But before I disclose the names of the authors who received the ornamental dagger and a £20,000 prize tied to it, let me jot down some ” behind the scenes” facts leading to the biggest award of the planet for new crime fiction writing.

Colin Cotterill, winner of the 2009 CWA Dagger in the Library, with CWA Chair Margaret Murphy. Photo: Fiona Davies

It all started in the year 1955 when The Crime Writer’s Association (CWA) founded The Crossed Red Herring Award to celebrate the best crime novel of the year.

In 1960 the award was renamed The CWA Gold Dagger, and it’s sister, The CWA Silver Dagger, for her part, was introduced in 1970.

The next change was in 2006 when The Duncan Lawrie Private Bank became sponsor of the award, therefore giving it their own name.

They sponsored as well the newly-formed Duncan Lawrie International Dagger which celebrates  the best crime novel translated into English.

A complete chronological listing of each awards and winners is available on the CWA website .

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So, without further ado, let’s drill down the recipients  of the CWA Dagger Awards:

Duncan Lawrie Dagger Award - Best Crime Novel Of The Year

Prize: £20,000 sponsored by Duncan Lawrie Private Bank.

2006 Ann Cleeves Raven Black – The Shetland Quartet Series (Macmillan).
“Ann Cleeves, the winner of the first Duncan Lawrie Dagger, offered “a huge thank you to Duncan Lawrie”, adding:

Ann Cleeves - 2006 Winner

“This prize will make a difference. It’ll save me from being so frantically busy that writing is done on slow Virgin trains and crammed into weekends”.

2007 Peter Temple – The Broken Shore (Quercus)

Peter Temple - 2007 Winner / Photo: Candy Bryce

“This is a well written crime novel with excellent characterisation mingled with a subtle exploration of contemporary Australian landscape and mores. This is a first class read with a sympathetic engrossing police protagonist.”

2008 Frances Fyfield – Blood From Stone – published by Sphere (Little, Brown)

Frances Fyfield

“A subtle and elegantly written exploration of contemporary themes.

Blood From Stone

The mystery behind the death of a troublesome female barrister is explored in ways that illuminate the dark corners of life in Britain today, while detailed attention to costume and dress as aspects of identity resonates with insights into the fabric of society.”

Many other CWA Dagger Awards are presented during the prize-giving ceremonies, and I can tell you right away that I will have a very exciting wishlist for my next visit to the library from the following winning titles:
The CWA International Dagger - Best Crime Novel Translated into English

Prize: £5000 going to the author and £1000 to the translator.

2006 Fred Vargas – The Three Evangelists (Harvill), translated by Siân Reynolds
2007 Fred Vargas – Wash this Blood Clean from my Hand (Harvill Secker), translated by Siân Reynolds
2008 Dominique Manotti – Lorraine Connection – EuroCrime (Arcadia Books), translated by Amanda Hopkinson and Ros Schwartz

2009 Fred Vargas - The first in the series of Adamsberg novels, The Chalk Circle Man, translated by Siân Reynolds  ( 3 times in the last 4 years! )

Fred Vargas - 2009 Winner

The CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger

Prize:  £2000 for the best adventure/thriller novel in the vein of James Bond.

2006 Nick Stone – Mr Clarinet (Penguin)
2007 Gillian Flynn – Sharp Objects (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
2008 Tom Rob Smith – Child 44 – Simon & Schuster
2009 Coming soon…

The CWA Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction

Prize:  £2000 -  awarded this and every even-numbered year.

2006 Linda Rhodes, Lee Shelden and Kathryn Abnett – The Dagenham Murder (The Borough of Barking and Dagenham)

2008 Kester Aspden – Nationality: Wog – The Hounding of David Oluwale – Jonathan Cape (Random House)

The CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger

Prize: £1000 – awarded in memory of CWA founder John Creasey, for first books by previously unpublished writers.

2006 Louise Penny – Still Life (Headline)
2007 Gillian Flynn – Sharp Objects (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
2008 Matt Rees- The Bethlehem Murders – Atlantic Books

The CWA Dagger in the Library

Prize: £1500 – awarded to “the author of crime fiction whose work is currently giving the greatest enjoyment to readers”

2006 Jim Kelly
2007 Stuart MacBride
2008 Craig Russell
2009 Colin Cotterill

The CWA Debut Dagger

Prize: £500 plus night’s stay for two in a top London Hotel after the prize ceremony dinner.

2006 Otis Twelve (pseudonym of US writer D V Wesselmann) with Imp: Being the Lost Notebooks of Rufus Wilmot Griswold In the Matter of the Death of Edgar Allan Poe.
2007 lan Bradley ( from British Columbia in Canada ) The Sweetness At the Bottom of the Pie.
2008 Amer Anwar( from West London ) Western Fringes.
2009 Catherine O’Keefe – The Pathologist

…..Boy oh boy….what a long title for Otis Twelve’s book! Are you aware of any prize awarded to the longest title given to a novel Mairiuna?

Left-to-right: Colin Cotterill (2009 CWA Dagger in the Library), Catherine O’Keefe (2009 CWA Debut Dagger) Margaret Murphy, Chair of CWA and Sean Chercover,(2009 CWA Short Story Dagger) Photo: Fiona Davies

Does the above not prove that the CWA Dagger Awards are the longest established literary awards in the UK and are internationally recognised as a mark of excellence and achievement ?

I sincerely do think so!

And you know what Mairiuna?

Upon signing off this post, I just discovered there is also The CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger !!! It celebrates sustained excellence in the genre of crime writing.

Sue Grafton was the winner in 2008 and “previous winners include John Harvey, Elmore Leonard, Ian Rankin, Lawrence Block, Sara Paretsky, Colin Dexter, Ed McBain, Reginald Hill, Ellis Peters, Leslie Charteris, Ruth Rendell, Dick Francis, John Le Carré and PD James”.

Cartier Diamond Dagger Award Photo: David Stuart Davies

Well…well …well…anymore out there of these prolific Dagger Awards? 

The “Daggers” name and Crossed Daggers logo ® are registered Trade Marks of the Crime Writers’ Association.

PS: Main source of information for this blog post  is The Crime Writer Association website and we thank them for their help.

Cheers.

Talk soon.

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Du Fond Des Tenebres - Ian Rankin

It is with great pleasure Mairiuna that I will undertake with you this challenge of reading the complete series of 17 novels from Ian Rankin’s Inspector Rebus series.

While I await reception of my Amazon order for the first novel in the detective series, Knots and Crosses
let me jot down some facts about the first Ian Rankin’s book we read together when travelling by car on our way from France to Scotland.

Each time the weather did not allow contemplation of the beautiful landscapes surrounding us on these winding roads, you would read aloud to Jean-Claude and myself, the French version of Set in Darkness,  titled Du Fond des Ténèbres , the 11th in the series. Nonetheless, by the end of the trip you had managed to read the full 496 pages. What a great suspense crafted in this plot!

Before Set In Darkness was published in 2000, it’s author had already won many literary awards:

1991   Chandler-Fulbright Award

1994   Crime Writers’ Association Macallan Short Story Dagger   (A Deep Hole)

1996   Crime Writers’ Association Macallan Short Story Dagger   (Herbert in Motion)

1997   Crime Writers’ Association Macallan Gold Dagger for Fiction   (Black and Blue)

1999   Crime Writers’ Association Macallan Gold Dagger for Fiction   – shortlist  ( Dead Souls)

and was also elected a Hawthronden Fellow.

Ian-Rankin-Set-in-Darkness-Inspector-Rebus

Ian-Rankin-Set-in-Darkness-Inspector-Rebus-4c

Ian-Rankin-Set-in-Darkness-Inspector-Rebus-tranche

The book is divided in three parts:

Chapters 1 to 15 : The Sense of an Ending

And this long narrow land is full of possibilities…

Deacon Blue, in “Wages Day”

Chapters 16 to 28 : FitFul and Dark

No citation introduces this section.

Chapters 29 to 42: Beyond The Mist

“Yet frost under sunlight can sparkle like hope even while muscles cramps, and the freezing damp can whisper “let the bottle rest for once”. There are warm mysteries beyond this mist.  Angus Calder in “Love Poem”.

Plot summary from a jacket of the book:

On the eve of the first Scottish parliament in three hundred years, Edinburgh is a city rife with political passions and expectations. Queensbury House, the home of Scotland’s new rulers, falls in the middle of John Rebus’ turf, keeping him busy with ceremonial tasks.

Queensberry House - Scottish Parlement

That quickly changes, however, when a long-dead body is discovered in a Queensbury House fireplace, a homeless man throws himself off a bridge – leaving behind a suitcase full of cash – and an up-and-coming politician is found murdered.

The links between the three deaths lead Rebus to a confrontation with one of Edinburgh’s most notorious criminals, a man he thought he’d put in jail for life.

Someone’s going to make a lot of money out of Scotland’s independence – and, as Rebus knows all too well, where there’s big money at stake, darkness gathers.

Media Reviews

Wall Street Journal
Mr. Rankin is a master of the moody, modern British police prodecural, working on the same high plateau as Ruth Rendell, Reginald HIll and P.D. James. Set In Darkness is filled with memorable sequences, well-drawn characters and enough Scots words…to make some readers think of John Buchan’s Thirty Nine Steps.

Manchester Guardian, UK
A series whose time has come…complex, humane and gripping, this is a perfect introduction to the art of Ian Rankin, head capo of the Scots mystery MacMafia.

The Daily Mail (UK)
Length has not added padding to Rankin’s lean outlines; it has added texture. Set In Darkness is rich and complex.

The Times London, UK
[A] consistent level of excellence unmatched in the field of British crime fiction…my advice is to read [it] now.

Sunday Telegraph, UK
[Rankin] once again reaches the parts that many other British crime writers don’t even aim for.

]]> http://www.scotiana.com/crime-fiction-at-its-best-with-ian-rankins-set-in-darkness-an-inspector-rebus-novel/feed/ 0 http://www.scotiana.com/what-does-highland-park-whisky-and-inspector-john-rebus-have-in-common/ http://www.scotiana.com/what-does-highland-park-whisky-and-inspector-john-rebus-have-in-common/#comments Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:23:46 +0000 MAJA http://www.scotiana.com/?p=1382

Rebus's Scotland - A Personal Journey - Ian Rankin

On the subject of anniversaries and detectives, I’m indeed very pleased Mairiuna to talk about another well known Scottish author, Ian Rankin, creator of the famous Scottish detective Sergeant John Rebus.

Back in 1987, when his novel Knots & Crosses introducing for the first time Inspector Rebus was published, Ian Rankin had no idea that he would win, in 1991-92, the world’s most prestigious detective-fiction prize, the Chandler-Fulbright Award.

As he writes in the introduction to Rebus: The Early Years:

“I was living in a room in a ground-floor flat in Arden Street, so my hero, John Rebus, had to live across the road. When the book was published, I found to my astonishment that everyone was saying I’d written a whodunit,a crime novel. I think I’m still the only crime writer I know who hadn’t a clue about the genre before setting out…”

To celebrate the 20th birth anniversary of his famous Inspector, Ian Rankin visited Highland Park Whisky Distillery on the Orkney Islands, one of the world’s most remote Scotch whisky distilleries, to inquire if they would accept to be “Partners in Crime” to produce a single cask of 20-year-old Highland Park to be bottled as “Highland Park Rebus 20 “.

They were delighted with the idea!

Highland Park Whisky - Rebus 20

Happily, Rankin selected for this limited edition of 150 bottles, a dark caramel colour, rugged and manly smokey type of whisky because that was Inspector Rebus’s preferences.

So here’s the answer to the title’s  question: “What does Highland Park Whisky and Inspector John Rebus have in common?

” They are both high quality products,created by master craftsmen which continue to exceed expectations over a long period of time.”

Jason Craig,  Global Controller of Highland Park Distillery.

No doubt Mairiuna that  Jean-Claude, being fond of Scottish whisky, would be thrilled to acquire such a bottle!

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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (22 May 1859 - 7 July 1930)

Conan Doyle died of a heart attack on 7 July 1930. He was aged 71 and lived then at “Windlesham”, his house situated in East Sussex, England. He was buried in the churchyard at Minstead in the New Forest, Hampshire. The epitaph on his grave reads “Steel True – Blade Straight – Arthur Conan Doyle – Knight – Patriot, Physician & Man of letters”.

If you question people about Conan Doyle’s nationality many will probably answer : ‘English’. But let’s try to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s. If Conan Doyle did spend most of his life, died and was buried in England, he was born, spent his childhood and studied medicine in Edinburgh. That is why, on 22 may 2009, the day of his one hundred and fiftieth birth anniversary, he was paid a very moving tribute in Edinburgh, his native town.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's grave, Minstead Churchyard

To begin with, let us go back a few years ago. Of the three houses where Conan Doyle had lived during his childhood, in Edinburgh, only one had not yet been demolished. But Liberton Bank House, a late 18th century sandstone cottage located between Liberton Road and Cameron Toll Shopping Centre, 2 miles southeast of the city centre, was being threatened in its turn by the very polemical project of a Mac Donald fast food restaurant planned to be built there.

Fortunately it’s another one that was finally adopted, of the kind that would certainly not have displeased Conan Doyle who had lived there from the age of 5 to 9 ! It was a school that was to be established there !

In 2007, in a completely refurbished and extended building, Dunedin School opened its doors to a score of children with learning difficulties. But the story does not end here. In the garden of the new school there lived a very old sycamore aged 170 years in the branches of which Conan Doyle had played when a young boy.

Alas, it soon proved that the old tree was dying and that, to everyone’s dismay, it had to be cut. Dunedin school staff soon found a very interesting solution. Why not use the wood of the tree to create something in memoriam of Conan Doyle ? It could be one of those emblematic belongings of Sherlock Holmes, the most famous character created by Conan Doyle .

Finally it was decided that it would be a violin and that the work would be done by a well-known luthier of Edinburgh, Steve Burnett. The violin was finally made right on time and did make its debut on Friday 22 May 2009 at Dunedin school where the instrument would later serve to teach music to the children. The violin had been christened “Sherlock” and inside you can read the following words: “Sherlock, 150th anniversary, birth of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, wood from sycamore at Dunedin School, former chilhood home, Edinburgh, 22.05.2009″ Steve Burnett is going to carve four other instruments (two violins, one viola and one cello) for a group which will be called the Conan Doyle Quartet.

Sherlock Holmes - Illustration by Sidney Paget

So you see, author and character will be forever associated exactly where young Conan Doyle had played in the branches of the old sycamore. In my next post I will tell you about another great tribute paid to Conan Doyle in the city of books… but in the meantime I think Janice is intending to introduce another Scottish author whose detective could well prove to be to Edinburgh what Sherlock Holmes has been to London…

A bientôt!

Mairiuna

PS: Looking for Sherlock Holmes Posters ? Check out Candlesbook.com