Graeme Macrae Burnet’s acclaimed conclusion to the Inspector Gorski trilogy, A CASE OF MATRICIDE, has been shortlisted for this year’s Ned Kelly Awards. Run by the Australian Crime Writers Association, the Ned Kelly Awards are Australia’s oldest and most prestigious honours for the best crime fiction and true crime writing published in Australia. A CASE OF MATRICIDE, published by Text Publishing in Australia in October 2024, is recognised in this year’s Best International Crime Fiction category, alongside fellow nominees Michael Bennett, David McCloskey, Charity Norman, Jacqueline Bublitz and Michael Connelly. The winner, who will follow in the footsteps of recent honourees Adrian McKinty, Chris Whitaker, Nita Prose and Louise Candlish, will be revealed in September.
A CASE OF MATRICIDE – in which small-town French police inspector Georges Gorski must investigate the overlapping paths of a deceased business magnate, a shadowy stranger with no apparent reason to be there, and the titular threat of familial murder – sees Graeme receive his second nomination at the Ned Kelly Awards, having also been recognised for his Booker-longlisted standalone CASE STUDY in 2022.
Alongside Text Publishing, A CASE OF MATRICIDE was published in North America by Biblioasis and, most recently, as a paperback in the UK by Saraband in May 2025. The audiobook edition is published by Bolinda, and rights have sold to Impedimenta in Spain. Graeme will return this autumn with his new novella BENBECULA, the latest entry in Polygon’s Darkland Tales series, in which Scotland’s best writers reimagine moments from the country’s past – Polygon, Biblioasis and Text will all publish in October 2025.
Congratulations Graeme!
About A CASE OF MATRICIDE
In the unremarkable French town of Saint-Louis, a mysterious stranger stalks the streets; an elderly woman believes her son is planning to do away with her; a prominent manufacturer drops dead. Between visits to the town’s bars, Chief Inspector Georges Gorski mulls over the connections, if any, between these events, while all the time grappling with his own domestic and existential demons.
Graeme Macrae Burnet pierces the respectable bourgeois façade of small-town life in this deeply human story. He draws a wry humour from the tiniest of details and delves into the darkest recesses of his characters’ minds to present a fascinating puzzle that blurs the boundaries between suspect, investigator and reader in an entertaining, profound and moving novel.
Credit: Euan Anderson
About Graeme Macrae Burnet
Graeme Macrae Burnet was born in Kilmarnock, Ayrshire and now lives in Glasgow. He has also lived in the Czech Republic, France, Portugal and London.
His first novel, THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ADÈLE BEDEAU (Contraband, 2014), received a New Writer’s Award from the Scottish Book Trust and was longlisted for the Waverton Good Read Award. A second Inspector Gorski novel, THE ACCIDENT ON THE A35, was published in 2017, and the trilogy was completed in 2024 with the ‘tragic, cinematic, propulsive' (Martin MacInnes) A CASE OF MATRICIDE.
HIS BLOODY PROJECT (Contraband, 2015) won the Saltire Society Fiction Book of the Year Award and the Vrij Nederland Thriller of the Year, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the LA Times Mystery Book of the Year and the European Crime Fiction prize. It has been published in over twenty languages. CASE STUDY was published in 2021 by Saraband (UK), Text (ANZ) and Bolinda (UK audio) to wide critical acclaim. The North American edition was published in 2022 by Biblioasis. It has been longlisted for the Booker Prize 2022 and the Dublin Literary Award, and shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize and Ned Kelly International Crime Prize. It has been published in fifteen languages.
Graeme was named Author of the Year in the 2017 Sunday Herald Culture Awards and has appeared at festivals and events in Australia, New Zealand, the US, Canada, Russia, Estonia, Macau, Ireland, Germany, Poland and France, as well as in the UK.
Praise for A CASE OF MATRICIDE
‘A dizzyingly immersive experience. Macrae Burnet’s Gorski novels were already a significant achievement, but the concluding part is breathtaking – tragic, cinematic, propulsive – and marks a new standard in contemporary crime fiction.’ – Martin MacInnes, Booker-longlisted author of IN ASCENSION
‘Burnet plays metafictional games, but the book pulls off the rare double of being emotionally involving as well as teasingly tricksy.’ – Jake Kerridge, 5* review, The Telegraph
‘Brilliantly weird.’ – Paula Hawkins, author of THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN
‘I’ve long appreciated the way Burnet’s novels are in conversation with earlier times… min[ing] the postmodern era without pretense and with deep respect… You can gulp down A CASE OF MATRICIDE in one sitting, as the prose style seems to demand. But linger over Burnet’s novel, and its real pleasures emerge.’ – Sarah Weinman, New York Times
‘A CASE OF MATRICIDE demonstrates literary talent of the highest order… Details of place are especially rich, and the subtle mores of the small town are reflected in Gorski’s misguided incorruptibility… few writers can rival Burnet.’ – Andrew Rosenheim, The Spectator
‘Macrae Burnet brings a slyly playful quality to his reimagining of the classic police procedural… and here delivers a wickedly funny novel that owes as much of a debt to Albert Camus as it does to Georges Simenon.’ – Declan Burke, Irish Times
‘Burnet has proved to be a durable talent, and A CASE OF MATRICIDE continues his upwards trajectory… this final book in a trilogy is a triumph.’ – Barry Forshaw, Financial Times
‘Graeme Macrae Burnet’s A CASE OF MATRICIDE finished up his Gorski trilogy with all the Kafkaesque shenanigans, paranoia and observational bathos you could wish for. It’s an incredibly fun, cleverly crafted novel that works on so many levels I can even forgive him for being a postmodernist.’ – Eimear McBride, The New Statesman, ‘Books of the Year 2024’
Visit Graeme’s website.