Author Craig
Robertson introduces the winner of the Crime in the City short story
competition.
I was honoured to be asked to judge the Waterstones short
story competition, run as part of their Crime in the City series in Glasgow,
along with Laura McCormick of Waterstones and Margaret Clayton of The Sunday Post. The first prize was to
be a £100 gift voucher for everyone’s favourite bookshop and, more importantly,
publication on these Dark Pages.
The standard was reassuringly high and Scottish crime
fiction, already more than punching its weight on the world stage, is in safe
hands if these entries are anything to go by. The winner was announced at an
event in Waterstones in Sauchiehall Street last Friday (15th June)evening.
The shortlist was:
Dan Stewart - Hen Night
Frances Pitt - Out of the Shadow
Elizabeth Adamson - Summer Desires
Peter McCormack - The Ameteur (Runner-up)
Les Wood - Joy (Runner-up)
Elliot Cooper - A Conscious Realisation of Error (Winner)
Elliot Cooper’s winning entry is darkly delicious,
effortlessly conveying a real sense of obsession that doesn’t just border on
the unhealthy; it invades it with guns blazing and flags flying.
It’s a nasty and deeply disturbing tale but it never loses
sight of the beauty that the narrator sees within his distorted vision. Elliot
manages to convincingly portray a slowly-increasing mania that you know will
lead to somewhere you’d rather not see yet find yourself unable to tear your
eyes away from.
Elliot also does a fine job with the narrator’s voice,
striking just the right note between method and madness, all the while wrapping
the unfolding horrors up within lyrical language that gives this story a
dangerously unsettling edge.
Intrigued? Why not read it and judge for yourself . . .
