Author Val’s hoping for more success at crime writing festival
AUTHOR VAL McDermid will be hoping to score a win with her 30th novel, which has been shortlisted for a major crime-writing prize to be announced in Yorkshire this summer.
The Scottish writer is nominated for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year award alongside five of her contemporaries. Last year, McDermid won the ceremony’s top prize as she was awarded the Outstanding Contribution to Crime Fiction. McDermid’s 2016 book Out
Of Bounds, part of her Inspector Karen Pirie series, is up for the Crime Novel of the Year award this year. She will go up against Christopher Brookmyre for Black
Widow, Eva Dolan for After You Die, Sabine Durrant for Lie With Me, Mick Herron for Real Tigers and Susie Steiner for Missing, Presumed.
Last year’s winner of the novel prize was Clare Mackintosh for I
Let You Go, which has sold more than a million copies worldwide.
Simon Theakston, the executive director of the ceremony’s title sponsor T&R Theakston, said: “The shortlist this year highlights the incredible writers at work today. As these novels show, crime novels explore issues at the heart of our society and tap into the zeitgeist.”
The winner for the Crime Novel of the Year award will be announced on July 20 at the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate. Jack Reacher creator Lee Child has also been named as the winner of the Outstanding Contribution to Crime Fiction award for 2017.