BOOK OF THE YEAR
FICTION: CRIME & THRILLER
of the market. But there is also space for a
BAMBURGH Bamburgh shot to the top of the Amazon UK Kindle chart when listed, with over 29,000 pre-orders. That’s a remarkable number for the 19th book in L J Ross’ DCI Ryan Mystery series—the second-bestselling book series of all time on Amazon UK—and attests to the importance of online sales for Dark Skies Publishing, the list founded by Ross in 2019 to publish physical copies too.
THE PARIS APARTMENT With Lucy Foley’s third locked- room thriller, HarperFiction sought to establish her as the biggest emerging brand in the market. The marketing was tailored precisely to the story of The Paris Apartment, with a creepy Airbnb-style ad on The Bookseller website, a first for a cover reveal, and a sampler giveaway outsiutside St Pancras’ Eurostar terminal.
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MURDER BEFORE EVENSONG The first novel in the Canon Clement Mystery series sold over 80,000 copies through Nielsen BookScan and spent five weeks atop the bestseller chart. It was the second- biggest novel for Orion in 2022. Five special editions were produced by W&N, including two Christmas editions, and Rev Richard Coles visited over 50 bookshops as part of a tour.
THE TWYFORD CODE After the huge success of her début The Appeal, with The Twyford Code Viper needed to cement Janice Hallett’s reputation as the queen of cosy crime. It commissioned an illustrator and made mock-ups of Six on Goldtop Hill (the children’s novel featured in The Twyford Code) which were hidden and discovered by bloggers, creating a social media moment.
THE BULLET THAT MISSED Viking pulled together a crack in-house team for The Bullet That Missed. The third in a record-breaking series bene- fited from bespoke campaigns for publication week, Black Friday and Christmas, anchored with Richard Osman appearing on numerous big TV shows. With sales topping 610,000 copies, it’s the fastest- selling adult fiction title of the past seven years.
WRONG PLACE, WRONG TIME Gillian McAllister’s previous six thrillers were all top-10 best- sellers, and in 2022 Penguin Michael Joseph moved her into hardback. The pre-order campaign for Wrong Place Wrong Time kicked off with a cover reveal that was ampli- fied by more than 100 of the author’s “superfan” bloggers and viewed 85,000 times. The book hit fourth in the charts.
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