Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2024 Longlist Announced
25 April 2024
The longlist for UK and Ireland's most prestigious prize for crime fiction, the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year has been announced. The award is for the best crime novel published in paperback in the previous year and is voted for by an academy and the public and presented each year at the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival. More information about Ulverscroft's longlisted titles are below.
The Last Dance by Mark Billingham
Published in CD and MP3 CD audiobook and uLibrary eAudiobook in June 2023.
He's a detective, a dancer, he has no respect for authority - and he's the best hope Blackpool has for keeping criminals off the streets. Meet Detective Declan Miller. A double murder in a seaside hotel sees a grieving Miller return to work to solve what appears to be a case of mistaken identity. Just why were two completely unconnected men taken out? Despite a somewhat dubious relationship with both reality and his new partner, can the eccentric, offbeat Miller find answers where his colleagues have found only an impossible puzzle?
In The Blink Of An Eye by Jo Callaghan
Published in large print in August 2023.
In the UK, someone is reported missing every 90 seconds. Just gone. Vanished. In the blink of an eye. DCS Kat Frank knows all about loss. A widowed single mother, Kat is a cop who trusts her instincts. Picked to lead a pilot programme that has her paired with AIDE Lock - an AI detective - Kat's instincts collide against Lock's logic. But when the two missing persons cold cases they are reviewing suddenly become active, Lock is the only one who can help Kat when the case gets personal.
The Raging Storm by Ann Cleeves
Published in large print in September 2023.
When Jem Rosco - sailor, adventurer and local legend - blows into Greystone in the middle of an autumn gale, the residents are delighted to have a celebrity in their midst. They think nothing of it when he disappears again: that's the sort of man he is. Until the lifeboat is launched to a hoax call-out during a raging storm, and Jem's body is found in a dinghy anchored off Scully Cove, a place with legends of its own. It's an uncomfortable case for DI Matthew Venn. He came to the remote village as a child, its community populated by the Barum Brethren he eventually parted ways with. So when superstition and rumour begin to mix, Matthew soon finds his judgement clouded. As stormy winds howl and the village is cut off, Matthew and his team start their investigation, little realising their own lives might be in danger...
Fearless by M.W. Craven
Published in large print in October 2023, CD and MP3 CD audiobook and uLibrary eAudiobook in August 2023.
Six years ago, Ben Koenig headed up the US Marshals' elite Special Ops group. They were the elite unit who hunted the worst criminals, so no one else had to. Then Koenig disappeared without trace or reason. For six years he drifted from town to town, state to state, a ghost. It was as if he never existed. But now Koenig's face is on every TV in America. Someone wants to find him and doesn't care how. In the Chihuahuan Desert lies a town called Gauntlet, home to people who have a secret they'll do anything to protect. They've killed before and will kill again. Only they've made a mistake. They've dismissed Koenig as just another drifter. But Koenig has a unique disorder: it's impossible for him to feel fear. And they're about to find out what a truly fearless man is capable of...
The Secret Hours by Mick Herron
Published in Large Print in December 2023, CD and MP3 CD audiobook and uLibrary eAudiobook in November 2023.
Two years ago, the Monochrome inquiry was set up to investigate the British secret service. Monochrome's mission was to ferret out misconduct, allowing civil servants Griselda Fleet and Malcolm Kyle unfettered access to confidential information in the service archives. But with progress blocked at every turn, Monochrome is circling the drain...until the OTIS file appears out of nowhere. What classified secrets does OTIS hold that see a long-redundant spy being chased through Devon's green lanes in the dark? What happened in a newly reunified Berlin that someone is desperate to keep under wraps? And who will win the battle for the soul of the secret service - or was that decided a long time ago? Spies and pen-pushers, politicians and PAs, high-flyers, time-servers and burn-outs - they all have jobs to do in the daylight. But what they do in the secret hours reveals who they really are...
None Of This Is True by Lisa Jewell
Published in Large Print in August 2023.
Celebrating her 45th birthday at her local pub, podcaster Alix Summer crosses paths with an unassuming woman called Josie Fair. Josie is also celebrating her 45th birthday. They are, in fact, birthday twins. A few days later, Alix and Josie bump into each other again, this time outside Alix's children's school. Josie has been listening to Alix's podcasts and thinks she might be an interesting subject for the series. She is, she says, on the cusp of great changes in her life. Alix agrees to a trial interview. Josie's life appears to be strange and complicated, and although Alix finds her unsettling, she can't quite resist the temptation to keep digging. Slowly, Alix starts to realise that Josie has been hiding some very dark secrets. Before she knows it, Josie has inveigled her way into Alix's life - and into her home...
Past Lying by Val McDermid
Published in Large Print in December 2023.
Edinburgh, haunted by the ghosts of its many writers, is also the cold case beat of DCI Karen Pirie. So she shouldn't be surprised when an author's manuscript appears to be a blueprint for an actual crime. Karen can't ignore the plot's chilling similarities to the unsolved case of an Edinburgh University student who vanished from her own doorstep. The manuscript seems to be the key to unlocking what happened to Lara Hardie, but there's a problem: the author died before he finished it. As Karen digs deeper, she uncovers a spiralling game of betrayal and revenge, where lies are indistinguishable from the truth, and more than one unexpected twist lurks...
Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent
Published in CD and MP3 CD audiobook in June 2023.
Sally Diamond cannot understand why what she did was so strange. She was only doing what her father told her to do, to put him out with the rubbish when he died. Now Sally is the centre of attention, not only from the hungry media and worried police, but also a sinister voice from a past she has no memory of. As she begins to discover the horrors of her childhood, recluse Sally steps into the world for the first time, making new friends, finding independence, and learning that people don't always mean what they say. But when messages start arriving from a stranger who knows far more about her past than she knows herself, Sally's life will be thrown into chaos once again...
You Can Run by Trevor Wood
Published in CD and MP3 CD audiobook and uLibrary eAudiobook in May 2023.
A group of armed mercenaries lay siege to a remote village in Northumberland. Soldiers patrol the streets, telling everyone to stay inside, and the roads are blocked off to prevent anyone coming in or out. Their target: Alex Winter and his 15-year-old daughter, Ruby. When her father is captured, Ruby tries to run, but quickly realises she has another problem - the only people who can save her are the villagers she's shunned for her whole life including the neighbourhood busybody, a disreputable poacher, the village drunk and the troublemaker of the local school. Desperate to find her father and to work out who took him and why, she seeks their help. But what if learning the truth means discovering the life she once knew was a lie.