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.

Brat Farrar by Josphine Tey

Reading Angel with Two Faces by Nicola Upson recently, which of course features crime writer Josephine Tey, I was reminded of Tey's Brat Farrar. I have read and enjoyed this book several times but I decided it was time for another re-read.

Orphan Brat Farrar returns to England after a number of years absence. He is seen on the streets of London by Alec Loding and mistaken for Simon Ashby, a young man from Loding's home village. When Loding realises Brat is not Simon he immediately forms plans for a scam. Simon Ashby is about to celebrate his 21st and inherit his dead father's estate. This event would not be happening except for the mysterious disappearance of Simon's elder twin brother Patrick some years earlier when they were still boys. Loding persuades Brat to impersonate the missing Patrick, take his place and inherit instead of Simon. Brat should then send Loding a regular income for his help in coaching Brat on Patrick's life. Loding had been well placed to observe the Ashbys over the years as the families were very close.

Despite the scamming premise of the book the reader's sympathies are immediately with orphan Brat. He is not a man without morals (unlike Loding who is defrauding people he knows well) and takes some persuading to join in the scam. His descent into joining Loding's plan is slow and believable. We see Brat's inner self wrestle with his lack of belonging, his need for a family and for a place in the world. His only emotional anchor is his love for horses, with whom he worked in the USA after he left the orphnage, and it is this that is his undoing. Loding reveals the Ashbys are horse breeders and Brat is won over. He can't resist any more.

The playing out of family loyalties and personalities when the bombshell of Patrick's reappearance in their lives explodes is masterly. Beatrice Ashby, the aunt who brought up the Ashby children after the death of her brother and his wife, and who has spent years being haunted by images of what may have happened to Patrick, is one of my favourite literary characters. Her world is torn apart by Brat's arrival but even on the day she meets him, still unsure that he is not an impostor she is compassion through and through:

She turned at the door to say goodbye. he was standing in th middle of the room watching her go, leaving Mr Sandal to shepherd her out. he looked remote and lonely. And she thought; "If this is patrick, Patrick come home again, and I am leaving him like this, as if her were a casual acquaintance -". It was more than she could bear, the thought of the boy's loneliness.

She went back to him, took his face lightly in her gloved hand, and kissed his cheek. "Welcome back my dear, " she said.

And this in the end, a family, is all Brat craves. But he is now committed to being an impostor but from the inside he is the first person to really be in a position to solve the mystery of what really happened to the missing Patrick Ashby. How Tey resolves the difficulties Brat has got himself into, and manages the new emotional ties he forms, is a delight to watch.

A lovely book combining the same warmth, insight and intrigue as The Franchise Affair.

The first image of Brat Farrar above is from the modern paperback. I re-read my own copy a Pan paperback which you can see here:

This copy was purchased a few years ago from the lovely Mike and Ann Sims from A Book for All Reasons whose site is an excellent resource for early twentieth century fiction, especially Georgette Heyer. I love the stylised cover art here: the young man shadowy at the back has taken a petulant stance that looks more like he is in trouble for not eating his greens than he looks angry at the return of a usurper to his inheritance!

On a related note: does anyone remember seeing the BBC adaptation of this, modernised I think, in the 1980s. It stared Mark Greenstreet who was brilliant as both Brat and Simon Ashby. Why oh why have the Beeb never put this out on video or DVD. With the mini Tey revival going on at the moment I can't think of a better time for them to let us watch it again.

Agatha Christie - The Complete Miss Marple

A new volume of the works of detective fiction writer Agatha Christie has set a new world record for the book with the thickest spine. Measuring over a foot long, with 4,032 pages, the volume contains the complete Miss Marple stories which means all twelve novels and twenty short stories.

Produced as a special limited edition the volume is bound by Cedric & Chivers Period Bookbinding, cased in Winters Wintan leather, blocked in gold on the front and spine, with head and tail bands, four silk ribbon markers to keep your place. There have been just 500 made and each volume comes complete with a suede-lined wooden box and copy of the Guinness World records certificate.

The Complete Miss Marple contains a newly commissioned map of St Mary Mead by Nicolette Caven who based her map on Christie’s description of St Mary Mead from The Body in the Library with additional details from other Miss Marple works.

The Complete Miss Marple limited edition retails at £1000 and are obtainable from Harper Collins +44 (0)844 576 8112 or weborders@harpercollins.co.uk

HarperCollins have been busy as also up their sleeves is the publication of a book based on the contents of Agatha Christie's 73 working notebooks. Written by Agatha Christie archivist, John Curran, in close conjunction with the Christie Archive Trust which owns the notebooks, this new book not only uncovers the details behind many of Agatha Christie’s famous books but also includes for the first time two complete Hercule Poirot short stories that have never before been published. This book lifts the lid on Agatha Christie’s biggest secret – how her pencilled notes, lists and drafts led to her many successful books, plays and stories. Alternative plots, titles and characters, deleted scenes, even her plans for the books she didn’t get to write – John Curran’s investigation reveals a wealth of unpublished material, including two complete Hercule Poirot short stories never before published: "The Mystery of the Dog’s Ball" and the unseen "Thirteenth Labour of Hercules"!