It was just last night at the 16th Davitt Awards that Australia’s top female crime writers were announced. Today, Australia’s best crime writers of 2016 were revealed at the Ned Kelly Awards, regardless of gender.
Emma Viskic won the Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction with Resurrection Bay, the book that saw her take out three awards at the Davitts last night – Best Debut Novel, Best Adult Novel and the Readers’ Choice Awards.
Dave Warner’s Before it Breaks won Best Fiction, Gideon Haigh’s Certain Admissions took out Best True Crime and Roni O’Brien was the recipient of the S.D. Harvey Award for Short Stories for Flesh.
The Ned Kelly Awards are one of Australia’s most prestigious prizes honouring our published crime fiction and true crime writers. When it came to deciding on a name, co-opting the nation’s most infamous villain seemed a natural fit. The awards began in 1995 and are run by the Australian Crime Writers Association.
The 2016 Ned Kelly Winners
WINNER: BEST FIRST FICTION
Resurrection Bay
by Emma Viskic
Caleb Zelic, profoundly deaf since early childhood, has always lived on the outside – watching, picking up tell-tale signs people hide in a smile, a cough, a kiss.
When a childhood friend is murdered, a sense of guilt and a determination to prove his own innocence sends Caleb on a hunt for the killer. But he can’t do it alone. Caleb and his troubled friend Frankie, an ex-cop, start with one clue: Scott, the last word the murder victim texted to Caleb. But Scott is… Read more.
Emma Viskic answers the Booktopia Book Guru’s Ten Terrifying Questions
Emma Viskic chats about why she set out to write a deaf protagonist
WINNER: BEST FICTION
Before it Breaks
by Dave Warner
Detective Daniel Clement is back in Broome, licking his wounds from a busted marriage and struggling to be impressed by his new team of small-town cops. Here, in the oasis on the edge of the desert, life is as stagnant as Clement’s latest career move.
But when a body is discovered a local fishing spot, it is clearly not the result of a crocodile attack. Somewhere in Broome is a hunter of a different kind. As more bodies are found, Clement races to solve a decades-old mystery before a monster cyclone hits… Read more.
WINNER: BEST TRUE CRIME
Certain Admissions
by Gideon Haigh
On a warm evening in December 1949, two young people met by chance under the clocks at Flinders Street railway station. They decided to have a night on the town. The next morning, one of them, twenty-year-old typist Beth Williams, was found dead on Albert Park Beach. When police arrested the other, Australia was transfixed: twenty-four-year-old John Bryan Kerr was a son of the establishment, a suave and handsome commercial radio star educated at Scotch College, and Harold Holt’s next-door neighbour in Toorak.
Police said he had confessed. Kerr denied it steadfastly. There were three dramatic trials attended by enormous crowds, a relentless public campaign proclaiming his innocence involving the first editorials against capital… Read more.
View all the shortlisted titles
About the Contributor
Anastasia Hadjidemetri
Anastasia Hadjidemetri is the former editor of The Booktopian and star of Booktopia's weekly YouTube show, Booked with Anastasia. A big reader and lover of books, Anastasia relishes the opportunity to bring you all the latest news from the world of books.
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