British Writer Mark Billingham has won this year's Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year with Death Message.
The Guardian article about it is here and the Harrogate Festival news here.
I had the great pleasure of sharing the stage with Mark Billingham and Paul Cleave at the Christchurch Writer's Festival last year. I enjoyed reading Death Message, and this is what I said about it at the time.
One of the special things about this award is it is voted for by readers, not reviewers or an award panel. Your happy crime fiction addict gets to have their say, and with the great line up of books and authors there, it would have been a difficult call. So congratulations Mark - your public adores you.
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3 comments:
That's great to hear. I voted for him in that but hadn't heard how he did. I recall there was some fairly stiff competition that he was up against. Ian Rankin? Michael Connolly? Blast, I can't quite remember now.
Anyway good stuff ... he seemed like a good egg ... of course you writers turn on the charm and sophistication when in the public eye so who knows what you're all really like.
:)
It's all about the veneer...
It was a fantastic line-up of finalists this year - all really top notch crime authors, so a great win. Interestingly, I actually think his latest book, "Blood Line", which has just been released this month, is quite a bit better than "Death Message", which I thought was very good, but not him at his absolute peak. So it will be interesting to see how the 2010 round of the CWAs/Theakstons etc goes...
Of course, now that "Blood Line" had finally arrived and been read, my eyes turn towards my ever-increasing TBR pile, eagerly looking forward to the day that a copy of "Containment" sits amongst it (vaulting straight to the top of course).
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