WHAT I AM READING

Thanks to Kind Karen of Euro Crime I am reading [just started] The Paper Moon by Andrea Camilleri.

Next up will be Ariana Franklin's Mistress of the Art of Death which was the first novel with a medieval setting to win the Crime Writer's Association Ellis Peters Historical Award.

'Started in 1999 as the Historical Dagger, in memory of Ellis Peters, author of the medieval Brother Cadfael series, this award is sponsored by the Estate of Ellis Peters and her publishers - Headline and Little Brown. The award, £3,000 (about $5,900/€4,000) and an ornamental dagger is presented to a novel with a crime theme and a historical background of any period up to the 1960s. The judging panel is made up out of the most recent winner, as well as reviewers and historians. In 2006 this was renamed the Ellis Peters Award, and is now awarded in the autumn.' [From the CWA website]

I do find it rather depressing that the period up to the 1960s now count as historical but I suppose the outside lavatories and miniscule TV screens of my childhood seem almost as far away to young people as the age of Brother Cadfael.