Peter James wins Crime Writers’ Association Diamond Dagger award

This week, acclaimed British writer Peter James has received one of the most prestigious awards in crime writing, the CWA Diamond Dagger. The award is given out annually to  one writer in recognition of excellence and success across their whole career.

Author of the bestselling, much-loved Roy Grace series as well as a number of gripping standalone novels, Peter has been published in 37 languages and has won a number of many international awards including the US Barry Award for Best British Crime Novel in 2012. In 2015 he was voted by WH Smith readers as The Best Crime Author of All Time.

James Runcie, making the opening speech of the Crime Awards evening, managed to reference almost all of Peter’s Roy Grace titles in a very funny sequence that had the whole room laughing.

Chair of the Crime Writers’ Association Len Tyler said that Peter James combines up-to-the-minute accuracy with tight plotting and a fast pace and he considers James to be the King of the Police Procedural.

Peter said he was ‘thrilled and immensely proud’ to win the award, adding: ‘Thanks to all of you at the wonderful Crime Writers Association for giving me an honour which, when I was first published all those years back, was one I could only dream of and never ever believed could one day become a reality.’

Following YOU ARE DEAD, Peter’s 11th novel in the bestselling Roy Grace series which sat for five weeks at the top of the UK bestseller chart, Peter’s new novel LOVE YOU DEAD will be published in paperback 20 October 2016. This new gripping read sees Roy Grace come up against black widow Jodie Bentley, perhaps his most venomous adversary yet.

Peter has also recently launched his own ‘author crime-hub’ YouTube channel, Peter James TV. The channel will feature exclusive interviews with household names in crime including RL Stine, Martina Cole, Lee Child and Paula Hawkins, as well as behind the scenes research footage for his bestselling Roy Grace series.

Praise for Peter James

'Peter James is one of the best crime writers in the business.' – Karin Slaughter

'Exceptional, knock-your-socks-off.' – Washington Post

‘Sinister and riveting… Peter James is one of the best British crime writers, and therefore one of the best in the world.’ – Lee Child

Find out more about Peter James at Blake Friedmann's, Pan Macmillan's and Peter’s websites and follow him on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

ICARUS by Deon Meyer in the USA – and the rise of FEVER

ICARUS, the number one bestseller by Deon Meyer, is out now in paperback in the USA from Grove Atlantic. Translated into English by K.L. Seegers, ICARUS shot to the number one position in the South African charts after its release in Afrikaans, and was shortlisted for the Nielsen Booksellers’ Choice Award. The fifth (and what The Times describes as the best) of Meyer’s Benny Griessel series, ICARUS is a breathlessly-paced crime novel rich in in character and its setting against the backdrop of the South African wine industry.

ICARUS is published in the US with Grove Atlantic, and has also been sold in South Africa, the UK, Holland, France, Germany, Italy, the Czech Republic, Norway, Spain and Sweden, with Deon’s books sold in more than 27 countries overall.

After 602 days dry, Captain Benny Griessel of the South African police services can't take any more tragedy.  So when he is called in to investigate a multiple homicide, it pushes him close to breaking point – a former friend and detective colleague has shot his wife and two daughters, then killed himself. Benny wants out – out of his job, his home and his relationship with his singer girlfriend, Alexa. He moves into a hotel and starts drinking. Again.

But Benny's unique talent is urgently required to help investigate another crime – the high profile murder of Ernst Richter, MD of a new tech start-up, Alibi, whose body is discovered buried in the sand dunes north of Cape Town. Alibi is a service that creates false appointments, documents and phone calls to enable people to cheat on their partners. It has made Richter one of the most notorious people in South Africa. Can Benny pull together the strands of his life in time to catch the killer?

Deon Meyer’s thrilling standalone novel FEVER was recently published in South Africa in Afrikaans (titled KOORS) by Tafelberg. A gripping, epic narrative of survival in a world struck by ‘The Fever’, with the mystery of a murder as well, it also raced to Number One in Afrikaans where it topped the lists for 6 weeks, and has remained in the Top Ten for more than ten weeks. See more on Deon Meyer’s site here.

FEVER will be published in May 2017 in the Netherlands and June 2017 in the UK and Deon Meyer will also be writing the gift book for the 2017 Crime & Thriller book weeks in the Netherlands. Previous authors selected include Stephen King, Dick Francis and Ian Rankin.

Praise for ICARUS

‘Deon Meyer is one of the best crime writers on the planet.’ – Mail on Sunday

‘South African author Deon Meyer's Benny Griessel series is one of the high points of contemporary crime fiction, and the fifth title, ICARUS, is his best yet... expertly engineered.’ – Laura Wilson, The Guardian

‘Don’t be surprised if you start to see gaggles of foreigners on the city’s streets clutching well-thumbed paperbacks and talking darkly of murder and mayhem. Such is the growing popularity overseas of Deon Meyer... the tight structure of the novels, which weave simultaneous narrative strands in punchy gobbets of action and suspense are also very filmic.’ – Tim Butcher, Cape Argus

‘A master on vintage form… He is a defining novelist of modern South Africa.’ – Barry Forshaw, The Independent

About Deon Meyer

Deon Meyer lives in Cape Town. His books are published in 27 countries, and have been awarded many prizes around the world: the Deutsche Krimi Prize in Germany, the ATKV Prize in South Africa, and Le Grand Prix de Littérature Policière and Le Prix Mystère de la Critique in France. His novel THIRTEEN HOURS was shortlisted for the 2010 CWA International Dagger, and HEART OF THE HUNTER, was longlisted for the 2005 IMPAC Prize and selected as one of Chicago Tribune's '10 best mysteries and thrillers of 2004'. Most recently, the spectacular COBRA was shortlisted for the 2015 CWA International Dagger.

Visit Deon’s website, or read more on the Blake Friedmann website.

Follow Deon on Twitter @MeyerDeon.

INFERNO by Julian Stockwin published today

INFERNO, the seventeenth novel in Julian Stockwin’s popular KYDD series, is published in hardback in the UK 6 October 2016 with Hodder and Stoughton.

The page-turning, sea-blasted KYDD series has been published in 7 countries including the UK, the US, Germany, France, Japan, the Czech Republic, and Russia.

1807. Captain Sir Thomas Kydd's famous sea action aboard Tyger has snatched his reputation from ignominy. He is the hero of the hour. But though Britain's Navy remains imperious, a succession of battles has seen Napoleon victorious on mainland Europe.

In an attempt to prevent the French from taking control of Denmark's navy, Kydd's great friend Nicholas Renzi - now Lord Farndon - is sent on a desperate diplomatic mission to persuade the Danes to give up their fleet to Britain. But the Danes are caught between two implacable forces and will not yield, opting instead for the inferno of battle.

Read an excerpt of INFERNO.

Julian Stockwin is also the author of the fascinating MOMENTS IN HISTORY series, gripping historical fiction which examines and reimagines the turning points of the past. THE POWDER OF DEATH, a heart-pounding novel based around the invention of gunpowder, was published with Allison & Busby 18 August 2016. A free excerpt is available online.

Praise for the KYDD series

‘I was soon turning over the pages almost indecently fast’ – The Independent

‘From the very first novel KYDD Stockwin climbed the dizzy heights of the bestseller lists and has stayed there ever since.’ – Craig Cabell, Book Collector and Magazine

‘Historical fiction is a tricky beast. As a writer you have to keep your history in proper shape while combining it with a narrative that someone actually wants to read. Score two out of two for Julian Stockwin...It is engrossing.’ – The Daily Mail

About Julian Stockwin

At 14 Stockwin joined a tough sea-training school, followed by the Royal Navy, transferring to the Royal Australian Navy when his family emigrated.  He saw active service in the Far East, the Antarctic, the South Seas and Vietnam, and was on board the Melbourne at the time of its disastrous peace time collision with the Voyager.  Later he worked for NATO on the strategic deployment of merchant shipping.

Find out more about Julian on the Blake Friedmann website or Julian’s website.

Follow Julian on Twitter @julianstockwin.

Jesse Loncraine's IN THE FIELD acquired by Blue Mark Books

Blue Mark Books will publish IN THE FIELD, a powerful and affecting novel by debut author Jesse Loncraine.

Editorial Director Toby Fountaine bought UK rights from Juliet Pickering at Blake Friedmann, for publication in April 2017.

IN THE FIELD follows Orin Perth, who disappears in East Africa after delivering a devastating article on Christine Lokeka, whose 12 year-old son, Paul, has been snatched by the militia that left her husband dead. Orin’s mother Liz, a hardened war reporter, embarks on a search to find her estranged son, enlisting the help of Christine. As Liz and Christine deal with their sons’ disappearances, Orin and Paul struggle to stay alive without losing their humanity in the process. IN THE FIELD grapples with the dilemmas of conflict journalism, and how far familial bonds will stretch when lives are at stake.

Jesse Loncraine, a short story writer for The White Review and former student of Violence, Conflict and Development at SOAS, has worked on documentaries about war crimes from Colombia and Guatemala to Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. In East Africa, he partnered with the International Criminal Court on outreach, disseminating information on the Court’s cases to affected communities.

Toby Fountaine said: 'This fantastic debut novel grabbed me in the first few paragraphs, and it didn’t let me go until I’d finished it. It still hasn’t. It’s a gripping story, and deals with some tough moral dilemmas. The characters and setting are wonderfully rendered by Jesse, and I found it very moving: he captures the relationships between two mothers and their sons brilliantly. And between the story, the drama, and all the emotion that comes with them, IN THE FIELD is simply a joy to read, sentence by sentence, because Jesse’s writing is bold, striking and often beautiful.'

Jesse Loncraine said: 'For all the newspaper articles and history books I have read about violent conflicts around the world, none were as powerful as hearing a single woman relate her experiences of war. That gap in experience—that tension between reportage and reality—became one of my central concerns when I started writing IN THE FIELD. Ironically, it was through a work of fiction that I felt best able to explore the dilemma of how we, as writers, tell other people’s stories. I never found a comfortable answer; I suspect there isn’t one. But with IN THE FIELD I hope I am at least able to pose the question—through the intimate stories of two mothers and their sons—in a compelling way. I am very grateful to Juliet for taking a leap of faith in signing me when this book was just a short story, and to Toby at Blue Mark Books for choosing to publish it.'

Juliet Pickering said: 'Jesse’s writing talent stood out from the first time I read his short stories. I’m delighted to have matched this striking, provocative debut with the ambition of Blue Mark Books. It’s vital we publish fiction that challenges as well as transports us, and Jesse’s is an important new voice.'

Read more about Jesse.

Orenda Books signs THE OTHER TWIN, a dark, sexy debut psychological thriller

Lucy V. Hay's debut thriller THE OTHER TWIN has been acquired by Karen Sullivan of Orenda Books in a two-book World English Language deal negotiated with Hattie Grünewald. Orenda is delighted to publish in early 2018.

Karen says: ‘This is a book whose premise grabbed me from the outset, and the writing, sublime and complex plotting, and very contemporary setting and storyline made it stand out from the rest. THE OTHER TWIN focuses on twenty-something Poppy and her quest to find out the truth behind the death of her sister India, who has fallen to her death from a bridge over the London to Brighton railway. Taking the reader into the lanes of Brighton, into the city’s gay scene and well-heeled families, THE OTHER TWIN is not just a fabulously layered, dark and twisty psychological thriller, but also an expose of the social media generation, where resentments, attachments and accusations are all played out online and identities are made and remade according to what is convenient or expedient at the time. This is an exceptionally relevant thriller, with an unforgettable cast of characters, a relentless tension and a chilling denouement, and Lucy is an unbelievably talented writer. I am looking forward to see her soar in the Orenda stable, and could not be more excited to welcome her to the team.'

Hattie says: ‘Lucy and Karen make a dynamic team and THE OTHER TWIN is a wonderful debut – dark, sexy and with twists you won’t see coming. I’m very excited to see Orenda publish.'

Lucy says: ‘I'm delighted to be working with Karen. As a crime fiction fan I've loved Orenda's output, so feel THE OTHER TWIN couldn't be in better hands.’

THE OTHER TWIN will be published in early 2018. For more information, please contact Karen@orendabooks.co.uk.

Read more about Lucy and follow her on Twitter.