Founded in 1982 by mystery reviewers Derrick Murdock and Doug Marshall, editor John Pierce and mystery and thriller authors Tony Aspler, Howard Engel, Tim Heald, and Larry Morse, Crime Writers of Canada (CWC) is now a national, non-profit organization. Its mandate, then and now, is to promote crime writing in Canada and to raise the profile of the genre's established and aspiring authors.
Crime writing, as defined by the CWC, is any fictional or factual book-length work, novella or short-story that features crime as a major or principal element, and is written for any print or electronic medium. The genre includes any written account of criminal activity, crime detection and/or crime solving, set in any historical or geographical context, and usually involves a strong element of suspense. Crime Fiction may include detective stories, mysteries, thrillers, tales of espionage and suspense, as well courtroom, police or forensic procedural dramas. Other genres such as romance or speculative fiction may also involve a strong criminal or crime-detection theme.
Among the CWC members are professional and emerging authors, publicists and literary critics, author representatives, librarians, book sellers, and fans of crime fiction.
Annual Awards
Originally known as the Arthur Ellis Awards, the Awards of Excellence have acknowledged distinction in Canadian crime writing since 1984. Celebrating the best in Canadian crime fiction with a juried annual competition, they draw readers’ and critics’ attention and the Unpublished category has launched several careers. Judges are drawn from a pool of award-winning writers, reviewers, booksellers, librarians, and academics across Canada. Finalists, as well as winners, recognize their exceptional promotional value.
Detective fiction is a subgenre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator or a detective—whether professional, amateur or retired—investigates a crime, often murder. The detective genre began around the same time as speculative fiction and other genre fiction in the mid-nineteenth century and has remained extremely popular, particularly in novels. Some of the most famous heroes of detective fiction include C. Auguste Dupin, Sherlock Holmes, Kogoro Akechi, and Hercule Poirot. Juvenile stories featuring The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and The Boxcar Children have also remained in print for several decades.
A whodunit is a complex plot-driven variety of detective fiction in which the puzzle regarding who committed the crime is the main focus. The reader or viewer is provided with the clues to the case, from which the identity of the perpetrator may be deduced before the story provides the revelation itself at its climax. The investigation is usually conducted by an eccentric, amateur, or semi-professional detective.
Crime fiction, detective story, murder mystery, mystery novel, and police novel are terms used to describe narratives that centre on criminal acts and especially on the investigation, either by an amateur or a professional detective, of a crime, often a murder. Most crime drama focuses on criminal investigation and does not feature the courtroom. Suspense and mystery are key elements that are nearly ubiquitous to the genre.
Mystery is a fiction genre where the nature of an event, usually a murder or other crime, remains mysterious until the end of the story. Often within a closed circle of suspects, each suspect is usually provided with a credible motive and a reasonable opportunity for committing the crime. The central character is often a detective, who eventually solves the mystery by logical deduction from facts presented to the reader. Some mystery books are non-fiction. Mystery fiction can be detective stories in which the emphasis is on the puzzle or suspense element and its logical solution such as a whodunit. Mystery fiction can be contrasted with hardboiled detective stories, which focus on action and gritty realism.
Genre fiction, also known as formula fiction or popular fiction, is a term used in the book-trade for fictional works written with the intent of fitting into a specific literary genre in order to appeal to readers and fans already familiar with that genre.
Thriller is a genre of fiction with numerous, often overlapping, subgenres, including crime, horror, and detective fiction. Thrillers are characterized and defined by the moods they elicit, giving their audiences heightened feelings of suspense, excitement, surprise, anticipation and anxiety. This genre is well suited to film and television.
Crime fiction is a typically 19th-, 20th- and 21st-century genre, dominated by British and American writers. This article explores its historical development as a genre.
Henry Reymond Fitzwalter Keating was an English crime fiction writer most notable for his series of novels featuring Inspector Ghote of the Bombay CID.
Karin Slaughter is an American crime writer. She has written 24 novels, which have sold more than 40 million copies and have been published in 120 countries. Her first novel, Blindsighted (2001), was published in 27 languages and made the Crime Writers' Association's Dagger Award shortlist for "Best Thriller Debut" of 2001.
Otto Penzler is an American editor of mystery fiction, and proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City.
The Crime Writers' Association (CWA) is a specialist authors' organisation in the United Kingdom, most notable for its "Dagger" awards for the best crime writing of the year, and the Diamond Dagger awarded to an author for lifetime achievement. The Association also promotes crime writing of fiction and non-fiction by holding annual competitions, publicising literary festivals and establishing links with libraries, booksellers and other writer organisations, both in the UK such as the Society of Authors, and overseas. The CWA enables members to network at its annual conference and through its regional chapters as well as through dedicated social media channels and private website. Members' events and general news items are published on the CWA website, which also features Find An Author, where CWA members are listed and information provided about themselves, their books and their awards.
Kenneth Martin Edwards is a British crime novelist, whose work has won multiple awards including lifetime achievement awards for his fiction, non-fiction, short fiction, and scholarship in the UK and the United States. In addition to translations into various European languages, his books have been translated into Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Taiwanese. As a crime fiction critic and historian, and also in his career as a solicitor, he has written non-fiction books and many articles. He is the current President of the Detection Club and in 2020 was awarded the Crime Writers' Association's Diamond Dagger, the highest honour in British crime writing, in recognition of the "sustained excellence" of his work in the genre.
Rick Mofina is a bestselling Canadian author of more than 30 crime fiction and thriller novels, with some 2 million copies of his books sold worldwide in nearly 30 countries. This includes an illegal Iranian translation of his first thriller, If Angels Fall. He grew up in Belleville, Ontario and began writing short stories in grade school. He sold his first short story at the age of fifteen. He sold subsequent short stories while in high school to various magazines. After finishing high school he worked for a few years in factories.
Libby Fischer Hellmann is an American crime fiction writer who currently resides in Chicago, Illinois. Most of her novels and stories are set in Chicago; the Chicago Sun-Times notes that she "grew up in Washington, D.C., but she has embraced her adopted home of Chicago with the passion of a convert."
Kelli Stanley is an American author of mystery-thrillers. The majority of her published fiction is written in the genres of historical crime fiction and noir. Her best known work, the Miranda Corbie series, is set in San Francisco, her adoptive hometown.
Thriller film, also known as suspense film or suspense thriller, is a broad film genre that evokes excitement and suspense in the audience. The suspense element found in most films' plots is particularly exploited by the filmmaker in this genre. Tension is created by delaying what the audience sees as inevitable, and is built through situations that are menacing or where escape seems impossible.
Maureen Corrigan is an American author, scholar, and literary critic. She is the book critic on the NPR radio program Fresh Air and writes for the "Book World" section of The Washington Post. In 2014, she wrote So We Read On, a book on the origins and power of The Great Gatsby. In 2005, she published a literary memoir Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading: Finding and Losing Myself in Books. Corrigan was awarded the 2018 Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing by the National Book Critics Circle for her reviews on Fresh Air on NPR and in The Washington Post, and the 1999 Edgar Award for Criticism by the Mystery Writers of America for her book Mystery & Suspense Writers, co-authored with Robin W. Cook.
Steven James is an American author who has written more than forty books, including the critically acclaimed Bowers Files, an eleven-book series of psychological thrillers that consists of Opening Moves, Every Crooked Path, Every Deadly Kiss, Every Wicked Man, The Pawn, The Rook, The Knight, The Bishop, The Queen, The King, and Checkmate. The series has received four Christy Awards and numerous other honors.
J. T. Ellison is a New York Times bestselling American author. She writes domestic noir and psychological thrillers, the latter starring Nashville Homicide Lt. Taylor Jackson and medical examiner Dr. Samantha Owens. She also pens the "A Brit in the FBI" series with #1 New York Times bestselling author Catherine Coulter. With over a million books in print, Ellison's work has been published in twenty-eight countries and sixteen languages. She is also the co-host of the Emmy Award-winning television series, A Word on Words, which airs on Nashville Public Television. Ellison is also the founder of Two Tales Press, an independent publishing house, and The Wine Vixen, a wine review website. She lives with her husband in Nashville, Tennessee.
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