We Don’t Get No Respect

With the British Crime Writers Association just hours away from announcing the winners of this year’s Dagger Awards, Chris Wiegand takes the opportunity to restart the genre wars over at The Guardian’s blog:

The subject of book awards is a touchy one for crime scribes, many of whom have long nursed grudges against the bigger literary prizes. P.D. James and Ian Rankin have both complained that crime--not to mention other genre writing--is unfavourably overlooked in these matters.

Wiegand’s main thrust, however, has to do with the Daggers themselves. He says he’s rooting for James Lee Burke’s Pegasus Descending, but admits that Burke has some tough competition:

... the main prize hands the winner £20,000, and Burke’s competition is pretty stiff. There’s Giles Blunt’s psycho-thriller [The] Fields of Grief, a chilling debut from Gillian Flynn called Sharp Objects, Craig Russell’s serial killer saga Brother Grimm, the historical mystery Sovereign by C.J. Sansom and Peter Temple’s The Broken Shore, which has won acclaim for its frank confrontation of Australian politics.

We will post the winners in this space just as soon as the results flutter our way.