MWF: The 10th Davitt Awards of Chic Crime Writers

This was the first year that the Sisters in Crime’s Davitt Awards has been ‘embraced’ under the umbrella of the Melbourne Writers Festival. It was noted no one from the Festival had joined them, but of course they were required at their own party, back at Fed Square. The Sister’s are a group of women, who started SheKilda, and then the Davitt Awards ten years ago because they loved crime writing and wanted to support female crime writers in Australia.

They meet monthly, they have about 500 members and it would seem that a large proportion of them are university educated, feminist, professional women firmly in the baby boomer box. One hundred and forty of them mingled and laughed in the function room of the Celtic Club, swapped the salmon, chicken and tortellini, and bemoaned replacement of the sweet lemon tart with a berry cheesecake. There was a raffle, and a competition to be immortalised in the next book of the Davitt winner, your name put in a hat.

But amongst them were a forensic pathologist, two judges and at least eight published authors. There were publishers and journalists and women who are at the top of the pile of their choose fields. It might look like a middle class crochet club but it’s not light-weight, and it’s not a networking group to be ignored.

And the publishing industry has started to pay some attention. It’s hard to say whether or not a Davitt Winner sticker on the front of a book, holds much sway on the bookstand, but this year there were a record 40 entries for the Davitt Award. There are four categories: true crime, young adult, the reader’s choice and the ultimate Davitt, and all were won by books published by Allen & Unwin.

The winner of the Davitt was Sharp Shooter by Marianne Delacourt. It is a novel being compared, quite deliberately to the popular ‘comedy-crime capers’ of the Stephanie Plum series by US writer Janet Evanovich. Sharp Shooter introduces Tara Sharp, a Monaro driving, aura reading private investigator and is proudly set in Delacourt’s hometown of Perth. This is Delacourt’s first foray into crime though she is also the author of the award winning Parrish Plessis and Sentients of Orion speculative fiction series. A second Tara Sharp novel Sharp Turn is due out soon.

This year’s True Crime went to Sydney journalist duo Candace Sutton and Ellen Connolly for their account of the crime and final conviction of Bruce Burrell, in Lady Killer: How Conman Bruce Burrell Kidnapped and Killed Rich Women for Their Money.

The Young Adult novel was won by Justine Larbalestier for Liar. In the judge’s report, it was described as a book that ‘grabs you by the jugular from the first page..elegantly and skilfully structured’…and ‘told from the point of view of an unreliable main character whose lies and truths have the reader questioning and re-questioning what they believe.’

The Reader’s choice chosen from the membership of Sisters in Crime was awarded to Kerry Greenwood for Forbidden Fruit.

The floor show entertainment was Val McDermid who was more relaxed and happy than I'd seen her at any other event. She also gave out the awards. She covered similar ground to what had been said at other Festival events but Sue Turnbull drew out some new anecdotes and laugh. Sue is of course, the one and the same who chaired Joss Whedon's Keynote last night.

The name, Davitt, by the way comes from Ellen Davitt, a women who migrated to Victoria in the 1850s and who wrote Force and Fraud, Australia’s first mystery novel, in 1865.

Melbourne Writers Festival
27 August – 5 September
www.mwf.com.au