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AustLit

Best Novel
or Best Crime
Subcategory of Ned Kelly Awards for Crime Writing
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Latest Winners / Recipients

Year: 2021

winner y separately published work icon Consolation Garry Disher , Melbourne : Text Publishing , 2020 19549694 2020 single work novel crime

'Winter in Tiverton.

'Constable Paul Hirschhausen has a snowdropper on his patch. Someone is stealing women’s underwear, and Hirsch knows enough about that kind of crime—how it can escalate—not to take it lightly.

'But the more immediate concern is a high school teacher worried about one of the students.

'A little girl in danger. A family on the edge. An absent father who isn’t where he’s supposed to be.

'The cold, seeping feeling something is very, very wrong.' (Publication summary)

Year: 2020

winner y separately published work icon The Wife and the Widow Christian White , Melbourne : Affirm Press , 2019 16866544 2019 single work novel mystery thriller

'Set against the backdrop of an eerie island town in the dead of winter, THE WIFE AND THE WIDOW is a mystery/thriller told from two perspectives: Kate, a widow whose grief is compounded by what she learns about her dead husband's secret life; and Abby, an island local whose world is turned upside down when she's forced to confront the evidence that her husband is a murderer. But nothing on this island is quite as it seems, and only when these women come together can they discover the whole story about the men in their lives.' (Publication summary)

Year: 2019

winner y separately published work icon The Lost Man Jane Harper , Sydney : Pan Macmillan Australia , 2018 14706327 2018 single work novel crime

'The man lay still in the centre of a dusty grave under a monstrous sky.

'Two brothers meet at the border of their vast cattle properties under the unrelenting sun of outback Queensland.

'They are at the stockman's grave, a landmark so old, no one can remember who is buried there. But today, the scant shadow it casts was the last chance for their middle brother, Cameron.

'The Bright family's quiet existence is thrown into grief and anguish. Something had been troubling Cameron. Did he lose hope and walk to his death? Because if he didn't, the isolation of the outback leaves few suspects...'

Source: publisher's blurb.

Year: 2018

winner y separately published work icon Crossing the Lines Sulari Gentill , Neutral Bay : Pantera Press , 2017 11455446 2017 single work novel

'When Madeleine d’Leon conjures Ned McGinnity as the hero in her latest crime novel, she makes him a serious writer simply because the irony of a protagonist who’d never lower himself to read the story in which he stars, amuses her. When Ned McGinnity creates Madeleine d’Leon, she is his literary device, a writer of detective fiction who is herself a mystery to be unravelled. As Ned and Madeleine play out their own lives while writing the other’s story, they find themselves crossing the lines that divide the real and the imagined. This is a story about two people trying to hold onto each other beyond reality.' (Publication summary)

Year: 2017

winner y separately published work icon Police at the Station and They Don't Look Friendly Adrian McKinty , London : Serpent's Tail , 2017 10406617 2017 single work novel crime

'Belfast 1988: a man has been shot in the back with an arrow. It ain't Injuns and it isn't Robin Hood. But uncovering exactly who has done it will take Detective Inspector Sean Duffy down his most dangerous road yet, a road that leads to a lonely clearing on the high bog where three masked gunmen will force Duffy to dig his own grave. Hunted by forces unknown, threatened by Internal Affairs and with his relationship on the rocks, Duffy will need all his wits to get out of this investigation in one piece.' (Publication summary)

Works About this Award

Lauded for Work, Crime Writer Lord Cast the First Stein Jason Steger , 2012 single work column
— Appears in: The Age , 30 August 2012; (p. 14)
Crime Book Nabs Award 2010 single work column
— Appears in: The Advertiser , 4 September 2010; (p. 5)
Crime Writer Breaks into Major League with Winning Tale Gia Metherell , 2009 single work column
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 29 August 2009; (p. 9)
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