Everyone - musician, actor or writer - says the US is a hard market to crack. But Melbourne crime writer Adrian McKinty has taken a big step by winning the Best Paperback Original for his novel Rain Dogs in this year's Edgar awards.
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The Edgars are given by the Mystery Writers of America and honour the year's best crime writing. Like the British Daggers but unlike Australia's Ned Kellys, they are an international award.
McKinty won his Edgar for the fifth in his series about Sean Duffy, a Catholic policeman working in Belfast during the Troubles of the 1980s. The sixth, Police at the Station and They Don't Look Friendly, was published in Australia in February and in the US last month.
McKinty said it was flabbergasting to win. "This is definitely a game changer for me. I think it's going to give me a huge amount of credibility in America," he said. "I'm always being told they want the Ireland of the 1950s, of The Quiet Man. You have all this weird stuff going on in Northern Ireland and I've been told for years that it's the big obstacle; that I'll never win a major award. But a good story is a good story."
One of the idiosyncrasies of the Edgars is that the Best Novel award can go only to a book published in hardback. The first winner, in 1954, was Australian Geraldine Halls writing as Charlotte Jay, and other winners have included Raymond Chandler and John le Carre.
McKinty, originally from Northern Ireland, moved to Australia about 10 years ago. He said getting the paperback prize was a "bit like getting the Grand Jury prize at Cannes rather than the Palm D'Or".
He said he wasn't sure whether there would be another Duffy book: "He's not dead, the Troubles are still going and there are lots of stories to be told." But he did concede he fancied the idea of a stand-alone novel. "Maybe now's the time to write my breakthrough Girl on the Train novel. theedgars.com
???Women writers dominate the fiction shortlists for the Australian Book Industry Awards, with only one male writer - Dominic Smith - in the hunt for the literary fiction award. The general fiction shortlist is: Truly Madly Guilty, Liane Moriarty; The Chocolate Tin, Fiona McIntosh; The One Who Got Away, Caroline Overington; The Dry, Jane Harper; and The Birdman's Wife, Melissa Ashley. Literary fiction: The Good People, Hannah Kent; The Last Painting of Sara de Vos, Dominic Smith; An Isolated Incident, Emily Maguire; Goodwood, Holly Throsby; and Between a Wolf and a Dog, Georgia Blain. Winners will be presented on May 25. Full shortlists: abiawards.com.au
