Thursday, 1 November 2012

Gene Kerrigan wins the CWA Gold Dagger Award 2012

Irish author and journalist Gene Kerrigan has won the CWA Gold Dagger for Best Crime Novel of the Year for his novel The Rage. Kerrigan joins an impressive list of previous Gold Dagger winners including Belinda Bauer, Minette Walters and Ian Rankin.  The Rage is about a professional thief, just out of jail, already preparing his next robbery. A retired nun reports suspicious behaviour in the Dublin backstreet where she lives to Detective Sergeant Bob Tidey, who is investigating the murder of a banker. The report unleashes a storm of violence and forces Tidey to make a deadly choice.  The Judges described his novel as “… a complex noir thriller that’s multi-layered and solidly written, with great style and pace. The depiction of post-crash Dublin has a real sense of menace and threat throughout.”

Kerrigan, a columnist with the Sunday Independent, has written many non-fiction works about Irish politics and crime. His first crime novel, Little Criminals, was set in the boom-time Ireland of 2005. Kerrigan’s portrayal of life on the edge of Irish society continued in his second work of fiction, The Midnight Choir. Dark Times in the City, which was shortlisted for the 2009 Gold Dagger, was set in a Dublin awash in a sea of cocaine and drug warfare.

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