Robert Harris’s novel about Dreyfus affair named thriller of the year

[The Guardian, 27 october 2014]

Crime Writers’ Association honours An Officer and a Spy for its ‘masterly storytelling’ and ‘beautiful’ writing

Alison Flood

Slice of life … Robert Harris, left, collects the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger at the Specsavers Crime Thriller awards. Photograph: Rex Features

Robert Harris’s novel about the Dreyfus affair An Officer and a Spy has been named the best thriller of the year by the Crime Writers’ Association.

Harris’s book, which won him the £25,000 Walter Scott prize for historical fiction earlier this year, was chosen this weekend as the winner of the CWA’s Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for best thriller. Described in the Guardian as “both gripping thriller and Buchan-esque adventure”, with “its revelations impeccably paced and its original material used to poignant effect”, the novel sees Harris take on the story of Alfred Dreyfus, the French army officer of Jewish heritage convicted of treason in 1895.

An Officer and A Spy beat books including Louise Doughty’s Apple Tree Yard to win the CWA prize and is, said the organisation, an example of “masterly storytelling” and an “outstanding, beautifully written novel [that] transforms actual events into an edge-of-the-seat thriller”.

The Specsavers Crime Thriller awards ceremony also saw Harris inducted into the CWA Hall of Fame, alongside Scottish novelist Denise Mina, the creator of Glasgow police detective Alex Morrow. Wiley Cash won the CWA Goldsboro Gold Dagger for best crime novel for This Dark Road to Mercy, in which a father steals his two daughters from foster care after their mother dies. It is, said the CWA, a “stand-out North Carolina-set literary thriller”, which is “underpinned by excellent character development, great storytelling and a strong sense of place”.

Ray Celestin took the CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger for his debut, The Axeman’s Jazz, set in a 1919 New Orleans stalked by a serial killer, while Peter May took the Crime Thriller Book Club best read for Entry Island, in which a murder on an island 850 miles from the Canadian mainland is investigated.

Each CWA award is judged by a panel of experts in the genre. The Daggers date back to 1955; previous winners of the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger including Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn, for her novel Sharp Objects. The Gold Dagger has been won in the past by Ruth Rendell and Dick Francis.