Cutting edge

In 1996, Louise Penny left her job as a CBC Radio host in Montreal to write novels. She completed her first book, a crime novel, in 2002.

Still Life is set in a Quebec village that is shaken to its core when a sweet old lady is shot through the heart with an arrow. The hero is Insp. Armand Gamache, a fatherly sort with keen powers of observation.

Penny spent the next two years sending the work to publishers and literary agents, but all she got back was rejections.

"Or even worse, no response at all," she says. "I was an international failure."

'[The contest] has proven invaluable in giving shortlisted authors a chance to gain publishing contracts even if they don’t win the Debut Dagger.' —British novelist Margaret Murphy

In 2004, Penny was on the brink of stashing the manuscript under her bed when she entered the first chunk of Still Life in the Debut Dagger contest, the British Crime Writers’ Association’s annual search for the best unpublished novel. A few months later, Penny found herself on the shortlist.

She attended the awards banquet in London that summer but didn’t win the top prize. She came in second, garnering a "highly commended" citation from the jury.

At a party the following night, Penny met London agent Teresa Chris, who had seen the manuscript and wanted to represent her.

"Within three weeks," Penny says, "Still Life had sold internationally."

The novel came out in 2006, and scooped up the CWA’s New Blood Dagger, the Crime Writers of Canada’s Arthur Ellis Award for best first crime novel and the Mystery Writers of America’s Anthony Award, among others.

Since then, Penny has put out a new Gamache mystery every year — the sixth in the series, Bury Your Dead, comes out later this year. None of it would have happened, she says, if it hadn’t been for the Debut Dagger.

The contest was started by the British Crime Writers' Association in 1998 as a way for talented new crime fiction writers to jump the "slush pile" of submissions that accumulate on publishers’ and agents’ desks.

Setting up the competition "was an amazingly altruistic act on the part of the British crime writers," Penny says. "They’ve invited potential rivals into their circle in an extremely competitive field."

The Debut Dagger contest is open to anyone in the world who hasn’t had a novel published. Entrants submit the first 3,000 words of an English-language manuscript, and a synopsis of 500 to 1,000 words about the story’s progression. The judges don’t know who wrote the submissions they receive.

"Producing a piece of presentable work is good discipline for a new writer," says Toronto’s Dorothy McIntosh, who was shortlisted for the award in 2007 for The Witch of Babylon.

The competition attracts a flood of submissions. Organizers won’t commit to exact figures, but say entries number in the "hundreds and hundreds."

Since 1998, 23 Debut Dagger winners and shortlisted writers have been published, some to notable success. And some of those notables are Canadians.

Alan Bradley won the contest in 2007 after submitting 15 pages of The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, a quirky caper starring a precocious 11-year-old named Flavia de Luce. By the time Bradley had returned to Canada from the Debut Dagger awards banquet that year, his agent had sold rights to the unfinished book in Canada, Britain and the U.S.

Sweetness, which came out in 2009, has not only sold in 32 countries, but Flavia has her own fan site. Bradley, who is 71 and lives in Malta, has a six-book contract, and his second Flavia book, The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag, was published this spring.

Winning the Debut Dagger doesn’t guarantee publication, but the contest’s organizers send out the shortlisted titles to any agents and editors who want a look at them.

"This has proven invaluable in giving shortlisted authors a chance to gain publishing contracts even if they don’t win the Debut Dagger," says British novelist Margaret Murphy, the CWA’s outgoing chair.

Acquiring an agent is key to a successful writing career, as many publishers won’t accept unsolicited submissions. McIntosh says being on the Debut Dagger shortlist resulted in her getting an agent before she had even completed her manuscript for The Witch of Babylon, a thriller set in the aftermath of the 2003 looting of the Baghdad Museum.

After McIntosh finished the novel, Toronto-based agent Denise Bukowski released it to publishers. The Witch of Babylon will be released in Canada next spring. McIntosh has a three-book contract with Penguin Canada and has sold rights in eight countries to date.

Catherine O'Keefe of Richmond, B.C., Madeleine Harris-Callway of Toronto and Renata Hill of Whitby, Ont., all entered their novels in the 2009 Debut Dagger competition. O'Keefe won the Dagger, while Harris-Callway and Hill were shortlisted. O'Keefe and Harris-Callway have both signed contracts with agents.

Crime Writers of Canada has a similar competition, though it’s still in its infancy.

Louise Penny knew there were plenty of emerging crime fiction writers at home and approached the CWC about setting up its own version of the Debut Dagger. In 2007, the CWC launched the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Unpublished First Crime Novel.

Open only to Canadians, the award is named after Arthur Ellis, the nom de travail of Canada's former official hangman. (The award is affectionately called "the Unhanged Arthur.")

Phyllis Smallman of Saltspring Island, B.C., won that first year, and her novel, Margarita Nights was published by McArthur & Co. in 2008. Its sequel, Sex in a Sidecar, came out in 2009, followed by A Brewski For the Old Man this spring.

Talent has a way of shining through wherever it lands. Margarita Nights was shortlisted for the Debut Dagger back in 2004. In 2007, McIntosh’s The Witch of Babylon went on to win the Unhanged Arthur.

Bradley’s Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is on this year’s shortlist for the Arthur Ellis Award, which will be handed out May 27. But he attributes the novel’s success to the Debut Dagger.

"If it wasn’t for the competition," he says, "I probably wouldn't have carried on beyond those first 15 pages."

The 2010 Arthur Ellis Award will be awarded in Toronto on May 27. The 2010 Debut Dagger will be awarded in Harrogate, England on July 23.

Rosemary McCracken is a writer based in Toronto. Her novel Safe Harbour was recently shortlisted for the 2010 Debut Dagger.