Several elements come together to make a good novel: writing style, plot and overall atmosphere. Very occasionally a novel’s unique atmosphere can elevate an OK book into a classic. Take Gerald Kerch’s ‘Night and the City’, possibly the most atmospheric novel about London since Dickens trod the city’s shabby streets and undoubtedly a great book, [...]

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  THE BIG SLEEP by RAYMOND CHANDLER The Big Sleep is Raymond Chandler’s masterpiece. The best crime novel ever written bar none. Almost single handedly Chandler invented the genre of the hard drinking, hard smoking, hard loving, sharply dressed, first person, private detective, with a wisecrack for every occasion, and a bullet for every bad [...]

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Mystery Readers International (Mystery Readers Journal) announces the Macavity Award nominations for works published in 2007. The awards will be presented during opening ceremonies at Bouchercon, the World Mystery Convention (Baltimore, October 2008). MACAVITY NOMINEES: Best Mystery Novel o Soul Patch by Reed Farrel Coleman (Bleak House) o The Unquiet by John Connolly (Hodder & [...]

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Shortlists for the 2008 CWA / Duncan Lawrie Daggers were announced at a reception at the British Library on 3rd June. The authors shortlisted for the £20,000 Duncan Lawrie Dagger, the world’s largest prize for a crime novel, are James Lee Burke (The Tin Roof Blowdown), Colin Cotterill (Coroner’s Lunch), Frances Fyfield (Blood From Stone), [...]

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There is an eternal debate about whether the best Crime Fiction can ever hold its head up as the equal of the literary novel. Just as ‘proper’ authors like Martin Amis, William Boyd and even Charles Dickens can and have turned their hand to mystery fiction, so there exists a strata of ‘crime’ novelists who really [...]

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2008 Longlist Announced The longlist was announced today for one of the most prestigious awards in the international crime writing calendar – the 4th Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award, the only literary prize of its kind to be voted for by the general public.  This year’s list is a vibrant and [...]

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What is loudly heralded as the final case for Edinburgh Detective Inspector John Rebus sees Ian Rankin returning to the form that established his name as one of Britain’s keenest crime writers back in the mid-1990s. Although the most recent outings lacked the vigour and richness that elevated the series’ undoubted highlight, Black and Blue, [...]

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