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.
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9. 2020: Francine Toon, Pine
The first debut novel to win the McIlvanney Prize was in 2020 - Francine Toon's atmospheric Pine. "Lauren and her father Niall live alone in the Highlands, in a small village surrounded by pine forest. When a woman stumbles out onto the road one Halloween night, Niall drives her back to their house in his pickup. In the morning, she's gone. In a community where daughters rebel, men quietly rage, and drinking is a means of forgetting, mysteries like these are not out of the ordinary. The trapper found hanging with the dead animals for two weeks. Locked doors and stone circles. The disappearance of Lauren's mother a decade ago. Lauren looks for answers in her tarot cards, hoping she might one day be able to read her father's turbulent mind. Neighbours know more than they let on, but when local teenager Ann-Marie goes missing it's no longer clear who she can trust." | Contributed
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10. 2021: Craig Russell, Hyde
Another bit of history made in 2021 - when Craig Russell became the first author to win the prize twice, thanks to gothic chiller Hyde. "Edward Hyde has a strange gift - or a curse - he keeps secret from all but his physician. He experiences two realities, one real, the other a dreamworld state brought on by a neurological condition. When murders in Victorian Edinburgh echo the ancient Celtic threefold death ritual, Captain Edward Hyde hunts for those responsible. In the process he becomes entangled in a web of Celticist occultism and dark scheming by powerful figures. The answers are there to be found, not just in the real world but in the sinister symbolism of Edward Hyde's otherworld." | Contributed
11. 2022: Alan Parks, May God Forgive
The fifth of Alan Parks' series featuring Glasgow policeman Detective Harry McCoy was announced the winner in 2022. "Glasgow is a city in mourning. An arson attack has left five dead. Tempers are frayed and sentiments running high. When three youths are charged the city goes wild. A crowd gathers outside the courthouse but as the police drive the young men to prison, their van is rammed by a truck, and the men are grabbed and bundled into a car. The next day, the body of one of them is dumped in the city centre. A note has been sent to the newspapers: one down, two to go. Detective Harry McCoy has twenty-four hours to find the kidnapped boys before they all turn up dead, and it is going to mean taking down some of Glasgow’s most powerful to do it..." | Contributed
12. 2023: Callum McSorley, Squeaky Clean
A second winning debut arrived in 2023 - Callum McSorley's darkly hilarious caper set in Glasgow's criminal underworld. "Half the Glasgow copshop think DI Alison McCoist is bent. The other half just think she's a f*ck-up. No one thinks much at all about carwash employee Davey Burnet, until one day he takes the wrong customer's motor for a ride. One kidnapping later, he's officially part of Glasgow's criminal underworld, working for a psychopath who enjoys playing games like 'Keep Yer Kneecaps' with any poor bastard who crosses him. Can Davey escape from the gang's clutches with his kneecaps and life intact? Perhaps this polis Ally McCoist who keeps nosing around the carwash could help. That's if she doesn't get herself killed first." | Contributed