Winners of the 2019 Davitts are to be chosen late this summer. But in the meanwhile, we now have a longlist of titles under consideration. A very long longlist, by any standards. “A record 127 books are in contention for Sisters in Crime Australia’s 19th Davitt Awards for best crime and mystery books by Australian women,” explains a press announcement. “This figure tips last year’s record by 16. An astonishing 73 adult crime novels have been entered. Almost half—49 books in total—are debut offerings.”
“It’s not just a crime wave—it’s a tsunami,” enthuses Davitt judges’ “wrangler,” Jacqui Horwood. The SinC press release goes on:
Horwood said that a number of trends were already evident in this year’s Davitt entries.A shortlist of works contending for this year’s Davitt Awards is expected to be ready by early July.
“Crime continues to move from the mean streets of Australia’s major cities to small towns and the outback as evident in the books by Jane Harper, Aoife Clifford, Sandi Curtis, Sue Williams and Ellie Marney,” she said.
“Historical mysteries are increasingly popular with books such as Deborah Burrows’ ‘Ambulance Girl’ series set in the London Blitz and M J Tjia’s series featuring the 1860s’ London Eurasian courtesan sleuth. Often these books have a foot in both the past and present. L J M Owen’s novels skip from ancient cultures to modern-day Canberra while Kirsty Manning’s The Jade Lily is set in both wartime Shanghai and 2016 Melbourne and Toni Jordan’s book is located in 1938 New York and 1986 Brisbane.”
What Sisters in Crime calls ‘Tropic Noir’ is also in vogue, Horwood said.
“Crime has moved to the Tropics with Caroline de Costa’s series in Cairns and Candice Fox’s Crimson Lake books set nearby. Out in the Pacific, B M Allsop’s self-published police procedurals set in Fiji have met with much acclaim,” she said.
(Hat tip to In Reference to Murder.)
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