The Good News ...

Ray Banks (Donkey Punch) is reporting on his Web site that Scottish author Allan Guthrie has won the 2007 Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award for his first book, Two-Way Split (2005). He beats out such big-name rivals as Stephen Booth and Christopher Brookmyre, both of whose work was also shortlisted for this commendation. (A longlist of nominees can be found here.) Guthrie’s triumph was announced tonight during England’s annual Harrogate Crime Writing Festival.

“My novel started out life as Blithe Psychopath,” Guthrie recalled for Britain’s Independent newspaper. “I wrote the unpublished novel in 2001 for the Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger competition, for which it was short-listed. It went through various manifestations before it was published in 2005.”

Winning the Old Peculier award places Guthrie (the author most recently of Hard Man) in the company of Val McDermid, who picked up that same prize last year for The Torment of Others, and British novelist Mark Billingham, who won the year before for Lazy Bones.

READ MORE: “Scottish Writer Takes the UK’s Biggest Crime Writing Award,” by Stacy Alesi (BookBitchBlog); “Hard Words: Q&A with Noir Author Allan Guthrie,” by Mike MacLean (Murderati).