Book awards up the wazoo...

A wee toot for friend of this blog, wonderful writer and all-round good guy, R J Ellory.

Roger’s novel A Quiet Vendetta was recently awarded the – let me get this right – Prix Des Libraries Du Quebec Laureat 2010.

Go, Roger.

This places him in excellent company. This prize was won previously by Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and Dennis Lehane with Mystic River.

Mr Ellory is fast winning himself a loyal fan base in the French speaking parts of the world. A Quiet Belief in Angels won The Inaugural Roman Noir Nouvel Observateur Prize 2008 and Le Livre De Poche Award 2010.

(He has also won awards in USA and the UK, but I’m liking the whole French connection.)

A Quiet Vendetta is a fantastic read with one of my favourite ever bad guys in fiction; Ernesto Perez. Here’s a look at the blurb.

A Quiet Vendetta by R.J. Ellory

When Catherine Ducane disappears in the heart of New Orleans, the local cops react rapidly - she is the daughter of the Governor of Louisiana after all. But the case gets very strange, very quickly. Her bodyguard turns up horribly mutilated in the trunk of a beautiful vintage car and when her kidnapper calls he doesn't want money: he wants time alone with Ray Hartmann, who works for a Washington-based organised crime task force.

All Ray wants to do is get this over with quickly, and go home to try and repair his broken marriage. Instead he must listen to the mysterious kidnapper, an elderly Cuban named Ernesto Perez, who wants to tell him his life story. It's only when he realises that Ernesto has been a brutal hitman for the Mob since the 1950s that things start to come together. But by the time the pieces fall into place, it's already too late...


A QUIET VENDETTA is both the epic novel of one man's life in the Italian Mafia - a story that ranges from Cuba to Las Vegas and from L.A. to Chicago - and equally a powerful thriller of rage, love and loss.

This is me talking with Roger at a recent writers' conference. He doesn't look bored. He's not bored, is he? Tell me I'm not boring him.