Many congratulations to RJ Ellory whose A Simple Act of Violence was awarded the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award at Harrogate on Thursday night.

While he’s an established seller and previous Richard and Judy bookclub pick, this was Ellory’s first major prize win in the UK and it’s heartening to see him recognized for what is, for me, his finest work to date.

The jacket blurb makes it sound like a fairly standard police procedural in which a Washington DC Detective investigates a series of killings where the victims don’t appear to have official identities. But don’t be deceived, as from this starting point Ellory fashions a bold and provocative exploration of the CIA’s covert operations in Nicaragua in the 1980s (and it’s this side of it which seems even more timely and relevant following today’s disclosures by Wikileaks). Perhaps the highest compliment I can pay it is that it makes a great companion piece to Don Winslow’s magisterial 2005 novel, The Power of the Dog.

And it was another excellent year for the festival, a three-day celebration of crime writing at which the authors, as is tradition, socialise (and drink) freely with the festival-goers.

My other highlight of the weekend was the Saturday lunchtime event for debuts, hand-picked and generously hosted by Val McDermid, which featured Belinda Bauer (Blacklands), Stuart Neville (The Twelve), Attica Locke (Black Water Rising) and Liam McIlvanney (All the Colours of the Town), four authors whose highly impressive first novels all promise a vibrant future for contemporary crime writing.

As the editor of Hang the DJ, and a man, I’m obviously a fan of lists, but this is one of the better features that they regularly run on the Guardian’s book pages, and worth a slot in Saturday’s Review if you ask me. Anyway, it’s a long while since I’ve thought about Carter USM or Jim Bob – in fact the thought of it now brings back pretty bad school memories of baggy longsleeved t-shirts and unwashed hair – but he shows pretty immaculate taste here in his list of Top Ten Illustrated Books for Adults, including a nicely worked in top spot, two mentions for Hartlepool’s answer to Cormac McCarthy (!), and my favourite book by Douglas Coupland. And it might be a couple of years off yet, but roll on that Top Ten Books by Willy Vlautin list…

Jim Bob’s Top 10 Illustrated Books for Adults at guardian.co.uk.

Angus Cargill is editor of Hang the DJ: A Book of Alternative Music Lists.

 

Back in 1998 – while studying at Goldsmiths College – I was desperately trying to earn money for a summer travelling across the South of America. I had a terrible job working for a ‘bar & catering agency’ that involved being sent to the worst pubs you can imagine – usually in the city, or Docklands – to cover the shifts no-one else wanted.

Still, it paid an ok rate and I needed the money, so I stuck it out for the best part of a year, until shortly before I was due to fly to the US. That particular day, I was booked for an eight-hour shift, but when that was done, the manager, one of the least pleasant women I’ve ever met, insisted I was booked for a twelve-hour shift. I pointed out that the only way I could get back from West India Quay to Deptford at midnight was by cab, which would wipe out about half of my day’s earnings. A row followed in front of a busy pub and, in one of those rare moments, I got to stick it to the man (!) and walk out on someone who was being totally unreasonable.

It felt good and empowering. The down-side though was that I didn’t get paid, and two days later I was summoned to the agency’s grim office off Tottenham Court Road and given my marching orders by a pale man called Warren.

But, strangely, one good thing did happen that day … as I grabbed my bag from the depressing staff room I saw lying on the floor a battered copy of a grimly alluring looking paperback, Nick Kent’s The Dark Stuff. Now some might call it stealing, but in that moment, in my aggrieved state of mind, I decided it was wholly reasonable to slip it into my bag and make my escape.

Ten years later and my friend Richard Thomas told me that Penguin had let The Dark Stuff go out of print and that Nick wondered if Faber would want to re-do it. So, with a smart new cover and some extra chapters (Sly Stone, Eminem, Serge Gainsbourg, Johnny Cash) we re-issued one of the classic books of rock journalism – the best book I never bought – and once again it was hailed as the seminal work it is. Even better, we contracted Nick’s follow up at the same time, his memoir of the 1970s.

Publishing this week – some 16 years after The Dark Stuff first appeared – Apathy for the Devil is a very different book, a personal, no-holds barred account of Nick’s rise and fall as the most celebrated and attacked music writer of his generation. A fascinating look into a very different musical era, and a genuinely moving portrait of the artist as a troubled young man, it was also more than worth the unpaid eight hours bar work I put in that day.

Catch Nick Kent at the following events:

3rd March – Q & A, reading and signing at free Rough Trade East event

7th April – at the Roundhouse in London

9th April – at the Laugharne Festival

15th May – at the Brighton Festival

31st May – at the Hay Festival

February 4th sees the publication of Lean on Pete, the third novel by Richmond Fontaine frontman Willy Vlautin.

Set in his adopted hometown of Portland, Oregon and already acclaimed by writers as diverse as Mark Billingham, Sarah Hall, George Pelecanos and John Connolly, it’s the hugely affecting story of a kid named Charley Thompson and the horse, Lean on Pete, who offers him some kind of hope – definitely one for fans of Cormac McCarthy, Annie Proulx, and John Steinbeck.

To celebrate publication Willy will be here in the UK for a short tour. If you’ve read either of his previous novels, The Motel Life or Northline, or seen Willy live before, you’ll want to be there, and if you haven’t then you’ve got a rare treat to discover …

Tour Dates:

Feb 9:  Willy solo music and reading at the Roundhouse, London

Feb 10: Willy solo music and reading at the Cardiff Arts Institute

Feb 11: Willy solo music and reading at The Victoria, Birmingham

Feb 12: Willy solo music and reading at the Captain’s Rest, Glasgow

Watch the preview …

Here’s a preview of this stunning book, read by the author:

And if that’s not enough, all of this prefigures the return of Richmond Fontaine, for a full UK and European tour, which will include some special book promotional duties in Ireland. Full details at the Richmond Fontaine website.

The Critics on Lean on Pete:

‘Vlautin’s characters … become a sketchbook of America … There’s music in the stark writing, the urban clamour of Portland giving way to the keening twang of the open spaces. The band has to be a hobby now. Vlautin is a writer.’ Sunday Herald

‘Lean On Pete is an archetypal American novel, Huck Finn for the crystal-meth generation. If there’s the occasional touch of sentimentality, it’s hard-earned and welcome. This is a sad, often brutal, but oddly beautiful portrait of an America that’s forgotten only because we choose not to remember its continuing existence.’ Independent

‘The story of Charley’s long journey to Wyoming and the America he meets on the way, which is often unforgiving and hostile, although home also to a surprising kindness. The language in which it’s told is spare and unadorned, but nevertheless poetic in its way, and full of boundless compassion for the dispossessed and rootless.’ ***** Uncut ~ Book of the Month