Sisters in Crime’s 20th Davitt Awards winners were announced September 26.

2020 Davitt Winners

Adult crime novels

• The Trespassers, Meg Mundell (University of Queensland Press) 

Young Adult crime novels

• Four Dead Queens, Astrid Scholte (Allen & Unwin) 

Children’s crime novels

• The Girl in the Mirror, Jenny Blackford (Eagle Books, an imprint of Christmas Press) 

Non-fiction crime books

• Banking Bad: Whistleblowers. Corporate cover-ups. One journalist’s fight for the truth, Adele Ferguson (ABC Books, ABC Books, a HarperCollins Australia imprint) 

Highly Commended:

• See What You Made Me Do: Power, control and domestic abuse, Jess Hill (Black Inc.) 

Debut crime books

• Eight Lives, Susan Hurley (Affirm Press)

2020 Davitt Readers Choice Award

[Joint winners]

• Darkness for Light by Emma Viskic
• The Scholar by Dervla McTiernan

The judging panel for 2020 was Philomena Horsley, winner of the 2018 Scarlet Stiletto Award winner and medical autopsy expert; Bec Kavanagh, YA expert; Debbie Stephen, forensic specialist; and Sisters in Crime national co-convenors Karina Kilmore (author and former Herald Sun book editor), Moraig Kisler and Pauline Meaney.

Sisters in Crime Australia was set up 29 years ago and has chapters in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia. The Davitts are named after Ellen Davitt, the author of Australia’s first mystery novel, Force and Fraud, in 1865.