TWO DEBUT novelists face some giants of the genre in the longlist for the 2013 Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award.

Lisa Ballantyne, whose first novel The Guilty One was a runaway success at the Frankfurt Book Fair, and former Yorkshire journalist David Mark, author of The Dark Winter, are the debut authors keeping lofty company.

Among the big names on the list is Lee Child, who won the award in 2011 and returns to favour with The Affair. Sizing up to Child’s phenomenal creation Jack Reacher is the master of the race-against-time thriller, Simon Kernick, with Siege.

Other big names include Stuart MacBride with Birthdays For The Dead, and two-time award-winner Mark Billingham for his stand-alone novel, Rush of Blood.

Gene Kerrigan’s The Rage and Stuart Neville’s nightmare noir Stolen Souls also feature, alongside last year’s winner Scottish author Denise Mina, who seeks to defend her title with her Glasgow thriller Gods and Beasts.

SJ Parris’s historical thriller, Sacrilege, featuring Giordano Bruno, the radical philosopher and secret agent, reveals the breadth of the genre, alongside Stav Sherez’s A Dark Redemption, an unflinching detective novel exploring the underworld of illegal Ugandan immigrants.

Now in its ninth year, the crime novel of the year award, in partnership with WHSmith, was created to celebrate the best in crime writing and is open to British and Irish authors.

The shortlist of six titles will be announced on July 4 and the winner will be revealed on the opening night of the 11th annual Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate on July 18.

• The longlist in full:

The Guilty One, Lisa Ballantyne (Piatkus) Finders Keepers, Belinda Bauer (Transworld)

Rush Of Blood, Mark Billingham (Little Brown) Dead Scared, SJ Bolton (Corgi, Transworld)

The Affair, Lee Child (Transworld) A Foreign Country, Charles Cumming (Harpercollins)

Safe House, Chris Ewan (Faber and Faber)

Not Dead Yet, Peter James (Macmillan)

Siege, Simon Kernick (Bantam Press)

Prague Fatale, Philip Kerr (Quercus)

The Rage, Gene Kerrigan (Vintage)

The Dark Winter, David Mark (Quercus)

The Lewis Man, Peter May (Quercus)

Gods And Beasts, Denise Mina (Orion)

Stolen Souls, Stuart Neville (Vintage)

Sacrilege, SJ Parris (Harper)

Birthdays for The Dead, Stuart MacBride (Harper)

A Dark Redemption, Stav Sherez (Faber and Faber)