Sizzling Summer Crime Fiction Awards News

The Ned Kelly and Ngaio Marsh award shortlists, and the Petrona Award longlist have been announced in recent weeks.

NED KELLY AWARDS

The Australian Crime Writers Association (ACWA) has unveiled the shortlist for the 2023 Ned Kelly Awards.

The Ned Kelly Awards are Australia’s oldest and most prestigious prizes for crime fiction and true crime writing, established in 1995.

The shortlisted titles in each category are:

BEST TRUE CRIME

  • Tiger! Tiger! Tiger! by Officer A
  • Death Row at Truro by Geoff Plunkett
  • Rattled by Ellis Gunn
  • Betrayed by Sandi Logan
  • Out of the Ashes by Megan Norris

BEST INTERNATIONAL CRIME FICTION

(Published in Australia)

  • The Lemon Man by Keith Bruton
  • Paper Cage by Tom Baragwanath
  • The Favour by Nicci French
  • The Hitchhiker by Gerwin van der Werf

BEST DEBUT CRIME FICTION

  • Wake by Shelley Burr
  • No Country for Girls by Emma Styles
  • Dirt Town by Hayley Scrivenor
  • Black River by Matthew Spencer
  • How to Kill a Client by Joanna Jenkins
  • The House of Now and Then by Jo Dixon
  • Lenny Marks Gets Away with Murder by Kerryn Mayne
  • Denizen by James McKenzie Watson

BEST CRIME FICTION

  • Soulmate by Sally Hepworth 
  • When The Carnival is Over by Greg Woodland
  • Exiles by Jane Harper
  • When We Fall by Aoife Clifford
  • The Tilt by Chris Hammer
  • Those Who Perish by Emma Viskic
  • Seven Sisters by Katherine Kovacic
  • Lying Beside You by Michael Robotham

NGAIO MARSH AWARD

The shortlist for the 2023 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Novel, the New Zealand crime fiction award, was announced on August 5.

BEST NON-FICTION (a biennial prize)

A New Dawn, by Emeli Sione (Mila’s Books)
The Devil You Know, by Dr. Gwen Adshead and Eileen Horne (Faber)
Downfall: The Destruction of Charles Mackay, by Paul Diamond (Massey University Press)
The Fix, by Scott Bainbridge (Bateman)
Missing Persons, by Steve Braunias (HarperCollins)

BEST FIRST NOVEL

One Heart One Spade, by Alistair Luke (Your Books)
Too Far from Antibes, by Bede Scott (Penguin SEA)
Better the Blood, by Michael Bennett (Simon & Schuster)
Surveillance, by Riley Chance (CopyPress)
The Slow Roll, by Simon Lendrum (Upstart Press)
Paper Cage, by Tom Baragwanath (Text)

BEST NOVEL

Exit .45, by Ben Sanders (Allen & Unwin)
Blue Hotel, by Chad Taylor (Brio)
Remember Me, by Charity Norman (Allen & Unwin)
The Doctor’s Wife, by Fiona Sussman (Bateman)
Better the Blood, by Michael Bennett (Simon & Schuster)
Blood Matters, by Renée (The Cuba Press)
The Slow Roll, by Simon Lendrum (Upstart Press)

THE PETRONA AWARD

Twelve crime novels from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland have made the longlist for the 2023 Petrona Award for the Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year.

The award is open to crime fiction in translation, either written by a Scandinavian author or set in Scandinavia and published in the UK in the previous calendar year.

  • Jussi Adler-Olsen — The Shadow Murders. Translated by William Frost (Denmark, Quercus)
  • Lina Areklew — Death in Summer. Translated by Tara F Chace (Sweden, Canelo Crime)
  • Kjell Ola Dahl — Little Drummer. Translated by Don Bartlett (Norway, Orenda Books)
  • Pascal Engman – Femicide. Translated by Michael Gallagher (Sweden, Legend Press)
  • Anne Mette Hancock — The Corpse Flower. Translated by Tara F Chace (Denmark, Swift Press)
  • Susanne Jansson — Winter Water. Translated by Rachel Willson-Broyles (Sweden, Hodder & Stoughton)
  • Håkan Nesser — The Axe Woman. Translated by Sarah Death (Sweden, Mantle)
  • Petra Rautiainen — Land of Snow and Ashes. Translated by David Hackston (Finland, Pushkin Press)
  • Joachim B Schmidt – Kalmann. Translated by Jamie Lee Searle (Switzerland, Bitter Lemon Press)
  • Lilja Sigurðardóttir — Red as Blood. Translated by Quentin Bates (Iceland, Orenda Books)
  • Gustaf Skördeman — Codename Faust. Translated by Ian Giles (Sweden, Zaffre)
  • Gunnar Staalesen — Bitter Flowers. Translated by Don Bartlett (Norway, Orenda Books)

Crime Fiction Award News

RADIO BREMEN KRIMIPREIS

The 2021 Radio Bremen Krimipreis, a German crime fiction award, has been awarded to Anne Holt.

The article is in German, so here is a summary:

The winner of the 2021 Radio Bremen Krimipreis is Norwegian crime writer Anne Holt. Anne Holt is one of the most successful Scandinavian crime writers with more than seven million books sold worldwide. In her non-writing career, she has been a journalist, police superintendent and even Norwegian secretary of justice. She has been writing full time for 25 years now.

The jury was impressed by how Ms. Holt incorporates current social issues such as nationalism, rightwing terrorism, climate change or corruption and doping in professional sports into her crime novels. Furthermore, Anne Holt’s novels featured diverse characters before “diversity” was a buzzword. In the 1990s, she created Hanne Willhelmsen, a lesbian police officer who is shot in a later book in the series and becomes a wheelchair user. Her latest novel features a new character, Selma Falck, a lawyer with a gambling addiction.

Since 2001, Radio Bremen has been awarding the Radio Bremen Crime Prize to outstanding crime writers. The prize is endowed with 2,500 Euros and is considered one of the most prestigious crime fiction prizes in Germany. The award honors German-speaking and international authors. The jury is composed annually of Bremen crime fiction professionals and, if necessary, supplemented by guest jurors.

SCARLET STILETTO AWARDS

Sisters in Crime Australia has announced the names of the writers on the 28th Scarlet Stiletto Awards Shortlist, but not which the various awards each is a finalist for, so there’s not much more to offer here than the link.

LOUIE AWARD

The Australian Crime Writers Association (ACWA) has announced a new flash fiction prize, the Louie Award.

Sponsored by ACT president of the Australian Medical Association Antonio Di Dio, the annual award celebrates his late father Luigi who was an avid crime fiction reader.

The award is open to Australian crime writers and will seek short story submissions of up to 500 words. The winner will receive $750.

Entries for the inaugural award is expected to open this month. For more information, see the ACWA website.

[Thanks to Cora Buhlert for these stories.]