We have five outstanding novels shortlisted for this year’s Debut Prize – Congratulations to:

David Goodman with A Reluctant Spy (Headline). He was selected for Crime in the Spotlight, reading ahead of Frank Gardner at Bloody Scotland 2024. Film & TV rights to his thriller about a successful Scottish sales exec who finds himself inadvertently pitched into a deadly mission on hostile territory in Tanzania have been sold in a hugely competitive auction. David lives in East Lothian.

Natalie Jayne Clark with The Malt Whisky Murders (Polygon) She was runner up in Pitch Perfect in 2023 and had an agent and a book deal less than a month later. Rights for her darkly comic novel about two women who have just taken over a distillery in Kintyre have already sold to Spain and Hungary. Natalie has won various poetry slams and is a certified whisky ambassador. She lives in Perth.

Foday Mannah with The Search for Othella Savage (Quercus). He was a finalist in Pitch Perfect and in 2022 won the Mo Siewcharran Prize which was established to discover new underrepresented talent. It is fiction based on a real case and is set in the Sierra Leone community in Edinburgh, revealing a different side to the Edinburgh usually found in Scottish crime writing. Foday is an English teacher at a High School in West Lothian.

Claire Wilson with Five by Five (Michael Joseph). Claire is the ultimate product of the Bloody Scotland school of supporting new writers. She was a finalist in Pitch Perfect 2022 and went on to appear in Crime in the Spotlight with Chris Whitaker and Abir Mukherjee. Her debut is inspired by her own job as an intelligence analyst in a Scottish prison and has been shortlisted for the CrimeFest Specsavers Debut Crime Novel Award, Capital Crime’s Debut Award and longlisted for the CWA New Blood Dagger. Claire lives in Central Scotland.

Richard Strachan with The Unrecovered (Raven / Bloomsbury). A former Waterstones bookseller, Richard lives in Edinburgh with his family. His haunting literary mystery set in a requisitioned stately home outside South Queensferry during the 1^st World War has drawn comparisons with James Hogg and Robert Louis Stevenson.

The winner will be announced on 12th September at the festival in Stirling.