Thank you very very much to Perry from Matilda(link is external) who was at Friday night's Ned Kelly awards and kindly let me know the winners:
Non-Fiction
THE TALL MAN by Chloe Hooper
First Fiction
GHOSTLINES by Nick Gadd
Fiction
DEEP WATER by Peter Corris and
SMOKE & MIRRORS by Kel Robertson (tie)
S.D. Harvey Award
"Fidget's Farewell" by Scott McDermott
Lifetime Achievement
Shane Maloney
Thanks also to Craig Sisterson (whose name will be familiar to readers of GoodReading Magazine) for the heads up about the tie for the Fiction award. Given that these 2 were up against the wonderful Barry Maitland this was definitely an entry in the "I'm glad I'm not a judge of that one" category.
Having said that Kel's book is a second in his series, Peter is up to however many dozens in his series. Add to that Smoke & Mirrors was published in a very small run (paid for by the author himself!), and I really hope that Kel's savouring the moment.
Ghostlines is also a fantastic win - an unusual book, it was one of my favourites last year.
This is the story of Palm Island, the tropical paradise where one morning Cameron Doomadgee swore at a policeman and forty minutes later lay dead in a watch-house cell.
Philip Trudeau, a once-respected investigative journalist, has stepped on the wrong toes. With his personal life and health deteriorating around him, he is consigned to a suburban newspaper where he writes 'filler' local news articles to be slotted in among the real-estate and restaurant advertisements. Sent to cover what appears to be a tragic-yet-routine death at a level crossing, Philip is drawn into a multilayered mystery that involves art theft, political intrigue and business corruption... not to mention murder.
Stripped of his private detective licence and devastated by the murder of his partner Lily Truscott, Cliff Hardy travels to the US to help Lily's brother's tilt for a world boxing title. In San Diego he suffers a heart attack and undergoes a quadruple bypass. He meets nurse Margaret McKinley, an expatriate Australian who is concerned about the disappearance in Sydney of her father - renowned geologist Dr Henry McKinley.
Hardy undertakes to investigate in association with Hank Bachelor, his former associate who now runs his own agency. It turns out that McKinley had discovered a way to tap into the massive Sydney basin acquifier, a possible solution to the city's water problems. Working with Margaret who visits Sydney, Bachelor, and his daughter, Megan, Hardy confronts an old enemy and contending forces bent on exploiting the discovery and prepared to kill for it.
Energised by the case and by his attachment to Margaret, Hardy obeys the strict rules for the restoration of his health - but in pursuing the truth and the malefactors, he makes his own rules.
Ace detective Brad Chen is lured back to work by the double murder of a Whitlam government minister and the editor of his political memoirs. The body count rises as Chen uncovers the deadly secret behind the most momentous events in Australian political history. Smoke and Mirrors is the second Brad Chen novel.