The Long Drop by Denise Mina has won Bloody Scotland's £1,000 (about $1,320) McIlvanney Prize for Scottish crime book of the year.
Lee Randall, chair of the judges, gave this glowing review: "The Long Drop by Denise Mina transports us back to dark, grimy Glasgow, telling the social history of a particular strata of society via the grubby, smokey pubs favoured by crooks and chancers. She takes us into the courtroom, as well, where Manuel acted as his own lawyer, and where hoards of women flocked daily, to watch the drama play out. Full of astute psychological observations, this novel's not only about what happened in the 1950s, but about storytelling itself. It shows how legends grow wings, and how memories shape-shift and mark us. For my money, this is one of the books of 2017--in any genre."
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Stef Penney won the £10,000 (about $13,200) Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize, presented by the Wilbur & Niso Smith Foundation, for her novel Under a Pole Star, the Bookseller reported. Judge Corban Addison said Penney "truly evoked both the time and place that she was describing, created a compelling story that kept me coming back, that transported me to a place that I had never seen or really even spent much time thinking about, and gave me characters that I really did fall in love with."
The prize was one of four awarded during a ceremony last week at London's Royal Geographical Society. The £5,000 (about $6,600) adventure research award for Best Unpublished Manuscript, which includes guidance from literary agents Tibor Jones & Associates, went to Matthew Di Paoli for Holliday; the £1,000 (about $1,320) Author of Tomorrow award for writers under the age of 21 was given to Wilbur Bryant Dublin for The Safe-House Café; and a £1,000 special commendation was awarded to Frederick Morgan for Sir Hop.