist writing back. Rika, the only woman in her news office, works late each night, rarely cooking more than ramen. As the visits unfold between her and the steely Kajii, they are closer to a masterclass in food than journalistic research. Rika hopes this gastronomic exchange will help her soften Kajii but it seems that she might be the one changing. With each meal she eats, something is awakening in her body, might she and Kaji have more in common than she once thought? Inspired by the real case of the convicted con woman and serial killer, "The Konkatsu Killer", Asako Yuzuki's Butter is a vivid, unsettling exploration of misogyny, obsession, romance and the transgressive pleasures of food in Japan.

Honourable mentions go to  -

The Instruments of Darkness by John Connolly (Hodder and Stoughton)

In Maine, Colleen Clark stands accused of the worst crime a mother can commit: the abduction and possible murder of her child. Everyone - ambitious politicians in an election season, hardened police, ordinary folk - has an opinion on the case, and most believe she is guilty. But most is not all. Defending Colleen is the lawyer Moxie Castin, and working alongside him is the private investigator Charlie Parker, who senses the tale has another twist, one involving a husband too eager to accept his wife's guilt, a disgraced psychic seeking redemption, and an old twisted house deep in the Maine woods, a house that should never have been built. A house, and what dwells beneath.

A Beginners Guide to Breaking and Entering by Andrew Hunter Murray (Cornerstone)

Property might be theft. But the housing market is murder. My name is Al. I live in wealthy people's second homes while their real owners are away. I don't rob them, I don't damage anything... I'm more an unofficial house-sitter than an actual criminal. Life is good. Or it was - until last night, when my friends and I broke into the wrong place, on the wrong day, and someone wound up dead. And now... now we’re in a great deal of trouble. Featuring crooked houses, dodgy coppers and a lot of lockpicking, A Beginner's Guide to Breaking and Entering is a gripping thriller about what it's like to be young, skilled, unemployed - and on the run.

Holmes, Margaret and Poe by James Patterson and Brian Sitts (Century)

Brendan Holmes, Margaret Marple and Auguste Poe run the most in-demand private investigation agency in New York City. The three detectives make a formidable team, solving a series of seemingly impossible crimes which expose the dark underbelly of the city - from a priceless art theft, high-stakes kidnapping and a decades-old unsolved murder, to a gruesome subterranean prison and corruption and bribery at the highest levels of power. But it's not long before their headline-grabbing breakthroughs, unconventional methods - and untraceable pasts - attract the attention of the NYPD and the FBI. After all, it's no surprise that there's a mystery or two to unravel in the city that never sleeps . . . not least, who really are Holmes, Margaret and Poe?

Midnight and Blue by Ian Rankin (Orion)

John Rebus spent his life as a detective putting Edinburgh's most deadly criminals behind bars. Now, he's joined them. As new allies and old enemies circle, and the days and nights bleed into each other, even the legendary detective struggles to keep his head. That is, until a murder at midnight in a locked cell presents a new mystery. They say old habits die hard... However, this is a case where the prisoners and the guards are all suspects, and everyone has something to hide.  With no badge, no authority and no safety net, Rebus walks a tightrope - with his life on the line. But how do you find a killer in a place full of them?

Winner of the Joffe Books Prize 2024 announced

 

Joffe Books is delighted to announce the winner of the Joffe Books Prize 2024: Rupa Mahadevan, for her addictive and atmospheric psychological thriller, The Goddess of Death. She receives a two-book publishing deal with Joffe Books, a £1,000 cash prize and a £25,000 audiobook deal from Audible for the first book. This is Britain’s biggest crime prize.

The Joffe Books Prize for Crime Writers of Colour was established in 2021 to actively seek out writers from communities that are underrepresented in crime fiction and support them in building sustainable careers, while simultaneously discovering brilliant new talent to join our bestselling list.

This year, submissions included gritty police procedurals, classic cosy crime whodunnits and ambitious sci-fi thrillers. 

The judges, including A.A. Chaudhuri, bestselling author of She’s Mine, literary agent Gyamfia Osei from Andrew Nurnberg Associates, Emma Grundy Haigh, former editorial director at Joffe Books and Jasmine Callaghan, commissioning editor, considered each manuscript in terms of both the strength of the writing and marketability. The judges unanimously awarded the Joffe Books Prize 2024 to Rupa Mahadevan.

From the judges: “This is a tense, fast-paced psychological thriller, with overlapping layers of intrigue and flawed narrators — all of whom have secrets. The eerie setting is fantastic and really adds to the undercurrent of unease and build-up of suspense. A truly gripping thriller with a fresh edge that sets it apart.”

Rupa Mahadevan grew up on the southern coast of India and has called Scotland home for over 15 years. She currently lives in Edinburgh with her husband and two children. When she is not grappling with Excel in her day job, she loves to read and dream up stories of her own. Her passion for becoming a published author is one step closer thanks to Joffe's Books and their commitment to promoting underrepresented authors.

Rupa says: “Winning the Joffe Books Prize is an absolute dream come true. As a writer, especially a writer of colour, it’s so easy to let insecurities take over. This win has given the writer in me the biggest validation, and I couldn’t be more grateful. I’m deeply honoured and thrilled to be working with Joffe Books, whose dedication to promoting underrepresented voices has made this incredible milestone possible.”

Jasmine Callaghan says: “It has been such an honour to have had the opportunity to read the fantastic submissions from so many amazingly talented writers. From the get-go, Rupa’s gripping psychological thriller stood out for its strong hook, tension-filled narrative and unreliable, well-nuanced cast of characters, and the judges’ decision was unanimous. Congratulations, Rupa!”

The synopsis reads: “A reunion of friends during the Hindu Dolls festival on the stormy island of Oban, Scotland, takes a deadly turn when a stabbed doll is found under a goddess statue. Leela (An outsider who has recently married a member of the group) is sure it foretells death.”

Lou Gilmond: On researching for PALISADE

 It started with an honourable member: Harry Colbey, although he wasn’t always called that. The member of parliament for Gloucester East had several names before that one stuck, and even then, I had to rob from the grave.

That’s the problem with research. It throws up complications. Neither the man nor the parliamentary constituency exist, but I write political thrillers set in Westminster and like to make sure there are no unfortunate coincidences. No accidental similarities of name that might set tongues wagging and confuse fiction with fact. Particularly since corruption and the choice between right and wrong are major themes of my Kanha and Colbey series of political thrillers.

As I was writing Dirty Geese, the first in the series, I was at the same time digging into MPs connected to scandal. Firstly, to ping out ideas for plot twists for that book and Palisade, the next in the series. But also, to be sure I didn’t use names for my two MP protagonists that were similar to those of anyone who really existed, particularly if linked to disgraceful goings-on or – as it tends to be called when connected to our politicians – sleaze.

Before I turned to writing, I worked for many years in regulatory affairs, which often involved lobbying MPs, ministers, and civil servants. During that time, I visited both the Houses of Parliament and the government departments of Whitehall on a regular basis, and even No 10 on occasion. It didn’t matter how many times I went, I still felt it an honour to be there; to stand, for example, in central lobby, an octagonal room at the centre of the Houses of Parliament and the beating heart of Westminster. Anyone can meet or lobby an MP in this room. It sits at a crossroads, one corridor leading off it to the Lords and another, on the other side, to the Commons. It is a place where members of both sides of the commons and members of both houses meet and mingle, and where the lobby press can interview ministers and backbenchers alike.

From my time visiting Westminster, I had a good grounding on the culture there and of the differing characters of MPs, of ministers and civil servants, but I’m one of those writers who like to be thorough when it comes to research, so I dug on in.

Affairs, theft, bribery, blackmail and sexual harassment: that was just for starters. Call girls, rent boys, aggressive pimps who call late at night, inappropriate content on computers, watching pornography at work, misrepresentation of educations and prior careers, drugs in the workplace, drugs outside of the workplace, vendettas, violence, and fraud.

It seemed that if there was a list of things that MPs shouldn’t be doing, every single item on it had been covered off in some form or other, at some time other.

It didn’t take too long to discover that the name I had chosen for one of my protagonists bore a resemblance to that of a real-life MP connected to one of the more salacious events in my research notes. I won’t say which one. Just a single letter differentiated their surnames. Annoying. The name of my male protagonist had to change. I picked another, and as my research continued, found the exact same thing happened again. Frustrating.

The name of a protagonist is an important cornerstone of any book and as I floundered about, my male protagonist was nameless while that first book, Dirty Geese was written. Then, at the last minute, when the manuscript was due in to my editor, I saw a name on a grave in a little churchyard on the south coast. ’Colbey.’ It was perfect. An honourable sounding name for an honourable MP, and as far as I knew – or to put it more accurately as far as google was aware – there had not been a British MP with that name since Thomas Colby died in 1588, and his version of the name had a different spelling. The given name of Harry came easily after that.

Harry Colbey, a truly honourable member of parliament. A rare and fine thing.

By the time I came to write Palisade, Harry Colbey felt as real as any of the MPs I met with in my time lobbying or in my subsequent research. He was an honest man, a family man, his kids grown up and just recently flown the nest. He had disappointed his wife with his choice of career, leaving his relatively well-paid position at a bank to stand for parliament.

His plan had been to serve his constituents well and represent their interests in the House of Commons to the best of his ability. He had had a brief moment of political stardom, promoted to a junior minister early on, but he wouldn’t do what they told him. He wouldn’t compromise his morals to toe the party line, so he had been kicked back to the backbenches.

There he disappeared from view, working quietly and tirelessly on behalf of his constituents, all ambition for advancement forgotten, much to his wife’s embarrassment and shame. But when Colbey uncovers a corrupt plot between senior ministers and a big tech organisation, he feels he must abandon his hopes of a quiet slide towards retirement and instead stand up and fight for what he believes in, no matter the cost.

Both Palisade, and its predecessor, Dirty Geese, are thrillers that look at corrupt links between politicians and big tech organisations, particularly those who now have advanced AI capabilities at their fingertips. They can be read standalone, or picked up in any order, as each book looks at different aspect of the same conspiracy – although chronologically, Dirty Geese comes first.

I tried hard to make sure that the politics within them is reflective of the way our parliamentary processes really work, or to be more accurate, on occasion don’t work. But both Dirty Geese and Palisade are crime thrillers at heart and they each start with a murder. They both involve jeopardy, deceit, international conspiracy, corruption and a whole catalogue of twists and turns. And they each turn on the hope that there is at least one MP out there who will do what needs to be done, who will stand up and say what needs to be said, and that is the honourable Harry Colbey.

 Palisade by Lou Gilmond (Fairlight Books) Out Now

When opposition Chief Whip Esme Kanha is handed a secret dossier containing evidence of government corruption, she suspects its original owner, a top journalist, was murdered for gathering it. Despite the danger, she feels she must investigate. Meanwhile, lowly backbencher Harry Colbey is working his own leads. A known campaigner against big tech, he is often sent data from anonymous sources and this time round he has something truly alarming. But both Colbey and Kanha must tread carefully in a world dominated by AI, where 'what can see watches, what can hear listens, and what can be followed is tracked'. As Kanha and Colbey again join forces, they are locked into a deadly race against political corruption, no matter what the cost. But when an old enemy returns, it may already be too la

Palisade by Lou Gilmond is published on 21st November and is available to buy in bookshops now.

More information about Lou Gilmond can be found on her website. You can also find her on Instagram @lougilmond