A few days ago at the Arts and Letters Club in Toronto, Canada celebrated its finest crime authors with the annual Arthur Ellis Awards. It’s a set of gongs given out by The Crime Writers of Canada and is named after the pseudonym used by Canada’s official hangman. The name was first used by Arthur B English in his role as executioner, and was handed down to each new hangman thereafter. The award, therefore, is a wooden model of a hanged man.

Anyhow, what you want to know is who won and here they are…

Best Novel went to CC Humphreys for Plague, while Best First Novel went to Steve Burrows for A Siege of Bitterns which is also up for a Kobo Emerging Writers award this year. The Lou Allin Memorial Novella Award goes to Jason R Petrin who penned A Knock on the Door for Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, and the worldwide sensation who is Margaret Atwood won the Best Short Story hangman for Stone Mattress. Canada is a bilingual nation and Andrée Michaud’s Bondrée won Best Book in French. The Juvenile/YA gong went to Sigmund Brouwer for Dead Man’s Switch while the Unhanged Arthur, which is for unpublished crime novels, was won by Elle Wild for Strange Things Done.

Congratulations to all the winners.

For more crime fiction from the Great White North click here.