Petrona Award 2019 - Judging Panel

I'm very pleased to be able to confirm the judging panel for this year's Petrona Award. The judges will be meeting shortly to determine the shortlist which will be taken from this list.

Judging Panel Announced for The 2019 Petrona Award for the Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year

The Petrona Award team would like to extend a warm welcome to our new judge, crime fiction expert and well-known blogger Raven Crime Reads. Raven has been a bookseller for 17 years and brings a wealth of critical expertise to the judging panel and we are delighted to welcome her on board.

Raven joins Dr Kat Hall and Sarah Ward on the judging panel for the 2019 Petrona Award.

Barry Forshaw, one of our founding judges, has stepped down to work on his magnum opus, Crime Fiction: A Reader’s Guide – which, he tells us, will have a large Nordic Noir section. We would like to thank Barry for his enormous contribution to our judging panels over the past five years, and for his help in making the Petrona Award such a success since its creation in 2013.

More details on the Petrona Award, which is sponsored by David Hicks, can be found at www.petronaaward.co.uk.

Petrona Award 2016 - Progress so far

I met up with the Petrona Award judges yesterday and our annual photo is below.

It was particularly difficult to reduce this year's longlist down to six but eventually we did. It was a long lunch!

The press release announcing the six books on the shortlist will be available before the end of the month, stay tuned.

The winner will be announced on 21 May at the Gala Dinner at Crime Fest.

(Sarah Ward, Barry Forshaw, me and Kat Hall)

Petrona Award - Update

The Petrona Award judges' meeting on Friday went very well, here is a picture of the team, post decisions: Sarah, Barry, myself and Kat (clockwise).

The press release announcing the six books on the shortlist will be available in a few days, stay tuned.

Review: Judges - Camilleri, Lucarelli & De Cataldo

Judges by Andrea Camilleri, Carlo Lucarelli and Giancarlo De Cataldo, translated by Joseph Farrell, Alan Thawley and Eileen Horne, May 2014, 165 pages, MacLehose Press, ISBN: 0857052977

JUDGES is a collection of three short stories from three of Italy's top crime writers. The collection was first published in Italian in 2011 and in all three stories, the judge is fighting against a corrupt establishment.

The first story is Andrea Camilleri's Judge Surra, which has been shortlisted for this year's CWA Short Story Dagger, and like his Montalbano series, is set in Sicily but around a hundred years earlier. This is an amusing tale of how the judge unwittingly brings down a mafia boss whilst discovering the local delicacy of cannoli pastries.

The second story is Carlo Lucarelli's The Bambina, set in Bologna in 1980 at a time when judges needed protection from the police. The judge in this case is a young woman, nick-named Bambina who is assigned an older policeman. She's prosecuting a fraud case and doesn't think she requires a bodyguard however she is soon proved wrong and she finds a different way of meting out justice.

The final story is Giancarlo De Cataldo's The Triple Dream of the Prosecutor, set in modern day and the main protagonist, Mandati, is a public prosecutor in a small town who is trying to bring down the mayor, a rival from childhood, and who has his fingers in all the financial pies. The mayor usually thwarts Mandati but will he this time?

Each story covers a similar theme but are all very different in approach and time-frame and the high standard does make you wish that more of Lucarelli's and De Cataldo's books were available in English. All three authors have recently had tv series shown in the UK: Montalbano, Inspector De Luca and Romanzo Criminale, so one can hope.

More short stories from these three authors can be read in the excellent anthology, CRIMINI.

The stories were translated respectively by Joseph Farrell, Alan Thawley and Eileen Horne.