RJ Ellory Wins Crime Novel Of The Year Award

British writer RJ Ellory wins a top UK crime writing prize for his novel "A Simple Act Of Violence". An excerpt:

A Simple Act of Violence is his sixth book, and although he sells well in the UK – A Quiet Belief in Angels was picked for the Richard & Judy book club in 2008 – he says his sales are "silly huge" in France.

"You do not run into this division in France between crime and literary fiction," he said. "There is no clique, no strict divide between the genres. The bottom line is the more books I sell and the more readers I speak to, the more I realise that what readers are interested in is a good story. Crime can be about romance, war, spies, child abduction – there are so many things you can thread through a crime novel that you can't do with other genres. As a topic it's very plasticine to deal with." He uses crime, he said, to "create a canvas within which I can put my characters through the spectrum of human emotions. That's what fascinates me."