Hong Kong mystery writer Simon Chan is making crime pay - just about
Crime novelist's latest award-winning book is about the evolution of the police force and graft-busting in the city. He explains how his work in IT prepared him for his new career
In the United States, there are the Edgar Awards; in Britain, it's the Dagger Awards given by the Crime Writers' Association. In the less developed world of Chinese-language mystery and crime fiction, perhaps the most prestigious is the biennial Soji Shimada Mystery Award established by Taiwanese publisher Crown Culture Corporation in 2009.
Hong Kong writer Simon Chan Ho-kei, who won the Shimada award in 2011, capped that achievement in January when he took one of three fiction prizes awarded by the Taipei International Book Exhibition for his latest novel, 13.67.
Not only did he receive a NT$100,000 (HK$24,860) cheque, Chan was the first Hongkonger to win a prize at the annual exhibition, the fourth largest book fair in the world.
13.67 spans 50 years and is a tale about a prominent local policeman that takes in watershed events in Hong Kong, including the leftist riots in the 1960s, the Sino-British negotiations, the 1997 handover and the Sars outbreak in 2003. It is likely to strike a chord with readers here.
A former computer programmer, 39-year-old Chan says he has been fascinated by tales of detectives since reading one of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes mysteries when he was in primary school. The cryptic clues and red herrings that writers weave into their stories appealed to his inner geek.
Having read hundreds of mystery novels, Chan decided to try writing his own in 2008. He had just quit his job as a programmer and began experimenting with a few stories while figuring out his options. Recognition came quickly: his entry, The Locked Room of Bluebeard , won a Mystery Writers of Taiwan award for short stories in 2009.