The Mystery Critics Award (Prix Mystère de la critique)  is one of France’s most prestigious Crime Fiction Awards. Launched in 1972 by  Georges Rieben for Mystère Magazine, the now defunct  Crime Fiction journal  created in 1948, it is awarded yearly by a jury of 32 critics specialised in crime Fiction, including authors, publishers and Librarians. The Awards ceremony takes place in the BILIPO, the Parisian library specialised in Crime literature and our partner in the AHRC project visualising European Crime Fiction .

Two  awards are given every year, one for best French Fiction, the other going to an international author. This year’s winners are :

-Nicolas Mathieu for “Aux animaux la guerre“, Actes Sud, 2014 , a novel set in the east of France (Epinal and the Vosges region, Nancy, Strasbourg), in a context of deindustrialisation and growing disenfranchisement, while spectres of the Algerian War cast a long shadow

More information and soundcloud, on the publisher’s webpage :http://www.actes-sud.fr/catalogue/romans-policiers/aux-animaux-la-guerre

–  Shannon Burke, for “911“, Sonatine, 2014, set in Harlem, as it can be seen at night, from the point of view of an Ambulance

The official ceremony will take place on the 4th of March in the BILIPO