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The Martin Beck Award is an award given by the
Swedish Crime Writers' AcademyThe Swedish Crime Writers' Academy , is a Swedish organization set up in 1971 to promote the writing of detective fiction and crime fiction...
(Svenska Deckarakademin) for the best crime novel in translation. It is one of the most prestigious international crime-writing awards.
The Award is named after
Martin BeckMartin Beck is a fictional Swedish police detective who is the main character in a series of ten novels by Sjöwall and Wahlöö, collectively titled The Story of a Crime...
, a fictional Swedish police
detectiveA detective is an investigator, either a member of a police agency or a private person. The latter may be known as private investigators or "private eyes"...
who is the main character in a series of ten novels by
Sjöwall and WahlööMaj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, a common-law wife and husband team of detective writers from Sweden. Together they conceived and wrote a series of ten novels about the exploits of detectives from the special homicide commission of the national police in which the character of Martin Beck was the...
1970s
- 1971 - Julian Symons
Julian Gustave Symons 1912 - 1994) was a British crime writer and poet. He also wrote social and military history, biography and studies of literature.-Life and work:...
, The 31st February, (UK, 1950)
- 1972 - Frederick Forsyth
Frederick Forsyth, CBE is an English author and occasional political commentator. He is best known for thrillers such as The Day of the Jackal, The Odessa File, The Fourth Protocol, The Dogs of War, The Devil's Alternative, The Fist of God, Icon, The Veteran, Avenger, The Afghan and The Cobra.-...
, The Day of the JackalThe Day of the Jackal is a thriller novel by English writer Frederick Forsyth, about a professional assassin who is contracted by the OAS, a French terrorist group of the early 1960s, to kill Charles de Gaulle, the President of France....
, (UK, 1971)
- 1973 - Richard Neely, The Walter Syndrome, (USA, 1970)
- 1974 - Francis Iles, Malice Aforethought
Malice Aforethought is a murder mystery novel written by Anthony Berkeley Cox, using the pen name Francis Iles. It involves a Devon physician who slowly poisons his domineering wife so that he may be with the woman he loves. It is an early and prominent example of the "inverted detective story",...
, (UK, 1931)
- 1975 - Cornell Woolrich
Cornell George Hopley-Woolrich was an American novelist and short story writer who sometimes wrote under the pseudonyms William Irish and George Hopley....
, Rendezvous in Black, (USA, 1948)
- 1976 - John Franklin Bardin
John Franklin Bardin was an American crime writer, best known for three novels he wrote between 1946 and 1948.-Biography:...
, The Last of Philip Banter, (USA, 1947) and Devil Take The Blue-Tail Fly, (UK, 1948)
- 1977 - Leslie Thomas
Leslie Thomas, OBE is a British author.- Virgin Soldiers :His novels about 1950s British National Service such as "The Virgin Soldiers" spawned two film versions, in 1969 and 1977, whilst his Tropic of Ruislip and Dangerous Davies, The Last Detective have been adapted for television Leslie...
, Dangerous Davies: The Last Detective, (UK, 1976)
- 1978 - Anthony Price
Anthony Price is an author of espionage thrillers.-Life and work:Price attended The King's School, Canterbury and served in the British Army from 1947 to 1949, reaching the rank of Captain. He then studied at Merton College, Oxford until 1952, earning the MA degree...
, Other Paths to Glory, (UK, 1974)
- 1979 - Brian Garfield
Brian Francis Wynne Garfield is an American novelist and screenwriter. He wrote his first published book at the age of eighteen and wrote several novels under such pen names as "Frank Wynne" and "'Brian Wynne" before gaining prominence when his book Hopscotch won the 1976 Edgar Award for Best Novel...
, Recoil, (USA, 1977)
1980s
- 1980 - Ruth Rendell
Ruth Barbara Rendell, Baroness Rendell of Babergh, CBE, , who also writes under the pseudonym Barbara Vine, is an English crime writer, author of psychological thrillers and murder mysteries....
, Make Death Love MeMake Death Love Me is a psychological crime novel by English author Ruth Rendell, regarded by some as one of her bleakest and most powerful stories...
, (UK, 1979)
- 1981 - Sébastien Japrisot
Sébastien Japrisot was a French author, screenwriter and film director, born in Marseille. His pseudonym was an anagram of Jean-Baptiste Rossi, his real name...
, One Deadly Summer, (L'Été meurtrier, France, 1977)
- 1982 - Margaret Yorke
Margaret Yorke is an English crime fiction writer, real name Margaret Beda Nicholson .-Life and work:Born in Compton, Surrey, she spent her childhood in Dublin, moving to England in 1937. During World War II she worked as a hospital librarian, then at eighteen she joined the WRNS as a driver...
, The Scent of Fear, (UK, 1980)
- 1983 - Pierre Magnan, Death in the Truffle Wood, (Le Commissaire dans la truffière, France, 1978)
- 1984 - Len Deighton
Leonard Cyril Deighton is a British military historian, cookery writer, and novelist. He is perhaps most famous for his spy novel The IPCRESS File, which was made into a film starring Michael Caine....
, Berlin GameBerlin Game is a 1983 spy novel by Len Deighton. It is the first novel in the first of three trilogies about Bernard Samson, a middle-aged and somewhat jaded intelligence officer working for the British Secret Intelligence Service...
, (UK, 1983)
- 1985 - Elmore Leonard
Elmore John Leonard Jr. , better known as Elmore Leonard, is an American novelist and screenwriter. His earliest published novels in the 1950s were westerns, but Leonard went on to specialize in crime fiction and suspense thrillers, many of which have been adapted into motion pictures.Among his...
, LaBravaLaBrava, the 1983 novel by author Elmore Leonard, follows the story of Joe LaBrava, former Secret Service agent. This novel won the 1984 Edgar Award for Best Novel.-Plot summary:...
, (USA, 1983)
- 1986 - John le Carré
David John Moore Cornwell , who writes under the name John le Carré, is an author of espionage novels. During the 1950s and the 1960s, Cornwell worked for MI5 and MI6, and began writing novels under the pseudonym "John le Carré"...
, A Perfect SpyA Perfect Spy by John le Carré is a novel about the mental and moral dissolution of a secret agent.-Plot introduction:A Perfect Spy is the tale of Magnus Pym, a long-time spy for the United Kingdom. After attending his father's funeral, Pym mysteriously disappears...
, (UK, 1986)
- 1987 - Matti Joensuu, Harjunpää and the Tormentors, (Harjunpää ja kiusantekijät, Finland, 1986)
- 1988 - Scott Turow
Scott F. Turow is an American author and a practicing lawyer. Turow has written eight fiction and two nonfiction books, which have been translated into over 20 languages and have sold over 25 million copies...
, Presumed InnocentPresumed Innocent, published in 1987, is Scott Turow's first novel, which tells the story of a prosecutor charged with the murder of his colleague, an attractive and intelligent prosecutor, Carolyn Polhemus. It is told in the first person by the accused, Rǒzat "Rusty" Sabich...
, (USA, 1987)
- 1989 - Anders Bodelsen
Anders Bodelsen is a prolific Danish writer primarily associated with the 1960 new-realism wave in Danish literature, along with Christian Kampmann and Henrik Stangerup. Bodelsen prefers the social-realistic style of writing, often thrillers about middle-class people that faces the consequences of...
, Mørklægning, (Denmark, 1988)
1990s
- 1990 - Ross Thomas, Chinaman's Chance, (USA, 1978)
- 1991 - Doris Gercke
Doris Gercke is an award-winning German writer of crime thrillers. She also works under the nom de plume Mary-Jo Morell.-Biography:...
, Weinschröter, du musst hängen, (Weinschröter, du musst hängen, Germany, 1988)
- 1992 - Manuel Vázquez Montalbán
Manuel Vázquez Montalbán was a prolific Spanish writer: journalist, novelist, poet, essayist, anthologue, prologist, humourist, critic, as well as a gastronome and a FC Barcelona supporter....
, Southern Seas, (Los mares del Sur, Spain, 1979)
- 1993 - Tim Krabbé
Tim Krabbé is a Dutch journalist and novelist.Krabbé was born in Amsterdam. His writing has appeared in most major periodicals in the Netherlands. He is known to Dutch readers for his novel De Renner , first published in 1978...
, The Golden EggThe Golden Egg , published as The Vanishing in English-speaking countries, is a psychological thriller novella written by Dutch author Tim Krabbé, first published in 1984...
, (Het gouden ei, Netherlands, 1984)
- 1994 - Maarten 't Hart
Maarten 't Hart is a Dutch biologist who studied zoology and ethology at the University of Leiden and taught that subject before becoming a full-time writer in the 1980s. He is the author of many novels, including Het Woeden der Gehele Wereld and De kroongetuige...
, Het Woeden der Gehele WereldHet Woeden der Gehele Wereld is a 1993 Dutch novel by Maarten 't Hart. The title translates as "The fury/rage/raging of the whole world" and is derived from the text of the poem Au bord de l'eau by Sully Prudhomme, set to music by Gabriel Fauré...
, (Netherlands, 1993)
- 1995 - Scott Smith
Scott Bechtel Smith is an American author and screenwriter, who has published two suspense novels, A Simple Plan and The Ruins. His screen adaptation of A Simple Plan earned him an Academy Award nomination...
, A Simple Plan, (USA, 1993)
- 1996 - David Guterson
David Guterson is an American novelist, short story writer, poet, journalist, and essayist.-Early life:David Guterson was born May 4, 1956, in Seattle, Washington. During his childhood, he attended Seattle public schools and later attended the University of Washington where he earned Bachelor of...
, Snow Falling on CedarsSnow Falling on Cedars is a 1994 novel written by American writer David Guterson. Guterson, who was a teacher at the time, wrote the book in the early morning hours over a ten-year period...
, (USA, 1994)
- 1997 - Barry Unsworth
Barry Unsworth is a British novelist who is known for novels with historical themes. He has published 15 novels, and has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times, winning once for the 1992 novel Sacred Hunger....
, Morality PlayMorality Play is a semi-historical detective novel by Barry Unsworth. The book, published in 1995 by Hamish Hamilton was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.-Synopsis:...
, (UK, 1995)
- 1998 - Mary Willis Walker
-Writing career:Walker began writing in her mid-forties, which she characterized as " 'pretty late to start' ". She spent two years writing her first published thriller, Zero at the Bone, which was published in 1991. Her second Texas-based mystery, Red Scream, was Walker's first to...
, Under the Beetle's Cellar, (USA, 1995)
- 1999 - Iain Pears
Iain Pears is an English art historian, novelist and journalist. He was educated at Warwick School, Warwick, Wadham College and Wolfson College, Oxford. Before writing, he worked as a reporter for the BBC, Channel 4 and ZDF and correspondent for Reuters from 1982 to 1990 in Italy, France, UK and...
, An Instance of the FingerpostAn Instance of the Fingerpost is a 1997 historical mystery novel by Iain Pears.-Synopsis:A murder in 17th-century Oxford is related from the contradictory points of view of four of the characters, all of them unreliable narrators...
, (UK, 1997)
2000s
- 2000 - Thomas H. Cook
Thomas H. Cook is an American author, whose 1996 novel The Chatham School Affair received an Edgar award from the Mystery Writers of America.Thomas H...
, The Chatham School Affair, (USA, 1996)
- 2001 - Peter Robinson
Dr. Peter Robinson is an English crime writer, based in Canada. He is best known for his crime novels set in Yorkshire featuring Inspector Alan Banks...
, In a Dry Season In A Dry Season is the 12th novel by crime-writer Peter Robinson, published in 1999 and is 10th in the multi award-winning Inspector Alan Banks series. The novel is widely acclaimed as Robinson's best, a large step forward in ambition from previous books, and this was reflected in its critical...
, (USA, 1999)
- 2002 - Karin Fossum
Karin Fossum is a Norwegian author of crime fiction, often referred to as the "Norwegian queen of crime".-Biography:Karin Mathisen was born in Sandefjord in Vestfold county, Norway. She currently lives in Oslo. Fossum debuted as a poet with Kanskje i morgen, her first collection published in...
, Black SecondsBlack Seconds is a novel by Norwegian writer Karin Fossum, the sixth in the Inspector Konrad Sejer series. The novel won Sweden's Martin Beck Award in 2002.- The storyline :...
, (Svarte sekunder, Norway, 2002)
- 2003 - Ben Elton
Benjamin Charles "Ben" Elton is an English comedian, author, playwright and director. He was a leading figure in the British alternative comedy movement of the 1980s, as a writer on such cult series as The Young Ones and Blackadder, as well as also a successful stand-up comedian on stage and TV....
, Dead FamousDead Famous is a comedy/whodunit novel by Ben Elton in which ratings for a reality TV show, very similar to Big Brother, rocket when a housemate is murdered...
, (UK, 2001)
- 2004 - Alexander McCall Smith
Alexander "Sandy" McCall Smith, CBE, FRSE, is a Rhodesian-born Scottish writer and Emeritus Professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh. In the late 20th century, McCall Smith became a respected expert on medical law and bioethics and served on British and international committees...
, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, (UK, 1998)
- 2005 - Arnaldur Indriðason
Arnaldur Indriðason is an Icelandic writer of crime fiction. He has repeatedly proved to be the most popular writer in Iceland in recent years — topping bestseller lists year after year...
, Voices, (Röddin, Iceland, 2002)
- 2006 - Philippe Claudel
Philippe Claudel , is a French writer and film director.Claudel was born in Dombasle-sur-Meurthe, Meurthe-et-Moselle. In addition to his writing, Claudel is a Professor of Literature at the University of Nancy....
, Grey Souls, (Les Âmes grisesLes Âmes grises is a novel by the French author Philippe Claudel. It is a first person narrative which revolves around the murder of a young girl in a small provincial French town near the Western Front in 1917. The book was published in France in 2005 and won the Prix Renaudot...
, France, 2003)
- 2007 - Thomas H. Cook
Thomas H. Cook is an American author, whose 1996 novel The Chatham School Affair received an Edgar award from the Mystery Writers of America.Thomas H...
, Red Leaves, (USA, 2005)
- 2008 - Andrea Maria Schenkel
Andrea Maria Schenkel is a German writer. She published her debut novel Tannöd in 2006.Based on the Hinterkaifeck murder in the 1920s, Schenkel’s fictional account takes place in the 1950s...
, TannödTannöd is a crime thriller by the German author Andrea Maria Schenkel. The book was first published in January 2006.- Contents :The novel narrates the story of a multiple murder at an isolated Bavarian farm called Tannöd in the 1950s. The points-of-view of the victims, the witnesses and the...
, (Germany, 2006)
- 2009 - Andrew Taylor
Andrew Taylor is a British author best known for his crime novels, which include the Dougal series, the Lydmouth series, the Roth Trilogy and the historical novel The American Boy.-Biography:...
, Bleeding Heart Square, (UK, 2008)
- 2010 - Deon Meyer
Deon Godfrey Meyer is a South African thriller novelist, writing in Afrikaans. His books have been translated in 20 languages. He has also written numerous scripts for television and film.-Life and career:...
, Devil's Peak, (South Africa, 2004)