Val McDermid wins the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger 2010

Bestselling author Val McDermid has been named as the recipient of this year’s prestigious CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger Award, which honours outstanding achievement in the field of crime writing. The announcement has been made by the Crime Writers’ Association in recognition of Val’s work over more than 20 years.

The CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger is the latest accolade in a highly successful career which last year saw Val inducted into the Hall of Fame at the ITV3 Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards, whose partners include the CWA.

In 1995 she won the CWA Gold Dagger for best crime novel of the year for The Mermaids Singing, which first introduced her readership to Tony Hill and Carol Jordan, and went on to become an international bestseller. Fever of the Bone is the sixth novel of this series which inspired Wire in the Blood.

She has won many awards internationally, including the LA Times Book of the Year Award. In 2007, she won The Stonewall Writer of the Year Award.

Val is a top 10 bestseller who has been translated into 40 languages, with more than two million copies sold in the UK and 10 million worldwide. She has written 23 bestselling novels and the popular ITV series Wire in the Blood, starring Robson Green, was based on her books and ran for six series. A three-part ITV drama of Val’s A Place of Execution was broadcast in the autumn of 2007.

Margaret Murphy, chair of the CWA, said, “The CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger award acknowledges the work of an author who has made an outstanding contribution to the genre.

“Val McDermid is a worthy winner whose work has entertained and thrilled millions of readers as well as many more who have enjoyed the TV adaptations her books have inspired.

“The recipient of the Cartier Diamond Dagger Award is chosen by the members and committee of the CWA and is very much an honour awarded by the author’s peers and thus makes it special.”

The prize will be presented at a ceremony yet to be confirmed.

Val McDermid's website is here. In February, the paperback of Val’s bestselling hardback Fever of the Bone will be published by Little, Brown.

You can view books by or about Val McDermid here and crime fiction here.