A former celebrity-memoir ghostwriter has beaten Stephen King and JK Rowling to scoop the top honour in the Crime Writers’ Association’s Dagger awards.
Australian Michael Robotham was revealed as the Gold Dagger award-winner for his 10th novel, Life Or Death (Little, Brown), at a presentation at London’s Malmaison hotel on Tuesday night, joining two American authors to freeze British writers off the rostrum.
Sydney-based Robotham previously wrote celebrity autobiographies for Geri Halliwell, Lulu and Rolf Harris, whose book the author removed from his shelves after Harris’s conviction for sex offences, which, he said, left him feeling “betrayed”.
But it’s Robotham’s psychological crime novels which have helped to earn him more than 6m book sales, plaudits from Jack Reacher author Lee Child, and now the CWA Goldsboro Gold Dagger.
Life Or Death, about a prisoner who escapes from jail the day before he is due to be released, was said by the CWA judges to be a “compelling and fascinating book”. The panel added: “When you start reading Life Or Death, you’ll want to stay curled up in an armchair with one of the best thrillers you’ll read this year.”
King, whose novel Mr Mercedes was on the shortlist, wasn’t at the event, but Rowling, who was up for the award for The Silkworm, written under her pen name Robert Galbraith, was the first to congratulate Rowbotham on the night, later tweeting her “massive congratulations to my Little, Brown stablemate”.
The CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, for the best thriller of the year, went to Atlanta-based Karin Slaughter’s Cop Town (Random House/Century). The CWA said: “The judges loved this fascinating story filled to the brim with rich and evocative period detail of Atlanta in 1974. The judges found the characters to be instantly real, engaging, well-drawn and convincing, helping the reader to be pulled through this dark and twisted story to the very end.”
The third award of the night was the John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger, for the best crime novel by a first-time author. It went to Smith Henderson, Montana-born but now living in Los Angeles, for Fourth of July Creek (Random House/William Heinemann), which the panel called “a powerful evocation of the rural America time has forgotten, and the casualties in its wake. Both harrowing and life-enhancing, a towering achievement and an insight into a world many of us would rather ignore.”
CWA chair Len Tyler said after the event: “This has been a simply wonderful year for the crime fiction genre and our judges were incredibly impressed by the standard of the entries.”
The CWA also launched its new online initiative Dagger Reads, which gives readers and libraries access to resources on all the shortlisted authors and books for this year’s awards. Tyler added, “Next year we’re rolling this initiative out to encompass all our Daggers and give readers the chance to discover all our shortlisted books. It’s a true celebration of the best work in the crime genre.”
Six other Daggers were presented at a separate ceremony in July, including a lifetime achievement award for veteran author Catherine Aird. The CWA is now accepting entries for the 2016 awards.