Tuesday, June 14, 2022

Softcover Standouts

Last month, organizers of the annual Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year award announced the 18 books and authors longlisted for the 2022 prize. Today, we have the half-dozen finalists:

The Night Hawks, by Elly Griffiths (Quercus)
True Crime Story, by Joseph Knox (Penguin)
Daughters of Night, by Laura
Shepherd-Robinson (Pan)
Slough House, by Mick Herron
(John Murray)
Midnight at Malabar House, by Vaseem Khan (Hodder Paperbacks)
The Last Thing to Burn, by Will Dean (Hodder Paperbacks)

Members of the public are invited to vote here for their favorites among that shortlist. This selection process will close on Friday, July 8, with the winner to be declared on Thursday, July 21—opening night of the 2022 Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, in Harrogate, England. The victor will receive £3,000 in prize money, plus “a handmade, engraved beer barrel provided by T&R Theakston Ltd.”

As has been explained previously by In Reference to Murder, this award, “now in its 18th year, is presented by Harrogate International Festivals and recognizes the best crime novels published in the UK and Ireland in paperback over the past year.”

1 comment:

MI6 said...

Some great reads ... If you are into all things espionage, fact or fiction, then you have probably heard of and read Robert Baer’s compelling novel The Fourth Man by now. It’s bound to become an espionage classic and is of the same quality as Bill Fairclough’s Beyond Enkription or Ben Macintyre's The Spy and The Traitor which John le Carré described as “the best true spy story I have ever read”. The Fourth Man is about a Russian mole in the CIA. In real life Baer was a CIA case officer. The Spy and The Traitor is about Oleg Gordievsky, the infamous KGB double agent. Need we say more! Beyond Enkription (misspelt intentionally) is a fact-based thriller about the first year of a real secret agent’s life working for MI6 and the CIA. The secret agent was of course Bill Fairclough, aka Edward Burlington in The Burlington Files series of stand-alone autobiographical spy novels. No matter whose side you’re on you had best read all three to stay alive!