Davitt Awards 2013: record 61 books on longlist

The Sisters in Crime Australia have a record 61 Books in contention for the 13th Davitt Awards (2013) for the best crime books by Australian women.

Six Davitt Awards will be presented at a gala dinner on 31 August by leading New Zealand crime writer, Vanda Symon, at the Thornbury Theatre in Melbourne: Best Novel (Adult); Best Novel (Children’s and Young Adult); Best True Crime Book; Best Debut Book (any category); Readers’ Choice (as voted by the 600 members of Sisters in Crime Australia).

See more details and the longlist here.

Australian Sisters in Crime 2010 Davitt Awards

Australia's 2010 Davitt Awards were announced at a dinner at the Melbourne Writer's Festival on August 30.
This year is the 10th anniversary of the awards.

The winners were
Best Adult Crime Novel: Sharp Shooter, Marianne Delacourt

Children's & YA Adult Fiction - Liar, Justine Larbalestier

True Crime - Lady Killer, Candace Sutton and Ellen Connolly

Readers Choice - FORBIDDEN FRUIT, Kerry Greenwood

The longlists were

Adult Fiction

• Sharp Shooter by Marianne Delacourt
• Forbidden Fruit by Kerry Greenwood
• Red Dust by Fleur McDonald
• Steel River by Antoinette Eklund
• Dark Country by Bronwyn Parry
• The Labyrinth of Drowning by Alex Palmer
• Too Many Murders by Colleen McCulloch
• A Beautiful Death by Fiona McIntosh
• Siren by Tara Moss
• Gene Thieves by Maria Quinn
• Gladiatrix by Rhonda Roberts
• Move to Strike by Sydney Bauer
• Pearl in A Cage by Joy Dettman
• Bloodborn by Kathryn Fox
• The Killing Hands by PD Martin
• The Devil’s Staircase by Helen Fitzgerald
• Riding High by Emma Boling
• Red Queen by H.M. Brown
• Ghost Child: The Past Is Always Close Behind by Caroline Overington
• Black Ice by Leah Giarrantano
• Pestle & Mortar by Carol Gibson

Children's and Young Adult Fiction

• The Reformed Vampire Support Group by Catherine Jinks
• Genius Wars by Catherine Jinks
• Liar by Justine Larbalestier
• Hedgeburners: An A~Z Mystery by Goldie Alexander
• Pop Princess by Isabelle Merlin
• Cupid’s Arrow by Isabelle Merlin
• Conspiracy 365 - January by Gabrielle Lord
• The Walk Right in Detective Agency – Bad News for Milk Bay by Moya Simons
• The Walk Right in Detective Agency – On the Case The Walk by Moya Simons
• The Walk Right in Detective Agency – Mischief Afoot by Moya Simons

True Crime

• Lady Killer: How Conman Bruce Burrell Kidnapped and Killed Rich Women for Their Money by Candace Sutton and Ellen Connolly
• A Greater Guilt: Constance Emilie Kent and the Road Murder by Noelene Kyle
• Crime Time: Australians Behaving Badly by Sue Bursztynski
• Salvation – The True Story of Rod Braybon’s Fight for Justice by Vikki Petraitis
• Hotel Kerobokan: The Shocking Inside Story of Bali's Most Notorious Jail by Kathryn Bonella
• Lambs to the Slaughter by Debi Marshall
• Blood Brother: Justice at Last by Robin Bowles
• Outside the Law 3 by Lindy Cameron (ed)
• Forensic Investigator: True Stories from the Life of a Country Crime Scene Cop by Esther Mckay

Davitt Awards 2009

Embargoed to 10pm, Friday August 21, 2009

Media Release: ANNOUNCING THE WINNERS OF 9th DAVITT AWARDS

This year 39 crime books competed for the Davitt Awards which were set up by Sisters in Crime in 2001 to celebrate the achievements of Australian women crime writers. Justice Betty King presented the awards to a crowd of 140 at the Celtic Club. For the third year running, the awards were sponsored by the Victoria Police Museum.


A Beautiful Place To Die (PanMacmillan), the debut novel by Sydney-based filmmaker turned crime writer, Malla Nunn, tonight won Sisters in Crime’s Davitt Awards for the best (adult) crime novel by an Australian woman in 2008.

Blue Mountains writer Catherine Jinks took out the Davitt (young adult) for Genius Squad (Allen & Unwin)



Melbourne’s Chloe Hooper won the Davitt (true crime) for much-awarded The Tall Man: Death and Life on Palm Island (Penguin Books Australia).


The Davitt Reader’s Choice (as voted by the members of Sisters in Crime) went to last year’s Davitt (Adult Fiction) winner, Gold Coast writer Katherine Howell, for her second novel, The Darkest Hour.


The judging panel comprised Dr Shelley Robertson (Sisters in Crime member, forensic pathologist), Rosi Tovey (former owner of Chronicles Bookshop in St Kilda), Dr Sue Turnbull (Head of Media Studies, La Trobe University, Sisters in Crime national co-convenor and Sydney Morning Herald crime columnist), Sylvia Loader (Sisters in Crime national co-convenor, and reviewer) Tanya King (reviewer and former Sisters in Crime national co-convenor).

The awards are named after Ellen Davitt (1812-1879) who wrote Australia’s first mystery novel, Force and Fraud, in 1865.

For a complete list of nominations see the Sisters in Crime website.

Australian Made, Born, Bred, and Written

My friend Bernadette over at her newly created blog Reactions to Reading has reminded me of what hurdles we sometimes have to jump to locate a specific book in Australian crime fiction.

At yet we demonstrably have world-class writers, and a number of writers who are stretching the boundaries of crime fiction.
Bernadette recommends Aust crime fiction as a starting point because it lists several hundred Australian writers and almost all of them have written at least one mystery. As it happens, Aust crime fiction is one of the sites that I contribute reviews to as do Helen of It's Criminal, Sunnie on her Book Blog, and Sally who "lives" at Books and Musings from DownUnder.

If you want some starting points in my blog, click on the "Australian made" logo for links to all mentions of "Australian author" in my blog.
Earlier this year Karen Chisholm (of the Aust Crime Fiction weblog), Damien Gay (of Crime DownUnder) and Perry Middlemiss (of Matilda) produced Australian Crime Fiction Snapshots in which they interviewed 36 Australian crime fiction authors. They certainly made me aware of authors I had never even heard of, and it was refreshing to read interviews with those who were already favourites. Start with my final blog posting about the project, and it will lead you to the others.

At the beginning of July I hosted Carnival of Criminal Minds #18 and produced quite a comprehensive list for you to explore. Since then we've had the Davitt Awards, and the Ned Kelly Awards.

And then, if you'd really like to be part of a group that discusses Australian crime fiction, then you could join oz_mystery_readers, a Yahoo group that focusses on crime fiction available in Australia, and highlights Australian authors and books.

Katherine Howell wins Davitt Award for FRANTIC

The Davitt Awards, presented in Melbourne on Friday 10th October 2008, are presented annually by Sisters in Crime Australia for the best crime novel by an Australian woman published in the previous year. This year there were 41 nominees in three categories, adult, young adult and true crime, as well as a readers' choice award.

The winners:

• Katherine Howell's FRANTIC won the best crime novel by an Australian woman writer in 2007. This novel was also shortlisted for the Ned Kelly Award. My review of Katherine's latest: THE DARKEST HOUR. Sally's review of FRANTIC is here.
  
• Mandy Sayer won the young adult prize for THE NIGHT HAS A THOUSAND EYES.
• Best True Crime went to KILLING JODIE by Janette Fife-Yeomans
• The readers choice award, voted on by Sisters Members when to Lindy Cameron for her editing of SCARLET STILETTO: THE FIRST CUT, which is a collection of stories that have won prizes in the Scarlet Stiletto awards - the Sisters own crime award designed to encourage and assist up and coming writers in particular.
  

This year's nominees for best crime novel were:

* Sydney Bauer, Gospel (Pan Macmillan)
* Joyce Berendes, The Fourteenth Day (Zeus)
* Robin Bowles, The Curse of the Golden Yo-Yo (The Five Mile Press)
* Lindy Cameron, Redback (Mira)
* Lindy Cameron, ed., Scarlet Stiletto – The First Cut (Mira)
* Lauren Crow, Bye Bye Baby (HarperCollins)
* Kathryn Fox, Skin and Bone (Pan Macmillan)
* Liz Filleul, To All Appearance Dead (Bettany Books)
* Leah Giarrantano, Vodka Doesn’t Freeze (Random House)
* Jane Goodall, The Calling (Hachette Livre)
* Alison Goodman, Killing the Rabbit (Random House/Bantam)
* Kerry Greenwood, Trick or Treats (Allen & Unwin)
* Kerry Greenwood, A Question of Death (Allen & Unwin)
* Sheridan Hay, The Secret of Lost Things (HarperCollins/4th Estate)
* Katherine Howell, Frantic (Pan Macmillan)
* Janette Turner Hospital, Orpheus Lost (HarperCollins/4th Estate)
* Dorothy Johnston, Eden (Wakefield Press)
* Wendy Laing, Cock of the Walk (Writers Exchange E-publishing)
* Wendy Laing, Severance Packages (Writers Exchange E-publishing)
* Gabrielle Lord, Shattered (Hachette Livre)
* Pat Noad, Rockhound (Zeus)
* Susan Parisi, Blood of Dreams (Penquin/Viking)
* Dorothy Porter, El Dorado (Pan Macmillan/Picador)
* Leigh Redhead, Cherry Pie (Allen & Unwin)
* Mandy Sayers, The Night Has a Thousand Eyes (HarperCollins)
* Felicity Young, An Easeful Death (Fremantle Arts Centre Press)

DIRTY WEEKEND, Gabrielle Lord

Jack McCain is the acting chief scientist in the Criminalistics section of the Australian Federal Police. As a supervisor, he is supposed to be delegating more, and certainly not answering calls to crime scenes. And yet here he is, in the carpark of Canberra’s Blackspot Nightclub, where the body of a former colleague has been found. So begins the first case in Gabrielle Lord’s DIRTY WEEKEND.

Jack McCain, former alcoholic, is now a workaholic who has trouble building relationships with people because he lets his work rule his life. He runs from intimacy, from revealing his hopes and fears. His relationship with Iona, who has moved from Sydney to live with him, is in danger of collapse because he constantly puts work first. His first marriage collapsed for the same reason, and his children have become used to his absence from their lives. But Jack strongly believes in what he is doing and that makes it nigh impossible for him to work 9 to 5.

Just as Jack is preparing to go home at the end of a long day, the second case emerges. The head of Canberra’s Agricultural Research Station contacts Jack with a delicate situation involving two of his research scientists. Their work is straightforward agricultural research on rabbit control, involving highly infectious materials, supposedly only dangerous if you are a rabbit. Claire Dimitriou is not to be found although her car is in the car park, and the door to the secure area appears to be open. Jack discovers Dimitriou’s body on the floor of a lab that has been meticulously steam-cleaned. That and the fact that her research partner Peter Yu has gone missing, their research log has gone, and that the lab no longer houses any of the research rabbits, rings alarm bells. At least a couple of people witnessed Peter and Claire in the lab arguing vehemently, she in tears, and he very angry.

DIRTY WEEKEND presents one puzzle after another. Two strands of investigation become many, including a twenty-year old cold case. The reader is right with Jack McCain, reading crime scenes, evaluating evidence, drawing conclusions. Gabrielle Lord’s detailed research is evident both in the development of the novel’s main themes, and the technologies used in the forensic investigations. Jack solves cases with a mixture of careful forensic investigation, memories of earlier cases, and intuition.

DIRTY WEEKEND is in many ways a brave novel. Gabrielle Lord determinedly uses Australian colloquialisms, carefully describes Australian settings, and places Australian events, and Australian scientific research, in a world setting. Watch out also for Lord’s quirky sense of humour seen in Faithful Bunnies, Terminator Rabbit, a thief called the “giant chicken”, and even in the book’s title.

13 novels in 10 years is no mean feat, and in that time Gabrielle has collected 2 awards: The Ned Kelly Award for best novel in 2002 for DEATH DELIGHTS, and a Davitt Award in 2003 for the best Australian crime novel by an Australian woman. DIRTY WEEKEND is the third in Jack McCain series: look for DEATH DELIGHTS and LETHAL FACTOR. If you'd like to find out more about Gabrielle Lord, check her website out at http://www.gabriellelord.com. Currently she is writing CONSPIRACY 365 - a 12 volume YA crime/thriller/mystery/series for Scholastic Publishing.

My rating 5.0
Join the discussion with Gabrielle Lord on oz_mystery_readers from February 17

BABY DID A BAD BAD THING, Gabrielle Lord

This book is the first Gabrielle Lord that I read, although it is her 9th book.
Published in 2003, it was #2 in the Gemma Lincoln series.
With it she won the Davitt Award in 2003 for the best Australian crime novel by an Australian woman in the previous year.

Gemma Lincoln, is trying to discover who has been raping and murdering street girls from Kings Cross. Parallel cases follow the suspicious death of a high profile Sydney businessman and philanthropist, and an utterly ruthless drug dealer whose hobby is maintaining a small zoo of poisonous snakes. In addition to these enquiries, Gemma has to contend with sabotage from within her own small organisation and pangs of jealousy over boyfriend Steve, whose own undercover work involves getting up close and personal with an extremely beautiful society woman. How much is Steve acting a role and how much is he really involved with the woman? Always haunted by the insecurities of her past, Gemma struggles to pull her life together in increasingly sinister circumstances.

My rating 4.0