At a gala dinner last evening, Giles Blunt was presented with the Crime Writers of Canada Arthur Ellis award for best novel for Until the Night (Random House Canada), beating out fellow crime fiction heavyweight Linwood Barclay’s Trust Your Eyes.

The awards recognize the best writing in the crime genre, including crime, detective, espionage, mystery, suspense, and thriller writing, as well as fictional or factual accounts of criminal doings.

The other winners are:

Best First Novel
Simone St. James, The Haunting of Maddy Clare (New American Library)

Best Novella
Lou Allin, Contingency Plan (Orca Books)

Best Short Story
Yasuko Thanh, “Switch-blade Knife” in Floating Like the Dead (McClelland & Stewart)

Best Nonfiction
Steve Lillebuen, The Devil’s Cinema: The Untold Story behind Mark Twitchell’s Kill Room (M&S)

Best French Book
Mario Bolduc, La Nuit des albinos: Sur les traces de Max O’Brien (Libre Expression)

Best Juvenile/YA Book
Shane Peacock, Becoming Holmes (Tundra Books)

Best Unpublished First Novel, a.k.a. The Unhanged Arthur
Coleen Steele, Sins Revisited

Derrick Murdoch Award
Lyn Hamilton