Peter Papathanasiou’s The Stoning (MacLehose) is also in contention, with another appearance on the New Blood Dagger for the best debut novel. William Shaw’s The Trawlerman (riverrun), Laura Shepherd-Robinson’s Daughters of Night (Mantle), Rosalind Stopps’ A Beginner’s Guide to Murder (HQ) and Joe Thomas’ Brazilian Psycho (Arcadia) complete the longlist for the Gold Dagger. Barcollando nella vita così lontano dal proprio sé, si aggira nottetempo lungo la spiaggia ed è allora che assiste, apparentemente indifferente, alla morte di un coetaneo. E, dunque, Oscar ha diciassette anni: la sera ha ballato con Luce sulla spiaggia, si sono baciati, poi lui si è impiccato con la corda dell’altalena. For his first novel, Victor Jestin displays a stunning literary talent. It’s short, pitiless, polished, perfectly realized’ Livres Hebdo Other writers on the prestigious 20-strong list include Kia Abdullah for Next of Kin (HQ), Alexandra Benedict for The Christmas Murder Game (Zaffre), DV Bishop for City of Vengeance (Macmillan), Jacqueline Bublitz for Before You Knew My Name (Sphere) and SA Cosby for Razorblade Tears (Headline), which is also up for the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger.

Heatwave | Book by Victor Jestin | Official Publisher Page

The references to the heat don’t only add to the atmosphere, Jestin also uses it to reference global warming and our ignorance of the climate crisis: “Every year it got hot earlier – this year it had been in February – and we had welcomed it without fear, happy to see the end of winter; we’d sat out on café terraces with no sense of foreboding about what it might mean. We didn’t sense the inferno coming. I wondered what temperature would finally be too hot.” I enjoyed this much more than I expected - a dark and cynical little novella, but somehow sympathetic as well. Victor Jestin portrays with cruel exactitude the throes of an adolescent trapped in a secret too heavy to bear’ L’Obs It is the end of August and the long summer holidays are drawing to a close. Seventeen-year-old Leonard is on a camping holiday with his family in the South of France. Awkward and ill at ease, he is an outsider who creeps away from parties unnoticed after a couple of drinks. Told over the space of a long weekend, this intense and brilliant novel is the story of an adolescent struggling to fit in. Heatwave is a gripping psychological thriller that poses the existential question:Flesh of a Fancy Woman’ by Paul Magrs in Criminal Pursuits: Crime Through Time edited by Samantha Lee Howe (Telos Publishing) Nascondere il corpo, invece di dare l’allarme, è senza dubbio partecipare alla morte. Anzi, quasi averla causata. Ma su Leonard sembra incombere qualcosa di più ampio, di più spaventoso e opprimente come il caldo di quello scorcio di estate. Un caldo persecutorio che può raggiungere un parossismo senza fine. For his first novel, Victor Jestin displays a stunning literary talent. It’s short, pitiless, polished, perfectly realized.”— Livres Hebdo The book is filled with sexual confusion and teenage angst. Teen boys and girls drinking too much, eager to have their first (or next) sexual experience. All this while the parents have their own fun at the other end of the beach where a bunny-costumed host is prancing around, shouting Olé! Olé! and urging people to have fun! be happy! form a cha-cha line!

Heatwave | Book by Victor Jestin | Official Publisher Page Heatwave | Book by Victor Jestin | Official Publisher Page

Léonard is 17 en brengt met zijn ouders, jongere broer en zus de laatste vakantiedagen op de camping door. Léonard voelt zich niet goed in zijn vel - hij heeft er de leeftijd voor - en het kunstmatige campingleven met zijn opgedrongen groepsgevoel, de apérospelletjes, de aquagym maakt het er allemaal niet beter op. A searing hot summer in the South of France: 17-year-old Léonard is spending the holidays on a camping ground with his parents and his siblings. We meet him around 24 hours before their departure, as Léo, by coincidence, witnesses the suicide of his friend Oscar. Paralyzed, he stands by as Oscar slowly strangles himself - and that's the opening scene of this short, impactful novella. Our protagonist doesn't dare to confess what he saw, even as the other guests and the police start searching for Oscar, he partakes in normal activities, joining the young crowd in their pursuit of parties, summer flings, and sex. The oppressive heat is joined by an oppressive tension, as Léo's feelings of guilt start to grow...You devour this book, but its effects linger, so strongly does it reverberate with destinies sacrificed to the yawn of the void’ Le Point The young author of this first novel keeps all promises, with writing of a rare precision, mature and carnal... Moving and cinematic.”— La Vie Tense and brief, this text plays with the codes of a first novel to paint a portrait of a sad and aloof teenager’ L’Humanite The story opens with him watching a suicide and making the conscious decision to not stop it. The reason being hinted at that this other boy had the attention of the girl he wanted to be with. Like when you loath another person and have that horrible fleeting thought, “Oh why don’t they just die and leave me alone then my life would be so much easier,” but in this instance he gets exactly what he wants and is filled with a general malaise. Poi fa qualcosa di altrettanto irrimediabile, ma anche più assurdo: sotterra in spiaggia il corpo di Oscar sotto la sabbia di una duna.

Heatwave | Victor Jestin | 9781471199776 | NetGalley Heatwave | Victor Jestin | 9781471199776 | NetGalley

With a searing voice, Victor Jestin captures the stale air of tents, the cheap music, the guys disguised in pink bunny suits who force you to have fun, teenagers as poignant as they are idiotic, rage, desire, absurdity. In effect, scorching’ Grazia The Dagger in the Library is voted on exclusively by librarians, chosen for the author’s body of work and support of libraries. This year sees firm favourites from the genre including Mark Billingham, Susan Hill, Lin Anderson and Cath Staincliffe. I heard singing through the canvas, a long line of people dancing around my tent. I’m a little older now. I kissed a girl, then lost her. Oscar died. Oscar is dead because of me, because I did nothing. Because I didn’t move. And I didn’t move because at that moment I couldn’t. I would rather have died like him, and we could have watched each other die while the others danced.” Changeling’ by Bryony Pearce in Criminal Pursuits: Crime Through Time edited by Samantha Lee Howe (Telos Publishing) This a teen angsty version of Camus’ The Stranger. The narrator is a 17 year old boy on vacation, feeling completely isolated while surrounded by the revelry of others. He has a strange preoccupation with losing his virginity, which is really a silent cry for the attention of just anyone.

Man, this was bad. Kid witnesses someone die in what might have been an autoerotic asphyxiation accident. Kid buries the body, spends an entire day being maudlin (and that’s the most apt word for him) and being creepy with the local girls. Jestin’s charged and chilling debut turns on a stifling vacation that descends from purgatory into a nightmarish inferno’ Publishers Weekly