Bloody Scotland Crime Book of the Year

Charles Cumming has won the inaugural Bloody Scotland Crime Book of the Year Award for his novel A Foreign Country. (M)

A key part of the new Bloody Scotland-Scotland's International Crime Writing Festival, the award celebrates the best of Scottish crime writing.

Checkout their entertaining website for some great authors clips and a free short story anthology download.

A Foreign Country
by Charles Cumming

Six weeks before she is due to take up her position as the first female head of MI6, Amelia Levene vanishes without a trace.

Her disappearance is the gravest crisis MI6 has faced for more than a decade. There has been no ransom demand, no word from foreign intelligence services, no hint of a defection.

Should news of Levene’s disappearance leak out, the consequences would be catastrophic. But for disgraced MI6 officer Thomas Kell, the crisis offers a chance for redemption. He is approached by his former employers and ordered to find her.

Kell’s search takes him first to France, then North Africa, where he discovers an extraordinary secret hidden deep in Levene's past. It is a secret that could fatally compromise Britain’s national security – and for which Kell himself could pay with his life.


Also consider runner up Philip Kerr's Prague Fatale: a Bernie Gunther novel (M)

In 1941 Prague, private detective Bernie Gunther must sort through a roomful of murderous high-ranking Nazi Party members to discover who killed a young member of Reinhard Heydrich's staff.