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Jul
Best-selling authors gather in Harrogate as crime writing festival begins
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Hunted by Abir Mukherjee was named crime novel of the year on the opening night of the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate.
The event, which runs until Sunday at the Old Swan, is the UK’s most prestigious crime fiction award and attracts many leading authors from the genre.
It is the biggest festival run each year by the arts charity Harrogate International Festival, with 19,000 tickets sold this year.
Simon Theakston, chairman of sponsors T&R Theakston, presented the prize to Mr Mukherjee at an awards event hosted by the arts broadcaster Mark Lawson last night (July 17).
Besides £3,000, he won an engraved beer cask handcrafted by one of Britain’s last coopers from Theakston’s brewery.
Hunted is a topical thriller set in London and the US in the final week of a toxic presidential campaign. Mr Mukherjee, whose crime novels also include the Wyndham & Banerjee series set in 1920s India, said:
Hunted was a tough book to write – it took me four years — and it's such a privilege that the judges and the readers have taken it to their hearts. It means so much to me.
The shortlist also included The Cracked Mirror by Chris Brookmyre, The Mercy Chair by M.W. Craven, The Last Word by Elly Griffiths, Deadly Animals by Marie Tierney and All the Colours of the Dark by Chris Whitaker.
The McDermid debut award, named in recognition of crime writer Val McDermid, was won by David Goodman for A Reluctant Spy. Festival regular Ms McDermid who presented the award, described the novel as “a sparkling new entry in the canon, with a vivid and unfamiliar setting as well as a gripping cast of characters”.
Bestselling novelist Elly Griffiths, author of the Dr Ruth Galloway Mysteries, received the outstanding contribution award in recognition of her remarkable crime fiction writing career.
Previous winners include Sir Ian Rankin, Lynda La Plante, James Patterson, John Grisham, Lee Child, Val McDermid, P.D. James, Michael Connelly and last year’s recipient, Martina Cole.
The line up at this year’s festival includes Lee and Andrew Child, Irvine Welsh, Attica Locke, Kate Atkinson, Paula Hawkins, Kate Mosse, Steph McGovern, Val McDermid and Mark Billingham.
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