The McIlvanney Prize - named after ‘Godfather of Tartan Noir’ William McIlvanney - is presented each year at the Bloody Scotland international crime writing festival.
Dreamed up by writers Lin Anderson and Alex Gray, the festival is held in Stirling over three days of September each year, attracting thousands of readers to events feturing hundreds of authors around the world.
The prize aims to reward "the best Scottish Crime book of the year" and has been won by 13 different books since it was established.
.jpeg?crop=4:3&trim=&width=800)
5. 2016: Chris Brookmyre, Black Widow
Chris Brookmyre won his first McIlvanney in 2016 for this twisty thriller that leaves the reader guessing right to the end. It's his seventh novel to feature investigative journalist Jack Parlabane. "Diana Jager is clever, strong and successful, a skilled surgeon and fierce campaigner via her blog about sexism. Yet it takes only hours for her life to crumble when her personal details are released on the internet as revenge for her writing. Then she meets Peter. He's kind, generous, and knows nothing about her past: the second chance she's been waiting for. Within six months, they are married. Within six more, Peter is dead in a road accident, a nightmare end to their fairytale romance. But Peter's sister Lucy doesn't believe in fairytales, and tasks maverick reporter Jack Parlabane with discovering the dark truth behind the woman the media is calling Black Widow..." | Contributed
.jpeg?crop=4:3&trim=&width=800)
6. 2017: Denise Mina, The Long Drop
This novel inspired by real-life serial killer Peter Manuel earned Denice Mina the 2017 prize. "William Watt wants answers about his family's murder. Peter Manuel has them. But Peter Manuel is a liar. William Watt is an ordinary businessman, a fool, a social climber. Peter Manuel is a famous liar, a rapist, a criminal. He claims he can get hold of the gun used to murder Watt's family. One December night in 1957, Watt meets Manuel in a Glasgow bar to find out what he knows. Based on true events, The Long Drop is an extraordinarily unsettling, evocative and compelling novel from a writer at the height of her powers." | Contributed
.jpeg?crop=4:3&trim=&width=800)
7. 2018: Liam McIlvanney, The Quaker
It was a family affair in 2018 when Liam McIlvanney took the prize named after his father, William McIlvanney, for his novel The Quaker. "It is 1969 and Glasgow has been brought to its knees by a serial killer spreading fear throughout the city. The Quaker has taken three women from the same nightclub and brutally murdered them in the backstreets. Now, six months later, the police are left chasing a ghost, with no new leads and no hope of catching their prey. They call in DI McCormack, a talented young detective from the Highlands. But his arrival is met with anger from a group of officers on the brink of despair." | Contributed
.jpeg?crop=4:3&trim=&width=800)
8. 2019: Manda Scott, A Treachery of Spies
When Glasgow vet-turned-writer Manda Scott won the McIlvanney in 2019 for France-set thriller A Treachery of Spies she chose to share it with fellow-nominees Doug Johnstone, Denise Mina and Ambrose Parry. "An elderly woman of striking beauty is found murdered in Orleans, France. Her identity has been cleverly erased but the method of her death is very specific: she has been killed in the manner of traitors to the Resistance in World War Two. Tracking down her murderer leads police inspector Inès Picaut back to 1940s France where the men and women of the Resistance were engaged in a desperate fight for survival against the Nazi invaders." | Contributed