A convicted killer, who was jailed for murdering a 23-year-old student, has won a £10,000 prize for his first crime novel after judges were bowled over by the tale's realism.
The Private Eye Writers of America panel had no idea that Alaric Hunt was serving a life sentence for the killing of student, Joyce Austin, in Clemson, South Carolina in 1988.
Hunt's novel, entitled Cuts Through Bone they impressed them with its authenticity, and sparked interest from a publisher.
Unlikely star: the winner of the debut crime fiction competition turned out to be convicted murderer Alaric Hunt, pictured here in 2013, whose novel Cuts Through The Bone impressed with its authenicity
But when the interested party rang the Southern California number Hunt had submitted with his manuscript, they were told he unavailable as he was was in an institution.
Hunt's cousin, Jade Reed, who had posted his novel to the competition's organisers, had to reveal to Toni Kirkpatrick, an editor at Thomas Dunne Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Press, that the author was holed-up in a maximum-security facility in the small town of Bishopville.
To which Ms Reed was forced to reply: 'Well, he's there indefinitely.'
SOURCE-DAILYM
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