Sally Hepworth's Mad Mabel wins 2026 Ned Kelly Award for crime fiction

The Australian Crime Writers Association also honoured Liz Allan, Charlotte Grieve and Abigail Dean in this year's Ned Kelly Awards, which drew entries from 160 authors.

Sally Hepworth has won the 2026 Ned Kelly Award for best crime fiction for Mad Mabel (Pan Macmillan), the Australian Crime Writers Association has announced. It is her second win in the category, after Darling Girls took the award in 2024.

Liz Allan's In Bloom (Hachette) won best debut crime fiction, and Charlotte Grieve's Duty to Warn (Hachette) won best true crime. The international award, for crime fiction published in Australia, went to Abigail Dean's The Death of Us (HarperCollins). The association said 160 authors entered this year.

Judges commended Hepworth's "smart and intelligent storytelling" and the way the novel weighs the best and worst in people. They described In Bloom, which follows four teenagers trying to break free of poverty, as bold and well paced, with spare, poetic prose. Duty to Warn traces an orthopaedic surgeon's investigation that ended in a $20 million defamation trial, and the judges praised it as brave and moving. The Death of Us centres on the victims of a home invasion.

Shortlisted for best crime fiction were Jack Beaumont (Liar's Game), Jane Caro (Lyrebird), Susi Fox (The Other Child), Karen Herbert (The Ghost Walk), Daniel Oakman (Fire in the Head) and Michael Robotham (White Crow). The international shortlist also included Tom Baragwanath, Graeme Macrae Burnet and Michael Connelly. True crime finalists were Stuart Coupe, Greg Haddrick, Derek Pedley and Kate Wild, and the debut shortlist featured Madeleine Cleary, Sam Guthrie, Angie Faye Martin, Laura McCluskey and Alexandra Strnad.