JUDGEMENT DAY

The Duncan Lawrie Dagger for 2007 has been won by Peter Temple for his book The Broken Shore, while the writer /translator team of Fred Vargas and Sian Reynolds won the International Dagger for the second year running for Wash this Blood Clean from my Hand.

I read and reviewed both these books on Crime Scraps, and really enjoyed both of them. Links below:

http://camberwell-crime.blogspot.com/2007/05/peter-temples-australia.html

http://camberwell-crime.blogspot.com/2006/10/french-mistress.html

The choices of the Crime Writer's Association have been a case of feast and famine for me over the last few years.

The prize winners have ranged from the brilliantly gripping:

2001 Henning Mankell for Sidetracked

2005 Arnaldur Indridason for Silence of the Grave

To the mindblowingly eccentric:

2002 Jose Carlos Samoza for The Athenian Murders

To the utterly boringly predictable Silver Dagger winning:

2003 Morag Joss for Half Broken Things

and the just plain awful:

2004 Sara Paretsky for Blacklist

This year the judges get the Crime Scraps seal of approval for selecting excellent books with good plots and interesting characters.