Hannigan's thriller 'teeming with secrets' scoops £3k Little, Brown UEA Crime Award

Rebecca Hannigan has won this year’s Little, Brown UEA Crime Award for her novel Darkrooms worth £3,000.

Ed Wood, chair of the judges and publishing director at Little, Brown imprint Sphere Fiction, said: “Darkrooms is a confident debut. An intense, character-led thriller full of uneasy atmosphere and intrigue, it’s reminiscent of Tana French or Belinda Bauer in the quality of its prose.”

Hannigan said of winning: “It’s an honour to be recognised on this level. Darkrooms explores generational trauma over the decades following a child’s mysterious disappearance and the dark underbelly of a small Irish town teeming with secrets. I’m grateful to the course, and to my cohort for their support and thoughtful critique throughout the process.”

The author has signed with Cathryn Summerhayes at Curtis Brown who called Darkrooms “a brilliantly confident and exciting debut by an author with a huge writing future ahead of her”.  

The other two shortlisted titles were Sam De Bendern’s Swan Tango and Sasha Wilson’s Bad Business.

Hannigan joins previous winners including: Femi Kayode, author of Lightseekers (Raven Books), which was nominated for the CWA Gold Dagger and a Waterstones Thriller of the Month; Emma Styles, whose No Country for Girls (Sphere) has now been nominated for five further awards and won the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize; and last year’s winning title, The Day of the Roaring by Nina Bhadreshwar, which will be published by HarperFiction in 2025.