RJ Ellory wins crime novel of the year award

心雪

'Completely and utterly gobsmacked' ... RJ Ellory

Judge declares A Simple Act of Violence the work of 'a true master of crime fiction'

After winning four literary awards in France and one in the US, British author RJ Ellory has finally been rewarded in his own country, taking one of the UK's top crime writing prizes for his novel A Simple Act of Violence last night.

Ellory, who pronounced himself "completely and utterly gobsmacked and speechless" at his win, beat some of Britain's best crime authors, from Ian Rankin to Val McDermid, to be named winner of the £3,000 Theakstons Old Peculier crime novel of the year award in Harrogate.

"I had absolutely no hope. I've only ever won prizes in France and America and I've been nominated endless times in England but have never won," he said this morning. "I think it's because I don't really fit into that category of current British police procedurals that seem to be prevalent in the literary tastes of British readers."

Set in Washington DC during the mid-term elections, his winning novel sees Detective Robert Miller investigating a series of horrific killings where the victims do not officially exist. "I don't write books which start with a dead body and a chief inspector struggling with drink," said Ellory. "The two best descriptions which have ever been levelled at me are that I write human dramas which have crime as a central issue, but are more to do with its consequences on bystanders. And in France one newspaper journalist said I wrote slow motion thrillers, which I thought was a great description."

Judge Simon Theakston called A Simple Act of Violence "a most impressive, fascinating and surprising book and a worthy winner". "A fast-paced thriller, each page seems to bring about a new twist and take you deeper into a world that could only have come from a true master of crime fiction," he added. Ellory was selected by a judging panel that also included Radio 4 broadcaster Jenni Murray, the Guardian's John Dugdale and comedian and journalist Natalie Haynes, with a public online vote accounting for a 20% share of the final decision.

The research for A Simple Act of Violence was "phenomenal", according to Ellory. "My first draft was just shy of 250,000 words," he said. "When I read it through it was starting to feel like a textbook, an anti-CIA polemic, and a third had to go."

Orphaned at the age of seven, the author spent the following nine years at boarding school before being arrested for poaching aged 17 and receiving a jail sentence. He began his first novel in 1987, writing 22 books – mainly in longhand – over the next six years and receiving hundreds of rejection letters until his first novel, Candlemoth, was eventually published by Orion in 2003. A Simple Act of Violence is his sixth book, and although he sells well in the UK – A Quiet Belief in Angels was picked for the Richard & Judy book club in 2008 – he says his sales are "silly huge" in France.

"You do not run into this division in France between crime and literary fiction," he said. "There is no clique, no strict divide between the genres. The bottom line is the more books I sell and the more readers I speak to, the more I realise that what readers are interested in is a good story. Crime can be about romance, war, spies, child abduction – there are so many things you can thread through a crime novel that you can't do with other genres. As a topic it's very plasticine to deal with." He uses crime, he said, to "create a canvas within which I can put my characters through the spectrum of human emotions. That's what fascinates me."

As well as his £3,000 cash prize, Ellory also wins a handmade Theakstons Old Peculier beer barrel.  He joins a list of former winners of the prize that also includes Mark Billingham, McDermid, Allan Guthrie and Stef Penney.

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News from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/ ... ns-crime-novel-year