Debut books in the crime and mystery genre scooped all six awards in Sisters in Crime’s 22nd Davitt Awards last night (27 August).
Charlotte McConaghy’s environmental thriller, Once There Were Wolves (Penguin Random House Australia), won the award for Best Adult Novel. The Best Young Adult Novel prize went to Leanne Hall for The Gaps (Text Publishing) while the Best Children’s Novel Award was won by Nicki Greenberg (Melbourne, Victoria) for The Detective’s Guide to Ocean Travel (Affirm Press).
With Before You Knew My Name (Allen & Unwin), Jacqueline Bublitz took out both Best Debut Book and Readers’ Choice, as judged by the 500+ members of Sisters in Crime. Kate Holden was awarded Best Non-Fiction Book for The Winter Road: A Story of Legacy, Land and a Killing at Croppa Creek (Black Inc.).
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Dr Philomena Horsley, the judges’ facilitator, said that the six judges were blown away by the standard of the 55 debut books.
“So many of the debut books were so accomplished. Some of the winners have other books under their belts and the talents they bring to the crime and mystery genre are formidable. It’s not surprising that so many women are turning to crime. It’s the most popular genre and offers so many exciting possibilities when it comes to themes, plotting, characterisation, and location,” she said.
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The annual awards for best women’s crime books were presented by award-winning journalist and true crime writer, Louise Milligan, at a gala dinner at South Melbourne’s Rising Sun Hotel, the first live ceremony since 2019. Milligan first discussed her ‘life in crime’ with Sisters in Crime’s Jacqui Horwood before a sell-out audience of 85, including 25 women crime writers – and one male crime writer (a ‘Brother-in-Law’) – from across Australia and New Zealand.
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Charlotte McConaghy’s Once There Were Wolves was described by the Davitt judges as a “beautifully written book founded on the challenge of rewilding – the re-introduction of grey wolves to the remote Highlands of Scotland hundreds of years after they were hunted to extinction”.
Once There Were Wolves is a New York Times bestseller and has won the Indie Book Award for Fiction 2022 and a Nautilus Gold Award. McConaghy is also the author of the international bestseller Migrations, a TIME Magazine Best Book of the Year, and the Amazon.com Best Fiction Book of the Year for 2020. It is being translated into over twenty languages and adapted for film. McConaghy has both a Graduate Degree in Screenwriting and a Master’s Degree in Screen Arts.
McConaghy, who is based in Sydney, told the packed crowd that her book “is, like many crime novels, about the darkest, cruellest sides of humanity. It’s about the harm we do not just to each other, but to the natural world and the wild creatures we share this planet with. It was therefore a challenging and sometimes heartbreaking book to write.
“But it is also, and ultimately, about the triumph of tenderness. It’s about love and compassion and generosity, it’s about our profound capacity to nurture. And, in rewilding not only landscapes but ourselves, too, it declares loudly and proudly that the wildest parts of ourselves, and particularly of women, to be the strongest, kindest, and most essential parts.”
Back in 2001, when the Davitts were launched, there were 7 books in contention although the awards didn’t then extend to true crime (or non-fiction). This year a record 169 books have been battling it out.
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The YA winner, The Gaps by Leanne Hall (Melbourne, Vic) is a psychological novel that explores teenage fear, anger, and vulnerability following the abduction of a second student from a girls’ college. The judges said, “Although The Gaps mirrors all-too-real situations where females are at risk, the young women here ultimately claim agency. This novel also has much to offer adult readers.”
Hall is an award-winning author of young adult and children’s fiction. Her debut YA novel, This Is Shyness, won the Text Prize for Children’s and Young Adult Writing, and her novel for younger readers, Iris and the Tiger, won the Patricia Wrightson Prize for Children’s Literature at the 2017 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. The Gaps won the young adult category of the Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature and the Ethel Turner Prize for Young People’s Literature at the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. Hall is currently a PhD candidate at RMIT.
Hall told the crowd: “As an admiring consumer of crime stories, I wanted my novel to explore the depiction of young women in the stories we tell, and the lasting effects a crime can have on how young women move through the world.”
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The judges said that the Best Children’s Crime Novel by Nicki Greenberg (Melbourne, Victoria) was a real winner: “From opening lines that herald an ‘Outrageous Spree’, readers know they’re in for some fun with this story of plucky Pepper Stark who, after much pleading, finally gets to join her father, the Captain, aboard the RMS Aquitania on a voyage to New York.”
Greenberg is an award-winning writer and illustrator whose work includes critically acclaimed graphic novels, picture books, fiction, and non-fiction. She said: “The Detective’s Guide to Ocean Travel is my first mystery novel, and also my first historical novel – because clearly, I like to take on all the toughest genres in one go. It’s a book for kids, and for adults, too. Kids are often more sophisticated, thoughtful, inquisitive readers than their grown-ups give them credit for and, of course, they love crime and suspense and intrigue just as much as we do.”
Greenberg is an award-winning writer and illustrator whose work includes critically acclaimed graphic novels, picture books, fiction, and non-fiction. She said: “The Detective’s Guide to Ocean Travel is my first mystery novel, and also my first historical novel – because clearly, I like to take on all the toughest genres in one go. It’s a book for kids, and for adults, too. Kids are often more sophisticated, thoughtful, inquisitive readers than their grown-ups give them credit for and, of course, they love crime and suspense and intrigue just as much as we do.”
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The murder of an environmental compliance officer in the Best Non-Fiction Book, The Winter Road), was, the judges said, “a springboard for Kate Holden’s meticulously researched examination of Australia’s relationship with land since European settlement … The Winter Road is an exquisitely written book; the judges all agreed a stand-out in the genre of true crime.”
Holden, who lives in Thirroul (NSW), is also the author of In My Skin: A memoir and The Romantic: Italian Nights and Days. She is an accomplished columnist and essayist. For The Winter Road, she won a Walkley Book Award, and the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction, and was recently shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s History Awards.
Holden said: “This is totally unexpected, not least because I would never have presumed to call myself a crime writer, and to have my book counted among these excellent and definitely crimey crime books is a real thrill.”
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Jacqueline Bublitz’s double-award-winning book, Before You Knew My Name, is set in New York and mostly narrated by a young, dead woman.
Bublitz, who lives between Melbourne and New Zealand, is a writer, feminist, and arachnophobe. She wrote her debut novel after spending a summer in New York, where she hung around morgues and the dark corners of city parks (and the human psyche) far too often. Her second crime novel, with just as many dark corners, is coming soon!
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Sarah Barrie (Kulnara, NSW) was highly commended for Unforgiven (HQ Fiction) in the Best Adult Novel award category. The story revolves around whiskey devotee and part-time sex worker, Lexi Winter. Once a victim, she’s now a vigilante. Barrie is the author of nine novels including her bestselling print debut Secrets of Whitewater Creek, the Hunters Ridge trilogy, and the Calico Mountain trilogy. (Barrie was unable to attend the ceremony.)
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Dr Horsley said that the quality of the entries across the categories provided the judges with real challenges. “As Ann Cleeves said on the ABC last week, Australian writers have ‘blown open the [crime] genre’. The shortlisted authors continue to expand traditional notions of narrative, plot, and place. The complexity of issues these books address has swelled. They took us on journeys through new knowledge and novel perspectives. They featured women who were complex, strong characters, who continued to survive and grow despite experiences of violence and childhood trauma.”
Three $300 book packs were won by Ellie Marney, RWR McDonald, and Anna George, all crime authors. RWR McDonald also won the Be Immortalised in Fiction competition which means his name will go into the next novel by Charlotte McConaghy.
The judging panel for 2022 comprised Philomena Horsley, winner of the 2018 Scarlet Stiletto Award and medical autopsy expert; Joy Lawn, YA expert, and reviewer; Janice Simpson, author and academic; Emily Webb, true crime author, and podcaster; Jacquie Byron, business journalist, and novelist, and Moraig Kisler, Sisters in Crime’s President, and review editor.
The 2021 Davitt Awards were again supported by the Swinburne University of Technology.
The Davitts, named after Ellen Davitt, the author of Australia’s first mystery novel, Force and Fraud, in 1865, cost publishers nothing to enter. The awards are handsome wooden trophies featuring the front cover of the winning novel under perspex. No prize money is attached.
For the full script, go here. (Includes all speeches and judges’ reports. Please excuse the stage directions.)
Media comment: Philomena Horsley on 0417 121 771; philomenah1@aol.com
Media information/author interviews: Carmel Shute, Sisters in Crime, Secretary & National Co-convenor on 0412 569 356; admin@sistersincrime.org.au.