Crime Pays - Read all about it!

Crime Pays – Read all about it!

It pays to read crime novels.  The dividends are huge, not only in terms of entertainment but also for their strong social commentary.

Allow me to name a few that were on last year’s long/short list for the Crime Writers Association Golden Dagger award.  I’ve read them and can say hand to my heart, ‘It’d be criminal not to read at least one, if not all, of the following,’

A Land More Kind than Home by Wiley Cash

The Rage by Gene Kerrigan (eventual winner of the Gold Dagger Award)

Bereft by Chris Womersley   (Chris Womersley is a Melbourne based journalist. Bereft, his second novel, has met with massive critical and popular acclaim here and overseas.

These novels are not full of dismembered bodies which have either been stored in vats of lime or grounded into mince meat by some Mafioso deviant to make spag bog with at a later date. These novels deal with crime but are imbued with more; they speak of the social and political times in which they are set.

 Aside from this list I cannot resist adding Peter Temple’s crime novel Truth - the first crime novel ever to win the Miles Franklin in 2010.  Yay!

But it comes with a Health Warning: if you’ve got a dickey heart, avoid reading. 

The Miles Franklin judges described Truth as "a stunning novel about contemporary Australian life, written with all the ambiguity and moral sophistication of the most memorable literature".

If there’s a crime novel you’d like to recommend, please do.