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Hilary Mantel has been declared the favourite to win the Man Booker Prize for Fiction after 95% of bets have been placed on her novel, Wolf Hall (Fourth Estate) alone.
After a spate of betting, her novel has been placed at 2/1 to win, followed by Colm Toibin's Brooklyn and Sarah Waters' The Little Stranger, both at 4/1.
Bookmakers William Hill said it had “never seen a betting pattern like it”. "It's almost like an unspoken psychic rumour has gone round that this will be Hilary Mantel's year," spokesman Graham Sharpe said to the Independent. "We'll lose a five-figure sum if the support continues. It is as though a tip has gone around the literary world telling everyone that Mantel is a certainty.
"It's built up a head of steam very early on."
"Quite a lot of them (people placing the bets) are what we would describe as literary insiders," he added, but ruled out the notion of any foul play: "It would be unusual for the judges to know who they were picking as the eventual winner already. I would be very, very surprised if the judges had already decided."
William Hill's latest 2009 Man Booker Prize for Fiction odds are:
2/1 Hilary Mantel Wolf Hall;
4/1 Colm Toibin - Brooklyn;
4/1 Sarah Waters The Little Stranger;
6/1 J M Coetzee Summertime;
6/1 James Lever Me Cheeta;
10/1 A S Byatt The Children's Book;
12/1 William Trevor Love and Summer;
14/1 Ed O'Loughlin Not Untrue & Not Unkind;
14/1 Simon Mawer The Glass Room;
16/1 Adam Foulds The Quickening Maze,
16/1 Sarah Hall How to Paint a Dead Man,
16/1 Samantha Harvey The Wilderness;
16/1 James Scudamore Heliopolis