Mark Billingham’s novel ‘Death Message’ wins the Theakston Crime Novel of 2009 award.
He was presented with the special barrel of Old Peculier and the £3,000 prize, by Simon Theakston, at the opening of the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate, on Thursday 23rd July. The festival, the largest crime fiction festival in the world is held annually at the Crown Hotel, Harrogate in Yorkshire, north east England.
The jam packed four day crime writing event is a fantastic place to see and meet numerous crime writers from the up and coming to the well established writers, such as Val McDermid, Laura Lippman, Simon Kernick, Mark Billingham, Lee Child and a special treat for me this year is the visit by George Pelecanos, a great crime novel writer, as well as a screen writer for the TV series. ‘The Wire’.
The short list:
Death Message (Tom Thorne Novels)
(Mark Billingham)
The first message sent to Tom Thorne’s mobile phone was just a picture – the blurred image of a man’s face, but Thorne had seen enough dead bodies in his time to know that the man was no longer alive. But who was he? Who sent the photograph? And why? While the technical experts attempt to trace the sender, Thorne searches the daily police bulletins for a reported death that matches the photograph. Then another picture arrives. Another dead man …It is the identities of the murdered men which give Thorne his first clue, a link to a dangerous killer he’d put away years before and who is still in prison. With a chilling talent for manipulation, this man has led another inmate to plot revenge on everyone he blames for his current incarceration, and for the murder of his family while he was inside. Newly released, this convict has no fear of the police, no feelings for those he is compelled to murder. Now Tom Thorne must face one of the toughest challenges of his career, knowing that there is no killer more dangerous than one who has nothing left to lose.
The Accident Man (Tom Cain)
Breathlessly paced and featuring one of the most intriguing heroes in recent fiction, The Accident Man surprises the reader at every turn. For a certain sum of money, Samuel Carver will arrange any death. But when a job below a bridge in Paris goes wrong and he is pursued by the very forces that hired him, Carver must execute his most daring feat yet.
Author Tom Cain is the pseudonym for an award-winning journalist with a 25-year history of investigative reporting.
Bad Luck and Trouble
(Lee Child)
From a helicopter high above the California desert, a man is sent free-falling into the night. On the streets of Portland, Jack Reacher is pulled out of his wandering life and plunged into the heart of a conspiracy that is killing old friends . . . and the people he once trusted with his life.
Reacher is the ultimate loner–no phone, no ties, no address. But a woman from his old military unit has found him using a signal only the eight members of their elite team would know. Then she tells him a terrifying story about the brutal death of a man they both served with. Soon Reacher is reuniting with the survivors of his team, scrambling to unravel the sudden disappearance of two other comrades. But Reacher won’t give up–because in a world of bad luck and trouble, when someone targets Jack Reacher and his team, they’d better be ready for what comes right back at them.
Gone to Ground
(John Harvey)
Will’s first thought when he saw the man’s face: it was like a glove that had been pulled inside out…Stephen Bryan, a gay academic, is found brutally murdered in his bathroom. Will Grayson and Helen Walker, police detectives investigating the case, at first assume that his death is the result of an ill-judged sexual encounter: rough trade gone wrong. But doubts are soon raised. Bryan’s laptop has gone missing – could the murder be connected to a biography he was writing on the life and mysterious death of fifties screen legend, Stella Leonard? Convinced there’s a link, Bryan’s sister Lesley sets out to prove that Bryan had uncovered a dangerous truth, and that – desperate to keep it hidden – Stella Leonard’s rich and influential family have silenced him. But soon both Lesley and Helen Walker find themselves victims of the violence that swirls around them, as gradually the investigation uncovers the secrets of a family corrupted by lust, wealth and power…
Ritual (Mo Hayder)
The Garden of Evil
(David Hewson)
The sixth novel in Hewson’s riveting Italian crime series The picture possessed a frightful beauty, one which burned so brightly that, once witnessed, could never be unseen . . . Even the presence of two corpses, one clearly murdered, the other dead through strange and suspicious circumstances, did nothing to distract their attention from the canvas . . . In a hidden studio in an area of Rome where the Vatican liked to keep an eye on the city’s prostitutes, an art expert from the Louvre is found dead in front of one of the most beautiful paintings that Nic Costa has ever seen – an unknown Caravaggio masterpiece. But before long tragedy will strike Nic far closer to home. The main suspect’s identity is known, but he remains untouchable – protected in his grand palazzo by a fleet of lawyers and a sinister cult known as the Ekstasists. If Costa and his team can crack the reasons for the cult’s existence, he may well stand a chance of nailing the double-killer. But the mystery will take him right back to Caravaggio himself and the reasons he had to flee Rome all those centuries before . . .
A Cure for All Diseases
(Reginald Hill)
The new psychological thriller featuring Dalziel and Pascoe, the hugely popular detective duo and stars of the long-running BBC TV series, following on from the bestselling Death of Dalziel He may have been in a coma but it would take an act of God to put Superintendent ‘Fat’ Andy Dalziel down for good. In the meantime, He’ll settle for a few weeks’ bed-rest. Sandytown, a pleasant seaside resort devoted to healing, seems just the ticket. And when a fellow newcomer appears in the shapely form of psychologist Charlotte Heywood, Dalziel develops an unexpected passion for alternative therapy. But Sandytown’s warring landowners have grandiose plans for the resort. One of them has to go and when one of them does, in spectacularly gruesome fashion, DCI Peter Pascoe is called in to investigate – with Dalziel and Charlotte providing unwelcome support. And Pascoe soon finds dark forces at work in a place where holistic remedies are no match for the oldest cure of all!
The Colour of Blood: An Ed Loy Novel
(Declan Hughes)
Emily Howard is nineteen years old, slim and petite with a pale complexion and a red rose tattoo. She is also missing. She disappeared three days ago, and now her father has been sent photographs of her naked body. He is desperate to find her.
So he calls Ed Loy, a private investigator who knows the dark streets of Dublin better than most; a man who will find Emily Howard within twenty-four hours. But locating Emily turns out to be only the beginning. Within hours, Emily’s ex-boyfriend is found murdered, and Loy finds himself in a race against time to catch a killer – and to unearth the many dark secrets the Howard family have kept long buried.
Dead Man’s Footsteps
(Peter James)
Abby stepped in the lift and the doors closed with a sound like a shovel smoothing gravel. She breathed in the smell of someone else’s perfum, and lemon-scented cleaning fluid. The lift jerked upwards a few inches. And now, too late to change her mind and get out, with the metal walls pressing in around her, they lunged sharply downwards. Abby was about to realize she had just made the worst mistake of her life …Amid the tragic unfolding mayhem of the morning of 9/11, failed Brighton businessman and ne’er-do-well Ronnie Wilson sees the chance of a lifetime, to shed his debts, disappear and reinvent himself in another country.Six years later, the discovery of the skeletal remains of a woman’s body in a storm drain in Brighton, leads Detective Superintendent Roy Grace on an enquiry spanning the globe, and into a desperate race against time to save the life of a woman being hunted down like an animal in the streets and alleys of Brighton. ‘One of the most fiendishly clever crime fiction plotters’ – “Daily Mail”.
Broken Skin
(Stuart MacBride)
A new Logan McRae thriller from the bestselling author of Cold Granite and Dying Light, set in gritty Aberdeen. In the pale grey light of a chilly February, Aberdeen is not at its best! There’s a rapist prowling the city’s cold granite streets, leaving a string of tortured women behind. But while DS Logan McRae’s girlfriend is out acting as bait, he’s dealing with the blood-drenched body of an unidentified male, dumped outside Accident and Emergency. When a stash of explicit films turns up, all featuring the victim, it looks as if someone in the local bondage community has developed a taste for violent death, and Logan gets dragged into the twilight world of pornographers, sex-shops and S&M. To make matters worse, when they finally arrest the Granite City Rapist, Grampian Police are forced by the courts to let him go: Aberdeen Football Club’s star striker has an alibi for every attack. Could they really have got it so badly wrong? Logan thinks so, but the trick will be getting anyone to listen before the real rapist strikes again. Especially as his girlfriend, PC Jackie ‘Ball Breaker’ Watson, is convinced the footballer is guilty and she’s hell-bent on a conviction at any cost!
Beneath the Bleeding
(Val McDermid)
The terrifying new psychological thriller featuring Tony Hill, criminal profiler and hero of TV’s Wire in the Blood. The race is on to uncover the identity of a murderer with nothing to lose — and everything to kill for. When Robbie Bishop, star midfielder for the Bradfield Vics, is poisoned by a rare and deadly toxin, profiler Dr Tony Hill and trusted colleague DCI Carol Jordan have their work cut out for them. Robbie was adored, so the public want answers — but the answers aren’t coming, and trails are running cold. Then a bomb explodes in the football stadium, causing massive casualties — and another man dies from poisoning. Is there a link between the cases? And what are the motives for these crimes? The clock is ticking for Tony and Carol — and the death toll keeps rising!
Exit Music
(Ian Rankin)
It’s late autumn in Edinburgh and late autumn in the career of Detective Inspector John Rebus. As he tries to tie up some loose ends before retirement, a murder case intrudes. A dissident Russian poet has been found dead in what looks like a mugging gone wrong. By apparent coincidence, a high-level delegation of Russian businessmen is in town – and everyone is determined that the case should be closed quickly and clinically. But the further they dig, the more Rebus and DS Siobhan Clarke become convinced that they are dealing with something more than a random attack – especially after a particularly nasty second killing. Meanwhile, a brutal and premeditated assault on a local gangster sees Rebus in the frame. Has the Inspector taken a step too far in tying up those loose ends? Only a few days shy of the end to his long, inglorious career, will Rebus even make it that far?
Friend of the Devil
(Peter Robinson)
When Karen Drew is found sitting in her wheelchair staring out to sea with her throat cut one chilly morning, DI Annie Cabbot, on loan to Eastern Area, gets lumbered with the case. Back in Eastvale, that same Sunday morning, 19-year-old Hayley Daniels is found raped and strangled in the Maze, a tangle of narrow alleys behind Eastvale’s market square, after a drunken night on the town with a group of friends, and DCI Alan Banks is called in. Banks finds suspects galore, while Annie seems to hit a brick wall—until she reaches a breakthrough that spins her case in a shocking and surprising new direction, one that also involves Banks.
Then another incident occurs in the Maze which seems to link the two cases in a bizarre and mysterious way. As Banks and Annie dig into the past to uncover the deeper connections, they find themselves also dealing with the emotional baggage and personal demons of their own relationship. And it soon becomes clear that there are two killers in their midst, and that at any moment either one might strike again.
Savage Moon (Chris Simms)
The body of a woman with her throat ripped out is found on Saddleworth Moor, near Manchester. She is discovered in an area where numerous sightings of a mysterious big black cat have been made. When analysis shows the hairs caught under her nails are those of a panther, it’s assumed the animal has killed its first human victim. But then a man DI Jon Spicer is investigating as part of an entirely different case is murdered in exactly the same way. Only this time the body is found in a secluded car park – a popular gay rendezvous far closer to the city centre. Soon DI Spicer finds himself hunting a killer dubbed The Monster of the Moor, a creature whose stealth and savagery strike terror into the local population and way beyond it.
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and gradually progress with Thorn’s troubled life.
illustrating that ‘the power of fear is a very powerful weapon, and if you are prepared to instill it, you have a very powerful weapon that is every bit as dangerous as a gun or a knife.