Finalists for Irish Crime Novel Award announced

On Thursday night the finalists for the various categories of the Bord Gais Energy Irish Book Award 2010 were announced, including the six finalists for the Ireland AM Crime Fiction Award.

This is the second year that there has been a crime fiction category in the Irish Book Awards, and it's great to see the genre being recognised in this way. Hat tip to Declan Burke of Crime Always Pays re the announcement.

The finalists for the Ireland AM Crime Fiction Award 2010 are:

• City of Lost Girls, Declan Hughes
• Time of Death, Alex Barclay
• Faithful Place, Tana French
• The Missing, Jane Casey
• Dark Times in the City, Gene Kerrigan
• The Twelve, Stuart Neville

You can read more about the awards, and the public vote, here.

Have you read any of the eligible Irish crime novels? Who do you think should win?

Crime Fiction in the news and on the 'Net: Weekly Round-up

There's been some more great crime fiction stories on the Web this past week - from newspapers, magazines, and fellow bloggers. Hopefully you will all like finding an interesting article or two linked here, that you enjoy reading.

Crime Watch Weekly Round-Up: In the News and on the 'Net

• Justine Gerardy of the AFP takes a look at how truth meets fiction for South African crime writers like Deon Meyer and Margie Orford.
• In the Irish Times, Tony Clayton-Lea interviews Irish crime writer Alex Barclay, saying her crime fiction career has "clearly benefitted from her former role as a journalist."
• Dave Walker of the New Orleans The Times-Picayne reports on actor Kenneth Branagh, who plays the lead in Wallander, talking about the 'Swedish crime fiction boom'.
• Rosie Kusunoki Jones of the Wall Street Journal online asks whether now English-language publishers have been awoken to translating foreign-language crime fiction bestsellers, Shuichi Yoshida could end up being the Japanese Stieg Larsson?
• Australian schoolteacher John Tognolini launches his debut crime novel THE MOUNTAIN CITY MURDERS at a wine-fuelled event in Wellington (NSW, not the NZ capital), this Sunday.
• The always-excellent Sarah Weinman of the Los Angeles Times takes a look at Justin Peacock's thriller, "Blind Man's Alley", in her regular Dark Passages column.
• Michael Janairo of the Times Union looks at the benefits of the Bouchercon festival to the towns where it is held.
• Examiner.com takes a look at how international thriller writers are set to tour the Persian Gulf during Fall 2010 as part of USO's 'Operation Thriller'.
• The NPR publishes its audience-voted list of the top 100 thrillers of all time, with Thomas Harris's THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS taking the #1 spot.

What do you think of the round-up? Which articles do you find interesting? Is THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS really the best thriller of all time? What do you think of South African crime? Scandinavian crime? I'd love to read what you think.