Night of the Nibbies

Retired attorney, former Mississippi politician, and best-selling novelist John Grisham (The Innocent Man) received a Lifetime Achievement Award as part of last night’s Galaxy British Book Awards presentation in London, England.

There were GBBA (“Nibbie”) awards handed out in a variety of additional categories, as well. The other American writer to be most applauded was Jeb Rubenfeld, a constitutional law professor at Yale University and author of The Interpretation of Murder, which--in line with pre-ceremony betting--received the Richard & Judy Best of the Year Award (Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan being co-hosts of a phenomenally popular British TV-magazine show). Interpretation, a debut novel about murder and psychological deduction in early 20th-century Manhattan, was also on January Magazine’s favorite books of 2006 list.

Also competing for the Richard & Judy commendation were Restless, a World War II espionage thriller by William Boyd, and several non-crime novels: Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; The Girls, by Lori Lansens; Love in the Present Tense, by Catherine Ryan Hyde; Semi-detached, by Griff Rhys Jones; This Book Will Save Your Life, by A.M. Homes; and The Testament of Gideon Mack, by James Robertson.

Picking up the BCA Crime Thriller of the Year prize was Ian Rankin’s The Naming of the Dead (only recently published in the States). It’s rivals for that honor: Peter James’ Looking Good Dead, Kate Atkinson’s One Good Turn, and Sam Bourne’s The Righteous Men. Sponsor BCA, by the way, is the UK’s largest direct-mail book club.

Two other crime-oriented novels were up for Nibbies last night: Martina Cole’s gangland novel, Close, which had been nominated in the Sainsbury’s Popular Fiction Award category (but lost to Anybody Out There, by Marian Keyes); and The Meaning of Night, by Michael Cox, which had been touted for the Waterstone’s Newcomer of the Year prize (only to be bested by Victoria Hislop’s The Island).

Photographs from Wednesday’s festivities can be found here.

(Hat tip to Shotsmag Confidential.)