Slough House by Mick Herron has won the £3,000 (about $3,600) 2022 Harrogate Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award. True Crime Story by Joseph Knox was "highly commended," and Michael Connelly won the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival Outstanding Contribution to Crime Fiction Award for his writing career.
Organizers said Slough House "manages to combine intrigue, peril and humour in a deft exploration of international espionage."
The Guardian described the book as "the seventh instalment in [Herron's] series of the same name, which follows a band of failed spies. In the book, a new populist movement is taking hold on London's streets, and the spies find themselves on the run in the aftermath of a blunder by the Russian secret service that left a British citizen dead."
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Longlists for the three 2022 Polari Prizes, which include first book and children's and YA, a category added this year, have been announced and can be seen here. The Polari Prizes honor LGBTQ+ literature, and this year's nominees include, organizers said, "memoir, fiction, and a significant number of poetry collections," many from independent publishers.