So to Fitzrovia for the announcement of the tenth annual CWA Ellis Peters Award for Historical Crime Fiction, which this year goes to Philip Kerr’s If The Dead Rise Not. It’s only just out so I have not yet read it, but if it’s up to the mark of his previous Bernie Gunther books, then Kerr is a deserving winner.

In a shortlist, indeed in a category, currently dominated by the Second World War, Kerr’s achievement stands out. In recreating Berlin of the 1930s his world weary detective inhabits a claustrophobic, paranoid world with which we are pretty familiar. To then take Bernie Gunther to post war South America is a stroke of authorial inspiration and I look forward to the rest of his detecting career with great enthusiasm.

The rest of the shortlist was:

• Rennie Airth: The Dead of Winter
• Shona MacLean: The Redemption of Alexander Seaton
• Mark Mills: The Intelligence Officer
• Andrew Williams: The Interrogator
• Laura Wilson: An Empty Death

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