The air was thick with excitement earlier this month when the shortlisted entrants to this year’s Young Crime Writers’ Competition gathered, with their families, friends and teachers to hear the results announced.
The competition is organised annually by B&NES Council Library Service in partnership with the Bath Chronicle, Bath Spa University and a panel of locally based writers: Sandy Osborne, David Lassman, Nigel Smith and Jeff Dowson.
The competition is also sponsored by Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights.
This year’s winner was Angus Cannock, age 10 who is a pupil at King Edward’s Junior School.
Ava Harker, age 13 of Hayesfield Girl’s School was in second place and in third place was Gabriel Rudowski who is also 13 year of age and attends King Edward’s School.
Runners up were: Madeleine Whitmore of Royal High Junior School (age 11), Rebekah Bolton of Wellsway School (age 11), Joshua Rudowski of Bathwick St Mary School (age 9), Isabella Lambert of High Littleton School (age 9) and Mark Bolton of Chandag Junior School (age9).
Angus Cannock was presented with a trophy and book token and Ava Harker and Gabriel Rudowski received books and book tokens. The runners up were all presented with certificates.
As always the stories were skillfully written showing a real talent for storytelling and some ingenious plots.
Submitting a 1,000 word story entitled A Day in the Life of Brian Goodfellow. (Or: Death by Banoffee Pie!), Angus’ tale tells the story of Brian Goodfellow, who works for the SAS (that’s Safe and Sure Ltd, not the Special Air Service regiment) and invents a whole host of incredible sounding surveillance and defence products, from the Weapon Vaporizer 500 (a robotic spider) to the Nitro-Blaster 3.
Angus’s storytelling was inspired by an earlier author workshop at school, where local children’s author, Jess Rennison, shared her tips for successful writing.