Though the corona virus/ COVID-19 crisis derailed all normal plans and resulted in the postponement of the conference planned for 2021, the three judges on three continents proceeded with the review of new titles for the Third Annual Prize.
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The following books were generously provided to the judges of the Third Annual International Crime Fiction Association Book Prize for non-fiction books on crime fiction published in 2020, listed in alpha order by author/editor. The range and creativity of the volumes attests to the deep interest in crime fiction scholarship.
  • Allan, Janice M., Jesper Guiddal, Stewart King, and Andrew Pepper, eds. The Routledge Companion to Crime Fiction. Routledge.
  • Farina, William. Italian Crime Fiction in the Era of the Anti-Mafia Movement. McFarland.
  • Gillis, Stacy, and Gunnthórunn Gudmundsdóttir, eds. Noir in the North: Gender, Politics, and Place. Bloomsbury.
  • Kim, Julie H. Crime Fiction and National Identities in the Global Age. McFarland.
  • Lee, Susanna. Detectives in the Shadows. A Hard-Boiled History. Johns Hopkins.
  • Mannion, Elizabeth, and Brian Cliff,  eds. Guilt Rules All : Irish Mystery, Detective, and Crime Fiction. Syracuse University Press.
  • Maury, Cristelle and David Roche, eds. Women Who Kill : Gender and Sexuality in Film and       Series of the Post-feminist Era. Bloomsbury.
  • Mintz, Susannah B. The Disabled Detective : Sleuthing Disability in Contemporary Crime Fiction. Bloomsbury.
  • Morrison, Kate. Morality and the Law in British Detective and Spy Fiction, 1880-1920. McFarland.
  • Pertusa, Inmaculada, and Melissa Stewart, eds. Spanish Women authors of Serial Crime Fiction : Repeat Offenders in the 21st Century. Cambridge Scholarly Publishing.
  • Rzepka, Charles J., ed. Critical Essays on Elmore Leonard: If It Sounds Like Writing. Wiley-Blackwell.
​The IFCA Book Prize recognizes ingenuity, innovation, and scholarship in the academic study of crime fiction and crime writing in its widest sense. In response to these criteria, the judges first made a short list, followed by a determination of the winner. The short list included the following works:
1. Allan, Janice M., Jesper Guiddal, Stewart King, and Andrew Pepper, eds. The Routledge Companion to Crime Fiction. Routledge.

The introduction to The Routledge Companion to Crime Fiction states that the volume wants to ‘approach the concept of the crime fiction companion in a different way’. Specifically, the aim was to couple the inevitable retrospective aspect of such a handbook with ‘an emphasis on the present’. This has been achieved admirably. While scholars and students can rely on the solid basis of crime fiction studies elucidated here, the whole volume feels fresh, relevant, and entirely up to date. Numerous and far reaching, the chapters in the book give great depth as well as breadth to the new and ongoing discussions about crime fiction. If you were to buy one crime fiction studies book this year, this should be it.  

2. Mintz, Susannah B. The Disabled Detective : Sleuthing Disability in Contemporary Crime Fiction. Bloomsbury.

With The Disabled Detective. Sleuthing Disability in Contemporary Crime Fiction, Susannah B. Mintz explores a neglected are of crime fiction: detectives of print and screen whose disabilities not only do not prevent them from efficient detecting, but may, in fact, contribute to their success. Fans of detective fiction of course recognize the frequent strangeness in the behavior of Sherlock Holmes, whose conditions, or defects, include drug addiction and anti-social behavior. A modern Holmes would no doubt be diagnosed as “on the spectrum,” or perhaps with Asperger syndrome. Mintz tracks detectives with blindness or visual disability, the deaf or auditorily impaired, the “crip sleuths,” investigators missing a hand or arm, and those with mental divergence, or intellectual or cognitive disabilities: obsessive compulsive disorder, epilepsy, and autism, among others. She examines works from the early twentieth century to contemporary television. Mintz makes a compelling argument about alternative paths to the construction of knowledge, or to solving a crime.

3. Gillis, Stacy, and Gunnthórunn Gudmundsdóttir, eds. Noir in the North: Gender, Politics, and Place. Bloomsbury.
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Stacy Gillis and Gunnthorun Gudmundsdottir’s Noir in the North: Genre, Politics and Place (Bloomsbury, 2020) demonstrates the rather surprising truth that  there is still much to be said, and much of great interest, about Nordic noir, a genre that has arguably received more than its fair share of public and critical attention. An insightful forward by Icelandic crime novelist Yrsa Sigurðardóttir and a very useful, even comprehensive introduction to ‘Noir in the North’ are an excellent beginning, and the collection’s fourteen chapters offer a fascinatingly diverse set of readings of a fascinating, and unusual set of texts (on both screen and page) as well as more theoretically oriented material on the genre. Noir in the North concludes by returning to the people who make crime fiction, with an interview with Val McDermid and short Coda by Gunnar Staalesen. All of this makes for a very rewarding volume.   
The Routledge Companion to Crime Fiction, edited by Janice M. Allan, Jesper Guiddal, Stewart King, and Andrew Pepper, published by Routledge, was chosen as the winner of the Third Annual International Crime Fiction Association Book Prize.
Congratulations to all the authors and editors of these outstanding volumes of crime fiction scholarship.