‘Slow Horses’ novelist Mick Herron has been awarded the highest honour in UK crime fiction.
British crime novelist Mick Herron won the Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) Diamond Dagger award for lifetime contribution to crime writing.
Herron, 61, is best known for his ‘Slough House’ spy series. The first novel of the series ‘Slow Horses’ was published in 2010. ‘Clown Town’ the 14th entry in the series is expected to be released this year.
Early entries into the series have been adapted into the TV show ‘Slow Horses’ starring Gary Oldman, Jack Lowden, and Kristin Scott Thomas.
The second novel in the ‘Slough House’ series won Herron the CWA’s Gold Dagger award in 2013, given to the best crime novel of the year.
He has been shortlisted for the Gold Dagger a further five times and shortlisted for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger – for the best thriller novel of the year – five times, winning once in 2017 for ‘Spook Street’.
Now, Herron has won the CWA’s highest award, the Diamond Dagger, for his lifetime contribution to crime writing. “To receive this accolade from these friends and colleagues is a career highlight and a personal joy,” the author said. “I’m touched and thrilled beyond measure, and will try to live up to the honour.”
Herron’s first book series was the Zoë Boehm collection of four books published between 2003 and 2009. Apple TV+ announced it is adapting the series with Emma Thompson and Ruth Wilson in starring roles.
The CWA was set up as a specialist authors’ organisation in London in 1953. To help promote crime and thriller fiction, its annual Dagger awards highlight the best of the year’s writing in the genres.
Diamond Dagger winners are first nominated by CWA members who are then passed onto a specialist panel of industry experts before a winner is chosen by previous recipients.
Past recipients of the Diamond Dagger include John le Carré, Ian Rankin, and Lee Child.
