Since the publication of Sophie Hannah's first suspense novel in April last year, Little Face has sold 20,000 copies in hardback and more than 100,000 in paperback in the UK. Publishing rights have been sold to ten other countries up to Press.

The Keighley-based author is naturally pleased, more so since her book was included in the long list of 20 in Theakstons Old Peculiar Prize for the Crime Novel of the Year 2007, along with crime megastars Ruth Rendell, Susan Hill and P D James.

"All of the books are being heavily promoted by Waterstones. The weekly sales of Little Face have gone up considerably," she told the T&A.

"There's not much violence, hardly any blood and guts in it at all. A woman goes out one night leaving the baby with her husband. When she comes back she is adamant that the baby is not hers. The husband says it is.

"The police are called and the night before the DNA test the baby disappears."

The follow-up book, Hurting Distance, is already out and the hardback version has been getting what she calls "very nice reviews", all of which augurs well for her collection of short stories, The Fantastic Book of Everybody's Secrets, due out in February.

Three years ago her short fiction won her first prize in the Daphne Du Maurier Festival Short Story competition. That was also the year that she was nominated as one of the 20 best poets to emerge in the last decade.

Sophie Hannah's poetry has been making her a decent living for many years. The mother-of-two belongs to that slim volume of writers whose poetry actually makes money rather than loses it. She thinks the two disciplines complement one another because the poetry she writes, like her crime writing, necessitates form and structure.

"I have always been keen on crime writing. When I was 18 I had a gap year before university and I wrote three crime novels. They weren't very good and were not published. Ninety per cent of what I read is crime fiction. The best crime novels have as much merit as a literary novel."

Probably more. Few modern literary novels seem able to shape either plot or character.

Voting on the long list closes on June 17. The short list will then be revealed. The winner's name will be announced on the opening night of the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival on July 19.

The prize consists of £3,000 and a handmade engraved beer barrel from Theakstons - an ideal blunt instrument for a murder.

Little Face and Hurting Distance are published by Hodder & Stoughton. Sophie Hannah's Selected Poems are available from Penguin Books.