Friday, October 19, 2012

Irish author Gene Kerrigan wins Gold Dagger for crime novel of the year


Judges described The Rage as 'a complex noir thriller that's multi-layered and solidly written, with great style and pace'

Veteran Irish journalist Gene Kerrigan has won the Gold Dagger for the best crime novel of the year for The Rage, a "suspense driven storm of violence" set in the backstreets of Dublin.

Kerrigan's novel, which beat books by MR Hall, Chris Womersley and NJ Cooper to take the £2,500 prize, intertwines the stories of professional thief Vincent Naylor, just out of jail and planning a new robbery, and detective Bob Tidey, investigating the murder of a banker. When Tidey is tipped off by a retired nun that there is something suspicious happening on her Dublin street, violence ensues.
"A complex noir thriller that's multi-layered and solidly written, with great style and pace," said the award's judges, who included booksellers, academics and authors. "The depiction of post-crash Dublin has a real sense of menace and threat throughout."

Kerrigan was presented with his prize at the Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards this evening, an event which also saw Charles Cumming win the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for best thriller for his novel A Foreign Country, beating Robert Harris. Recounting the fallout when the first female head of MI6, Amelia Levene, disappears six weeks before she is due to start her new job, judges said Cumming had a "gripping premise, expertly sustained, lots of believable spycraft and memorable supporting characters".

The Crime Writers Association's John Creasey New Blood Dagger went to American author Wiley Cash for A Land More Kind Than Home, the chilling story of an evil pastor and the nine-year-old who sees his autistic brother smothered during a church service. Judges called it "a potent mix of religion, fundamentalism and murder in America's Deep South", and "a powerfully written study of the places religious fanaticism can lead you".

Peter James, who won the Bestseller Dagger last year and is chair of the CWA, said there was no other prize he would rather have taken. "I really do think the quality of entries in the Daggers this year is quite exceptional ... There is this perception that there is a split between quality fiction and crime fiction, [but] this is the highest quality of English literature," he said. "The one thing good crime writing does more than any other genre is look at and examine the world we live in. No one sees more of human life in a 30-year career than a police officer."

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