Crawford’s on a Winning Streak

Two awards were presented this evening during the 2026 Bloody Scotland International Crime Writing Festival, but there was only a single recipient. That’s because A Bad, Bad Place (Bantam), Glasgow first-novelist Frances Crawford’s “gritty and poignant” story of a 12-year-old working-class girl who stumbles across the corpse of a murdered woman, picked up not only the 2026 Bloody Scotland Debut Prize, but also the latest McIlvanney Prize for “best Scottish Crime book of the year.” Crawford thereby becomes the first double winner in the history of these annual commendations.

The Scotsman quotes author Denise Mina, who served as this year’s Bloody Scotland guest programmer, as calling A Bad, Bad Place “a novel of profound depth and scope. Insightful, harrowing and very funny, it deals with the reality of violent crime and its impact on many victims. This is a spectacular debut from a wonderful new voice.”

In addition to Crawford’s novel, four others were shortlisted for the 2026 McIlvanney Prize, which honors Scottish fictionist William McIlvanney: The Hollow Boys, by Tariq Ashkanani (Viper); 138 Main Street, by Gavin Bell (Simon & Schuster UK); The Diary of Lies, by Philip Miller (Polygon); and The Vanishing Place, by Zoë Rankin (Viper).

Meanwhile, A Bad, Bad Place competed for the Debut Prize with a quartet of works, all of them also penned by women: Original Sins, by Linda Duncan McLaughlin (Into Books); We Know What You Did, by Kirsty Lockwood (Orion); The Vanishing Place, by Zoë Rankin (Viper); and Liar Thief, by May Rinaldi (Black Spring Crime).

I could kick myself for not having yet read Crawford’s novel, especially as it previously captured the McDermid Debut Award at July’s Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate, England. Well, time to go dig up the book post haste ...