Sisters in Crime’s 24th Davitt Awards winners announced!!

 

 

Debut books triumphed at Sisters in Crime’s 24th Davitt Awards for best women’s crime and mystery books held on 31 August 2024.

Four of the six winning crime and mystery books were first-time forays into the genre.

Ruth Wykes, the judges’ coordinator, said that there had been a seismic shift with debut books.

 “Increasingly, debut books are polished and sophisticated. There is nothing at all amateurish about them,” she said.

 Wykes said that judging the Davitts gives you “a front-row seat to the wonderful entertainment that is Australian women’s crime stories. This year, we travelled the world through the pages of 153 books: from an isolated house in Tasmania, to a road trip to the Kakadu National Park and all the way to a posh boarding school in Switzerland; and a hundred places along the way. We met some rather colourful characters; some who made us laugh out loud, others who left us in tears. And we had moments where we were secretly rooting for the bad guy,” she said.

 

 “This year’s themes seemed darker than last year. There were several stories that revolved around close family dramas, many that sadly reflected the darker, more hidden side of real-life Australia. Family violence and dysfunction, or long-buried secrets were the basis for many stories. Several authors wove their stories around mental health issues, a theme that has been taboo; deliberately avoided or watered down for many years. But this is perhaps a realistic reflection of the impact of COVID and those life-changing lockdowns we experienced in 2020. Our worlds changed, and so did the worlds of our storytellers.”

 CONGRATULATIONS TO THE WINNERS!

BEST ADULT NOVEL

 

When One of Us Hurts by Monica Vuu

Pan Macmillan Australia

 

 

Monica Vuu was born in Langley, British Columbia, and moved to Tasmania in 2019 with her Australian partner. When One of Us Hurts came out of a 90-day novel writing course and Vuu says it was inspired by the remoteness of rural Tasmania.

The judges said that it “takes courage to write a story like When One of Us Hurts and to portray a small, tight-knit community in a way that is at times familiar to readers of crime fiction, and at other times it’s uncomfortably confronting. Richly gothic at heart and fuelled by a multitude of masterful misdirects, When One of Us Hurts is a chilling foray into simmering small-town secrets, family tensions, and mental illness.” 

       

 

BEST YOUNG ADULT NOVEL

 

Eleanor Jones is Not a Murderer by Amy Doak

Penguin Random House Australia 

Eleanor Jones Is Not a Murderer, the YA-winning novel by Amy Doak, features Eleanor, the new girl at high school, who is falsely accused of stabbing another student and sets out to clear her name. The judges “all connected with Eleanor and loved her banter with the reader throughout the book. She was such a terrific character: bolshie and cynical, yet secretly vulnerable”. The sequel, Eleanor Jones Can’t Keep a Secret, was released in July.

 

 

BEST NON-FICTION BOOK 

 

The Schoolgirl , Her Teacher and His Wife by Rebecca Hazel

Vintage Press

Justice and the voices of women were at the heart of Rebecca Hazel’s Non-Fiction winner –The Schoolgirl, Her Teacher and His Wife. The judges reported, “This book focuses on ‘The Schoolgirl’ JC and Lynette Simms, the victims of Chris Dawson, now convicted of the murder of his first wife Lynn. Without Hazel’s curiosity and groundwork – conversations with JC when they worked together at a women’s refuge – Dawson would never have come to account for his crimes.

 Rebecca Hazel spent more than a decade researching this compelling case. She hit roadblock after roadblock, yet never gave up."

DEBUT AWARD

The Half Brother by Christine Keighery

Ultimo Press

The prospect of turning 60 prompted Christine Keighery (who also writes as Chrissie Perry) to try her hand at an adult novel. She is the author of more than thirty-five novels for children and Young Adults, including 13 books in the hugely successful Go Girl! Series. Her work has been published in ten countries, including the US, UK, Spain, Brazil, Slovenia, and Korea.

 

 The judges described The Half Brother as “a gripping story set in modern Australia, full of psychological suspense, gaslighting, new developments, and a well-handled final section that we didn’t see coming. The quality of her characters, the joys of her twisting plot, her control of pacing and pay-off merited this award.”

 

 

 BEST CHILDREN"S NOVEL

 

Boris in Switzerland by Lucinda Gifford

Walker Books Australia

The judges were thoroughly entertained and impressed by Lucinda Gifford’s children’s book, Boris in Switzerland, “an original take on the traditional boarding school mystery with the addition of an endearing family of anthropomorphic wolves. With witty, expressive illustrations on almost every page, it is jam-packed with the talent, passion, and esteem for readership of author-illustrator Lucinda Gifford."

Gifford said that as a life-long lover of mysteries and elaborate literary twists, she had been plotting for years to ‘move into crime’.

 

 

READER'S CHOICE AWARD

 

The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies by Alison Goodman

 

 

Alison Goodman is the author of eight novels including her latest release The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies which was a Washington Post and an Amazon Best Mystery Book of 2023. Set in the Regency era, its sleuths are two clever older women solving crimes by using skills and knowledge they have developed through their lives.

 “Lady Gus and Lady Julia were born from my own desire to read stories about older women having adventures,” Goodman said. “For me, this is a particularly sweet win — voted by readers from the Sisters in Crime membership. You, the readers, are why we plot and write and rewrite. You are why we strive to create the delight, whether that delight be the comfort of a cosy crime or the terror of a thriller or the fascination of a police procedural.” 

 

The 2024 Davitt Awards were again supported by the Swinburne University of Technology

The Davitts are named after Ellen Davitt, the author of Australia’s first mystery novel, Force and Fraud, in 1865. The awards are handsome wooden trophies featuring the front cover of the winning novel under perspex. No prize money is attached.