Elly Griffiths Crowned Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel Of The Year For The Frozen People

Sussex novelist Elly Griffiths has won the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2026 — the most coveted prize in British and Irish crime writing — for The Frozen People, a genre-bending mystery that sends a modern-day cold case detective back to the ice-bound streets of Victorian London.

The announcement was made at the Old Swan Hotel in Harrogate on the opening night of the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, with the ceremony compèred by Steph McGovern. It caps a remarkable run for Griffiths, who had been shortlisted for the award eight times before finally taking the top prize — and who received the festival's Outstanding Contribution Award only last year.

The Frozen People launches a new series built around Ali Dawson, a cold cases investigator whose latest inquiry pulls her through time to January 1850, where a string of killings casts a long shadow over present-day politics and Ali's own family. The judging panel called the novel bold, superbly plotted and highly original — praise borne out by a shortlist that had to see off stiff competition from Tariq Ashkanani, Abigail Dean, Alice Feeney, Mick Herron and Vaseem Khan.

Griffiths, whose Dr Ruth Galloway, Brighton Mysteries and Detective Harbinder Kaur series have sold more than five million copies worldwide, described the win as a bigger twist than anything she'd dreamed up herself. She takes home £3,000 and a beer cask handcrafted by one of Britain's last coopers at T&R Theakston's Masham brewery.

Simon Theakston, Chairman of T&R Theakston, said the judges had faced a difficult task given the strength of this year's shortlists, and singled out The Frozen People as a gripping, endlessly entertaining mystery from one of the genre's finest storytellers.

There was a second cause for celebration in the McDermid Debut Award, named for crime writing grandee Val McDermid, which went to first-time novelist Frances Crawford for A Bad, Bad Place — a 1970s Glasgow-set thriller that follows twelve-year-old Janey Devine after she stumbles across a murder victim on a disused railway line. Crawford, who returned to university in her sixties before turning to fiction, called the honour of winning an award bearing McDermid's name a source of particular pride. Playwright Mel Pennant was Highly Commended for A Murder for Miss Hortense, a Birmingham-set mystery starring a formidable retired nurse turned sleuth.

The festival's third major honour, the Outstanding Contribution Award, went to American thriller titan David Baldacci, whose more than 150 million book sales and half-century-spanning career began with Absolute Power — later filmed with Clint Eastwood. Baldacci, visibly moved to be receiving an award with roots in the British crime tradition that shaped his own writing, traced his love of the genre back to Conan Doyle and paid tribute to the need for new voices to keep the story going.

Between them, the three awards tell a satisfying story of their own: a beloved veteran finally getting her due, a debut talent arriving decades later than most, and a genre elder statesman reminded of just how far a good mystery can travel — from Victorian London to 1970s Glasgow to Harrogate's Old Swan Hotel, where, for four days each July, crime fiction gets to feel like the biggest show in town.