Up with the Scots!

Organizers of this year’s Bloody Scotland International Crime Writing Festival, set to take place in the central Scottish town of Stirling during the weekend of September 9-11, have announced their longlist of nominees for the 2016 McIlvanney Prize, previously known as the Scottish Crime Book of the Year award. This commendation—now dedicated in honor of Glasgow writer William McIlvanney (Laidlaw), who died last year—“recognizes excellence in Scottish crime writing, [and] includes a prize of £1,000 and nationwide promotion in Waterstones.” It will be presented to one of the following 10 books and authors on Bloody Scotland’s opening night, September 9:

• Even Dogs in the Wild, by Ian Rankin (Orion)
• Open Wounds, by Douglas Skelton (Luath)
• The Damage Done, by James Oswald (Michael Joseph)
• The Special Dead, by Lin Anderson (Macmillan)
• In the Cold Dark Ground, by Stuart MacBride (HarperCollins)
• Black Widow, by Chris Brookmyre (Little, Brown)
• The Jump, by Doug Johnstone (Faber)
• Splinter the Silence, by Val McDermid (Little, Brown)
• Beloved Poison, by E.S. Thomson (Little, Brown)
• A Fine House in Trinity, by Lesley Kelly (Sandstone)

As a press release explains, “Previous winners are Craig Russell with The Ghosts of Altona in 2015, Peter May with Entry Island in 2014, Malcolm Mackay with How a Gunman Says Goodbye in 2013, and Charles Cumming with A Foreign Country in 2012.”