The Judgment of Colleagues

Our congratulations go out this morning to novelist Andrew Taylor. The British Crime Writers’ Association has announced that he will receive the 2009 Cartier Diamond Dagger Award, presented “for sustained excellence in crime writing.” As the CWA reminds us,

Andrew Taylor is the best-selling author of the Richard-and-Judy choice The American Boy and the highly-acclaimed Bleeding Heart Square, which was shortlisted for the 2008 Ellis Peters Historical Award.

Andrew Taylor’s first novel, Caroline Minuscule, won the CWA’s John Creasey Award in 1982. He is the only author to have won the Ellis Peters Historical Award twice, in 2001 for The Office of the Dead and in 2003 for The American Boy (about the English boyhood of Edgar Allan Poe), which also won the U.S. Audie in the literary fiction category. He has been shortlisted for the Gold Dagger, the Edgar, and many other awards in the UK and abroad.

Among his other books are the Dougal series, whose central character is as liable to commit murders as solve them; the Lydmouth series, set in the 1950s; and the innovatory Roth Trilogy with its reverse narrative, filmed for ITV as Fallen Angel, starring Charles Dance and Emilia Fox.

Taylor will be presented with his commendation on April 28.

Prior recipients of this award include Sue Grafton, John Harvey, Elmore Leonard, Ian Rankin, and Lawrence Block.

READ MORE: “Andrew Taylor’s Diamond Dagger,” by Martin Edwards (Do You Write Under Your Own Name?).