You see, the Crime Writers Association and ITV3 have just handed out their Crime Thriller Awards, and it got us thinking. For instance, there weren’t that many female authors on the shortlists, and no women won an award, despite there being many fantastic female crime writers. Certainly, a great number wonderful books were considered for the Daggers, but not many of our particular favourites made the shortlists either. Awards can be a pretty subjective area, and some say being shortlisted, or winning, can help drive the popularity of a book. Or is it the other way round? We want crime fiction lovers like you to have their voices heard.
Tell us about your favourite book
So, please tell us the title (and author) of your favourite crime novel of the past year by commenting below. And to add to the fun, one lucky person who posts their choice will win a bundle of five free crime novels from Myrmidon Books. The independent publisher has just celebrated its fifth birthday so what could be more fitting than five books?
The prizes
Up for grabs are five fantastic, juicy crime fiction novels by authors who all broach the genre with their own unique take on it. The loot our lucky winner will nab includes:
The Painted Messiah by Craig Smith
The Spy Who Came for Christmas by David Morrell
Bulletproof Suzy by Ian Brotherhood
The Stone Gallows by C David Ingram
Thirteen by Sebastian Beaumont
More about the draw
This isn’t a vote or an empirical process aiming to choose the best book of the year. We just want to know what you think – and perhaps it will throw up some interesting debate. As long as you don’t work for Crime Fiction Lover or Myrmidon, you’ll be in with a chance of winning. (No doubt our writers and Myrmidon staff and authors will be commenting, but they won’t go into the draw.) The winner will be chosen randomly shortly after 10pm UK time on Sunday 16 October, when the draw closes. There’s no cash alternative to the prize, and no correspondence will be entered into.
All that remains is for you to tell us about your favourite crime book of the past 12 months by commenting below: