SHORT LIST ANNOUNCED
The winners will be announced on November 4 at 6.30pm during a splendid event held at Little, Brown Book Group, 100 Victoria Embankment, London. The winner of the £3000 award prize will take their place amongst an illustrious list of fellow historical authors including Philip Kerr, Laura Wilson, Ariana Franklin, Andrew Taylor and Lindsey Davis.
Started in 1999 in memory of Ellis Peters, author of the medieval Brother Cadfael series, this award has been presented to a novel with a crime theme and a historical background of any period up to the 1960s." (As of 2010, it includes any period up to the 1970s.) Today it is sponsored by the Estate of Ellis Peters, Headline Book Publishing Company and Little, Brown Book Group.
The winners will be announced on November 4 at 6.30pm during a splendid event held at Little, Brown Book Group, 100 Victoria Embankment, London. The winner of the £3000 award prize will take their place amongst an illustrious list of fellow historical authors including Philip Kerr, Laura Wilson, Ariana Franklin, Andrew Taylor and Lindsey Davis.
Started in 1999 in memory of Ellis Peters, author of the medieval Brother Cadfael series, this award has been presented to a novel with a crime theme and a historical background of any period up to the 1960s." (As of 2010, it includes any period up to the 1970s.) Today it is sponsored by the Estate of Ellis Peters, Headline Book Publishing Company and Little, Brown Book Group.
The nominees are (and alphabetically by book title):
C J Sansom HEARTSTONE
Massive, colourful and ambitious, this is a double mystery for Sansom’s wily lawyer Mathew Shardlake. The background of Tudor England - with Henry’s ill-advised foreign wars having modern resonances - is a stunning backdrop.
Publisher: Mantle
S. J. Parris HERESY
An astonishingly accomplished first outing for Giordano Bruno, monk, poet and sleuth, investigating skulduggery in Elizabethan Oxford. Parris has resurrected an undeservedly forgotten figure and her depiction of a society riven by religious intolerance is timely.
Publisher: HARPERCOLLINS
Rory Clements REVENGER
This second novel to feature the Elizabethan ‘intelligencer’ John Shakespeare captures all the danger but also all the excitement of living in capricious times when a wrong word can get you sent to the Tower. An exuberant novel that revels in the sights and smells of Tudor England
Publisher: John Murray
Andrew Taylor THE ANATOMY OF GHOSTS
This is Andrew Taylor at his considerable best; a wonderfully atmospheric - and labyrinthine -- mystery set in a period Cambridge evoked with all the skill that Taylor is famous for.
Publisher: Michael Joseph, Penguin Books
Andrew Williams TO KILL A TSAR
Compromised characters with difficult moral choices are at the centre of To Kill a Tsar. Set in a strongly realised nineteenth-century St Petersburg and dealing with the first significant terrorist cell of the modern era, this is bravura storytelling.
Publisher John Murray
Aly Monroe WASHINGTON SHADOW
This novel shows that your allies can do you as much harm as your enemies as MI6 agent Peter Cotton gets caught up in diplomatic intrigue in Washington. Monroe conjures up a world of murder and double dealing in beautifully lyrical prose.
Publisher John Murray
JUDGING PANEL
Eileen Roberts (Chair) - Originator and organiser of St Hilda’s annual crime symposium in Oxford, mystery and crime enthusiast
Geoffrey Bailey - Bookseller specialising in crime
Barry Forshaw - Edits Crime Time and is a talking head for the ITV Crime Thriller author profiles and BBC TV documentaries. A prolific writer, he has been Vice Chair of the Crime Writers’ Association.
Sir Bernard Ingham - Press Secretary to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and crime fiction fan
Jake Kerridge - the crime fiction critic of the Daily Telegraph
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