Mina Scores the McIlvanney

Glasgow author-playwright Denise Mina has won the 2017 McIlvanney Prize for her 13th and latest novel, this year’s The Long Drop (Random House UK). The announcement was made earlier tonight during opening festivities at the Bloody Scotland conference being held in Stirling (September 8-10). Expressing the judges’ enthusiasm for Mina’s standalone period thriller, judging chair Lee Randall said: “Full of astute psychological observations, this novel’s not only about what happened in the 1950s, but about storytelling itself. It shows how legends grow wings, and how memories shape-shift and mark us. For my money this is one of the books of 2017—in any genre.”

The McIlvanney Prize was formerly known as the Scottish Crime Book of the Year Award, but was rechristened last year in honor of the late author William McIlvanney (Laidlaw). To score the 2017 award, The Long Drop had to beat out four other finalists: Out of Bounds, by Val McDermid (Little, Brown); Murderabilia, by Craig Robertson (Simon & Schuster); The Quiet Death of Thomas Quaid, by Craig Russell (Quercus); and How to Kill Friends and Implicate People, by Jay Stringer (Thomas & Mercer).

In 2016, Mina’s fellow Glaswegian, Chris Brookmyre, picked up the inaugural McIlvanney Prize for his novel Black Widow.