Rennie Airth (born 1935)
is a South African novelist who currently resides in Italy.
Airth has also worked as foreign correspondent for the
Reuters
Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide writing in 16 languages. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world.
The agency ...
news service.
Novels
His works include ''Snatch!'' (1969), ''Once A Spy'' (1981), and a series of murder mysteries set in England between 1921 and 1949 featuring Detective Inspector John Madden of
Scotland Yard
Scotland Yard (officially New Scotland Yard) is the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, the territorial police force responsible for policing Greater London's London boroughs, 32 boroughs. Its name derives from the location of the original ...
(later retired). The first of these, ''
River of Darkness'' (1999), won the
Grand Prix de Littérature Policière
The (or the Police Literature Grand Prize) is a French literary award, literary prize founded in 1948 by author and literary critic Maurice-Bernard Endrèbe. It is the most prestigious award for crime fiction, crime and detective fiction in Franc ...
for best international crime novel in 2000 and was nominated for
Edgar
Edgar is a commonly used masculine English given name, from an Anglo-Saxon name ''Edgar'' (composed of ''wikt:en:ead, ead'' "rich, prosperous" and ''Gar (spear), gar'' "spear").
Like most Anglo-Saxon names, it fell out of use by the Late Midd ...
,
Anthony
Anthony, also spelled Antony, is a masculine given name derived from the '' Antonii'', a '' gens'' ( Roman family name) to which Mark Antony (''Marcus Antonius'') belonged. According to Plutarch, the Antonii gens were Heracleidae, being descenda ...
, and
Macavity
Macavity the Mystery Cat, also called the Hidden Paw, is a fictional character and the main antagonist of T. S. Eliot's 1939 poetry book '' Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats''. He also appears in the Andrew Lloyd Webber 1981 musical ''Ca ...
awards in the States.
Airth found inspiration for that tale in a scrapbook about his uncle, a soldier killed in World War I. A sequel, ''
The Blood-Dimmed Tide'', was published in 2003, and a third book, ''
The Dead of Winter'', in 2009. Although Airth initially intended to write a trilogy about Madden,
in 2014 he produced a fourth entry in the series, ''The Reckoning'', and followed that with ''The Death of Kings'' (2017).
Awards
Publications
* ''
Snatch'' (1969)
* ''
Once A Spy'' (1981)
* Detective Inspector John Madden
** ''
River of Darkness'' (1999)
** ''
The Blood-Dimmed Tide'' (2004)
** ''
The Dead of Winter'' (2009)
** ''The Reckoning'' (2014)
** ''The Death of Kings'' (2017)
** ''The Decent Inn of Death'' (2020)
References
External links
The story behind The Reckoning - Essay by Rennie Airthon Upcoming4.me
1935 births
Living people
South African male novelists
South African expatriates in Italy
Alumni of Michaelhouse
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