The CWA Dagger shortlists will be announced on 13th May at CrimeFest . The awards ceremony will be held at the Leonardo City hotel in London on 29th June, coinciding with National Crime Reading Month. The 2022 Diamond Dagger, awarded to an author whose crime-writing career has been marked by sustained excellence, has already been announced as going to C J Sansom. Ma è una sensazione che dura poche pagine. Non si tratta di quell’apatia esistenziale, di quell’indifferenza nei confronti del vivere. Victor Jestin succeeds in transporting us with almost nothing, this unique style, this voice—one might almost say these whispers.... A tour de force’ Le Figaro Culture Oscar è morto perché l’ho guardato morire senza muovere un dito. È morto strangolato dalle corde di un’altalena, come i bambini nei fatti di cronaca. Oscar non era un bambino. A diciassette anni non si muore così, senza farlo apposta. Ci si stringe il collo per provare qualcosa. Forse stava cercando un nuovo modo di godere. In fondo siamo tutti qui per godere. Comunque sia non mi sono mosso. Da lì è derivato tutto il resto.

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

Seventeen-year-old Leo is sitting in an empty playground at night, listening to the sound of partying and pop music filtering in from the beach, when he sees another, more popular boy strangle himself with the ropes of the swings. Then, in a panic, Leo drags the other to the beach and buries him. 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. 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 It’s well-written, particularly given Jestin’s youthful age of 26 (what is it about France that produces such brilliant writers so young - Rimbaud, Sagan, etc.?), it’s just a shame there isn’t much about the narrative that’s compelling. Teenage alienation, embarrassing moments as boys and girls flirt, that confusing transition phase to young adulthood and all the baggage that comes with it - besides the opening scene, there’s little else in the book to hold the attention.If so, could Leo be an unreliable narrator and, like in Camus’ novel, the death that occurs is a murder - did Leo actually murder Oscar, because he was jealous of his being with Luce, the girl he fancies, and Leo distanced himself from the crime like he distances himself from everything else in his life, pretending the swings killed him instead? It would explain the bizarre choice of not alerting anyone to Oscar’s accidental death and implicating himself unnecessarily. Jestin’s charged and chilling debut turns on a stifling vacation that descends from purgatory into a nightmarish inferno’ Publishers Weekly So, this wasn’t a bad book, at all, and I’ll definitely read another book by Victor Jestin. But I just had higher expectations, wanting to feel the guilt and the sadness more, wanting to know about Oscar more. Maybe even about Leo more, not just a snippet (okay, an important one) out of his life. 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. The young author of this first novel keeps all promises, with writing of a rare precision, mature and carnal... Moving and cinematic.”— La Vie

Heatwave by Victor Jestin | Crime Fiction Lover Heatwave by Victor Jestin | Crime Fiction Lover

You devour this book, but its effects linger, so strongly does it reverberate with destinies sacrificed to the yawn of the void’ Le Point A beautiful narrative that puts into play the kind of guilt that won’t quit a boy who’s alienated from his world and resistant to all its codes’ TeleramaSeventeen-year-old Leo is sitting in an empty playground at night, listening to the sound of partying and pop music filtering in from the beach, when he sees another, more popular boy strangle himself with the ropes of the swings. Then, in a panic, Leo drags him to the beach and buries him. Mi accingevo a vivere l’ultimo giorno di vacanze, quello più caldo, forse addirittura il più caldo degli ultimi diciassette anni.” The young author of this first novel keeps all promises, with writing of a rare precision, mature and carnal... Moving and cinematic’ La Vie Heatwave won the Prix de la vocation 2019 and the Prix Femina de Lycéens 2019 and it’s an intense, short, dark, suspenseful thriller set over the course of a weekend. It tells the story of Leonard, an awkward 17 year old boy enduring a family camping holiday in France and struggling to fit in with his peers. Although it has a slice of the macabre running through it, it’s also a story of youth and summer. The embarrassment of adolescence was captured perfectly, while the image of the intense sun burning down on the players of this story definitely heightened the tension and discomfort.