Kelly Hughes, owner of Aqua Books in Winnipeg, has set up an award in honour of late crime writer (and Winnipeg native) Michael Van Rooy.  According to the Winnipeg Review, Hughes is sponsoring the Michael Van Rooy Award for genre fiction.

Hughes’s comments from the WR:

I started thinking about the best way to honour him. It didn’t take long. The idea of an award that he might actually win was the first thing that came into my mind. And one with his name on it? Even better. Michael understood more than most how the game works. It’s not enough to be a good writer. You have to be a brand.

We will never have any more Monty Haaviko stories. What we will have is the Michael Van Rooy Award for Genre Fiction, where Michael can oversee and encourage the next generation of writers writing thrillers, westerns, sci-fi, and other “non-literary” books.

Van Rooy died last January from a heart attack in Montreal while promoting the third instalment in his Monty Haaviko thriller series, A Criminal to Remember (Turnstone Press).

The Manitoba Writers’ Guild will be giving out the prize at next year’s Manitoba Book Awards.