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DAVITT AWARDS

 

 

  

   

 

 

 

                    2009 DAVITT AWARDS: BOOKS IN CONTENTION

 

Sisters in Crime will shortly be inviting members to vote on best 2008 crime or mystery novel by an Australian woman. This year 41 books are in contention.

 

 

ADULT

 

Allen & Unwin

  • Kerry Greenwood, Murder on a Midsummer Night
  • Marion Halligan, Murder on the Apricot Coast
  • Catherine Jinks, The Dark Mountain
  • Kate Morton, The Forgotten Garden 

Exisle Publishing

  • T J Joyce, Hotel of Secrets

Fremantle Arts Press

  • Felicity Young, Harum Scarum

Hachette Livre

  • Camilla Noli, Still Waters
  • Bronwyn Parry, As Darkness Falls

HarperCollins

  • Alex Palmer, The Tattooed Man
  • Diane Armstrong, Nocturne

PanMacmillan

  • Sydney Bauer, Alibi
  • Katherine Howell, The Darkest Hour
  • P D Martin, Fan Mail
  • Malla Nunn, A Beautiful Place to DieP

New Holland Publishers

  • Maria Simms, The Dead House (Gibbes Street)

Random House

  • Leah Giarratano, Voodoo Doll

Soho Press, New York

  • Caroline Petit, Deep Night

The Five Mile Press

  • Robin Bowles, The Mystery of the Missing Masterpiece

Scribe Publications

  • Cooee by Vivienne Kelly.

Zeus Publications

  • Helen Denkha, Many Happy Returns

 

YOUNG ADULT

 

ABC Books (Harper Collins)

  • Sophie Masson, The Case of the Diamond Shadow

Allen & Unwin

  • Catherine Jinks, Genius Squad
  • Maureen McCarthy, Somebody’s Crying

Random

  • Isabelle Merlin, Three Wishes

 
  • Felicity Pulman, Willows for Weeping

Text

  • Beth Montgomery, Murderer’s Thumb

Walker Books

  • Moya Symons, The Walk Right In Detective Agency: Open for Business
  • Moya Symons, The Walk Right In Detective Agency: High Crime in Milk Bay

TRUE CRIME

Allen & Unwin

  • Carol Baxter, Breaking the Bank: An Extraordinary Colonial Robbery
  • Rochelle Jackson, Inside Their Minds: Australian Criminals
  • Anne Lovell, Connie's Secret: The True Story of a Shocking Murder and a Family Mystery at a Time When Appearances Were Everything

New Holland Publishers

  • Judith Fordham, Life, Law and Not Enough
  • Kay Danes, Families Behind Bars

PanMacmillan

  • Lisa Clifford, Death in the Mountains: The True Story of a Tuscan Murder

Penguin

  • Chloe Hooper, The Tall Man

Random House

  • Camilla Nelson, Crooked

The Five Mile Press

  • Lindy Cameron, ed., Outside the Law 2
  • Linda Cameron & Fin J Ross,  Killer in the Family: Over Twenty Chilling Accounts of Domestic Tragedy
  • Vicki Petraitis, Crime Scene Investigations: More Stories from the Australian Police Files

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Details of the 2008 Davitt Awards Winners

 

pdf file

 

 

Sisters in Crime Australia is proud to sponsor a national crime writing award – The Davitt – awarded for the best crime novel by an Australian woman published in book form in Australia in the previous year. There are three categories to the Davitt:
  • the best adult novel
  • the best young fiction book
  • and the Reader's Choice award, voted by members of Sisters in Crime.
  •  
  • The Davitt has been awarded in 2001, 2002 , 2003, 2004.,2005 , 2006 and 2007

 

Sisters in Crime named the award The Davitt in honour of Ellen Davitt (1812-1879) who wrote Australia’s first mystery novel, Force and Fraud in 1865. Her achievement is extraordinary when it is considered that Wilke’s Collins’ The Woman in White, generally regarded as the first full-length mystery novel, was published only in 1860. Force and Fraud was serialised in the Australian Journal, starting with its very first issue. It begins with a murder and ends with its solution, with red herrings, blackmail, and a dramatic court scene in between:

Born in Yorkshire, Ellen married teacher Arthur Davitt, and emigrated to Australia in 1854. The pair were powerful figures in colonial education and Ellen was also a public lecturer and an exhibited artist. She is vilified in the Australian Dictionary of Biography as having ‘overbearing self-esteem’ (translation: she was confident, a fighter, and not afraid of male authority). Davitt died in poverty, of cancer.

In 1993, Sisters in Crime Australia placed a plaque on her unmarked grave in Geelong cemetery; the same year Force and Fraud was reprinted by Mulini Press. A distant relative, English author Joanna Trollope, unveiled the plaque and spoke movingly about her contribution to Australian literature.