>
I was somewhat surprised that The Chalk Circle Man by Fred Vargas won the 2009 CWA International Dagger.
The French writer’s third win in four years and a French author’s fourth straight win; Dominique Manotti won last year with Lorraine Connection.
I reviewed The Chalk Circle Man here and here, and despite my misgivings about this book chose a Fred Vargas book as one of my five best reads of 2008.
I am definitely a Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg fan, but nevertheless I was stunned, as in my humble opinion and more importantly that of several far more literate and erudite bloggers than I, this Vargas was not as good as several of the Nordic contenders.
I would expect that the judge’s deliberations were confidential, but I would be interested to know their reasons from anyone else who thought this Vargas was better than the other nominated books.
I note that people from the blogosphere were invited to the awards ceremony at a cost of £45 per ticket. This was to include the announcement of the shortlists for the Gold Dagger, the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger and the John Creasy [New Blood] award for first novels, unfortunately this was postponed till October and if I had paid my £45 I would have been slightly miffed.
Click here and scroll down for all my posts on Fred Vargas, and for a discussion of the contenders click here and here.
CRIME SCRAPS REVIEW 