Belinda Bauer (author)

Last updated

Belinda Bauer (born 1962) is a British writer of crime novels. She grew up in England and South Africa, [1] but later moved to Wales, where she worked as a court reporter in Cardiff; the country is often used as a setting in her work. [2] She spent seven years as a screenwriter before writing her first novel at age 45. [3]

Contents

Literary career

Bauer's debut novel, Blacklands, won the British Crime Writers' Association's Gold Dagger for the best crime novel of 2010. [4] [5] She told a reporter she had been surprised to learn her book would be considered crime fiction because it wasn't a whodunit. She felt "pigeonholed" by genre expectations while writing her first three books, a trilogy set around Exmoor in Somerset, though later became convinced it was possible to tell stories of all kinds within the crime fiction genre. [3]

She was awarded the 2013 CWA Dagger in the Library. In 2014, her book Rubbernecker, set in Cardiff and Brecon, won the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award. [6] In July 2018 Bauer's novel, Snap, was longlisted for that year's Man Booker Prize, which was considered unusual for a work of crime fiction. [3] It also won the Specsavers National Book Award for best crime/thriller in 2018. [7]

In addition to crime novels, she published a thriller, High Rollers, under the name Jack Bowman, in 2013. [8]

Bibliography

Novels

As Jack Bowman

Related Research Articles

Reginald Charles Hill FRSL was an English crime writer and the winner in 1995 of the Crime Writers' Association Cartier Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement. He was inducted into the prestigious Detection Club in 1978.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ruth Rendell</span> English writer (1930–2015)

Ruth Barbara Rendell, Baroness Rendell of Babergh, was an English author of thrillers and psychological murder mysteries.

John Harvey is a British author of crime fiction most famous for his series of jazz-influenced Charlie Resnick novels, based in the City of Nottingham. He is also a screenwriter and poet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">R. J. Ellory</span> English thriller writer

Roger Jon Ellory is an English thriller writer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Allan Guthrie</span> Scottish literary agent, author and editor

Allan Guthrie is a Scottish literary agent, author and editor of crime fiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stephen Booth (writer)</span> English crime-writer

Stephen Booth is an English crime-writer. He is the author of the Derbyshire-set Cooper and Fry series.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ann Cleeves</span> British novelist (born 1954)

Ann Cleeves is a British mystery crime writer. She wrote the Vera Stanhope, Jimmy Perez, and Matthew Venn series, all three of which have been adapted into TV shows. In 2006 she won the Duncan Lawrie Dagger for her novel Raven Black, the first novel in the Jimmy Perez series.

The Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award is one of the UK's top crime-fiction awards, sponsored by Theakston's Old Peculier. It is awarded annually at Harrogate Crime Writing Festival in the UK, held every July, as part of the Harrogate International Festivals. The winner receives £3000 and a small hand-carved oak beer cask carved by one of Britain's last coopers. Novels eligible are those crime novels published in paperback any time during the previous year. Voting is by the public with decisions of a jury-panel also taken into account, a fact not-much publicised by the award organisers, who are keen to emphasize the public-voting aspect of the award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stuart MacBride</span> Scottish writer (born 1969)

Stuart MacBride is a Scottish writer, whose crime thrillers are set in the "Granite City" of Aberdeen, with Detective Sergeant Logan McRae as protagonist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter James (writer)</span> English crime fiction novelist (born 1948)

Peter J. James is a British writer of crime. He was born in Brighton, the son of Cornelia James, the former glovemaker to Queen Elizabeth II.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adrian McKinty</span> Irish crime novelist and critic

Adrian McKinty is a Northern Irish writer of crime and mystery novels and young adult fiction, best known for his 2020 award-winning thriller, The Chain, and the Sean Duffy novels set in Northern Ireland during The Troubles. He is a winner of the Edgar Award, the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award, the Macavity Award, the Ned Kelly Award, the Barry Award, the Audie Award, the Anthony Award and the International Thriller Writers Award. He has been shortlisted for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger and the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière.

Stav Sherez is a British novelist whose first novel, The Devil's Playground, was published in 2004 by Penguin Books and was shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey Dagger. In July 2018 he won the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award for his fifth novel, The Intrusions, the third outing for his detectives Jack Carrigan and Geneva Miller.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Caro Ramsay</span>

Caro Ramsay is a Scottish writer of crime fiction. Her first ten novels are police procedurals, set in Glasgow, featuring DI Colin Anderson and DS Freddie Costello.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mick Herron</span> British novelist

Mick Herron is a British mystery and thriller novelist. He is the author of the Slough House series, early novels of which have been adapted into the Slow Horses television series. He won the Crime Writers' Association 2013 Gold Dagger for Dead Lions.

Jane Harper is a British–Australian author known for her crime novels The Dry, Force of Nature and The Lost Man, all set in rural Australia.

David John Young is an English novelist whose crime thriller series featuring a fictional Volkspolizei detective, Karin Müller, is set in 1970s East Germany. Young's debut novel Stasi Child won the 2016 CWA Endeavour Historical Dagger for the best historical crime novel of the year. Both it and the follow-up, Stasi Wolf, were longlisted for the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award in 2016 and 2017 respectively. In 2017, Bonnier Zaffre, the UK adult fiction division of the Bonnier Group, announced Young had signed a six-figure deal for three further novels in the series, making five in all, with the third, A Darker State, being published in February 2018. Young says the inspiration for the series came after his indie pop band The Candy Twins toured Germany in 2007 and he read Anna Funder's non-fiction book Stasiland between gigs. He secured the tour thanks to favourable comments made by Edwyn Collins about a tribute song Young wrote about him. Before becoming a full-time novelist, Young was a news producer and editor for more than 25 years with BBC World Service radio and BBC World TV.

Imran Mahmood is a British novelist and barrister. His first novel You Don't Know Me (2017), which was shortlisted for the Glass Bell Award in 2018, was dramatised by the BBC in 2021.

Mike W. Craven is an English crime writer. He is the author of the Washington Poe series and the DI Avison Fluke series. In 2019 his novel The Puppet Show won the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Abir Mukherjee</span> Scottish-Bengali author

Abir Mukherjee is a British-Indian author best known for his crime novels. He wrote the Wyndham and Banerjee series set in the British Raj era in India.

References

  1. "Biography". Author's website. Archived from the original on 1 November 2011. Retrieved 9 October 2011.
  2. Elena Cresci (1 April 2013). "Belinda Bauer: I want to prove that books set in Wales do sell". WalesOnline. Retrieved 17 April 2019.
  3. 1 2 3 Flood, Alison (10 August 2018). "Belinda Bauer, the Crime Author up for the Booker: 'If it's Tokenism, I Don't Care'". The Guardian . Retrieved 1 August 2024.
  4. "Belinda Bauer wins the CWA Gold Dagger 2010". Crime Writers' Association. Archived from the original on 28 September 2011. Retrieved 9 October 2011.
  5. Lea, Richard (11 October 2010). "Debut Novelist Belinda Bauer Wins Golden Dagger". The Guardian . Retrieved 1 August 2024.
  6. Lea, Richard (18 July 2014). "Theakstons Old Peculier crime novel of the year taken by Belinda Bauer". The Guardian. Retrieved 11 June 2016.
  7. Hampson, Laura (21 November 2018). "All the Winners from the 2018 National Book Awards". The Evening Standard . Retrieved 1 August 2024.
  8. Forshaw, Barry (19 September 2017). "Killer Women Scoop: Crime Writer to Reveal Secret Identity at 'Killer Weekend'". Crime Time. Retrieved 1 August 2024.
  9. "The Impossible Thing". Penguin. 1 August 2024. Retrieved 1 August 2024.