Though it doesn’t have the muscle of Amazon, the Canadian company Kobo – which sells its digital ereaders as an alternative to the Kindle – is doing all it can to support crime writers in the Great White North. This year it launches the inaugural Kobo Emerging Writer Awards and the mystery shortlist is a great source of leads if you like discovering new authors. The winner will get $10,000.
First up there’s A Quiet Kill by Janet Brons – a murder mystery set in London and involving a team-up between a Scotland Yard detective and a mountie. The Monarch, a thriller by Jack Soren is about an art thief drawn into a murder mystery by two brutal slayings. Then there’s Cipher by John Jantunen which sees a former high school football star returning home from Afghanistan to Regina, Saskatchewan to mourn the death of a young girl. Thing is, it looks more and more to him like the girl was murdered. A Siege of Bitterns by Steve Burrows is the first Birder Murder novel and involves the death of a prominent environmentalist. And finally, the shortlist includes The Last of the Independents by Sam Wiebe, which is the first of the Vancouver Noir novels and it’s about a young PI who’s haunted by a missing persons case he failed to solve.
The winner will be announced on 7 June. It’s also worth noting that the Writers of Canada Arthur Ellis Awards for crime fiction are announced on 28 May. Watch for our story on this. For more information about the Kobo Emerging Writer Awards, click here.