Dagger Delights

The 2023 shortlists for the prestigious Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) Dagger awards were announced, honoring the very best in the crime-writing genre. This year also marks the CWA’s 70th Platinum Jubilee Year, making the Daggers the oldest awards in the genre. The Diamond Dagger, which recognizes authors whose crime writing careers have been marked by sustained excellence, and who have made a significant contribution to the genre, was previous announced in February as being awarded to Walter Mosley. The other category winners will be revealed at the Daggers awards night on Thursday, July 6, at the Leonardo City hotel in London with guest speaker, author Charlie Higson. Congrats to all!

Diamond Dagger

• Walter Mosley

Gold Dagger 

• The Kingdoms of Savannah by George Dawes Green (Headline Publishing Group)
• The Lost Man of Bombay by Vaseem Khan (Hodder & Stoughton)
• A Killing in November by Simon Mason (Quercus)
• The Clockwork Girl by Anna Mazzola (Orion)
• The Winter Guest by W C Ryan (Bonnier Books UK)
• The Silent Brother by Simon Van der Velde (Northodox Press)

Ian Fleming Steel Dagger 

• Take Your Breath Away by Linwood Barclay (HQ)
• Seventeen by John Brownlow (Hodder & Stoughton)
• The Botanist by M W Craven (Constable)
• The Ink Black Heart by Robert Galbraith (Sphere)
• Alias Emma by Ava Glass (Century)
• May God Forgive by Alan Parks (Canongate)

ILP John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger 

• Breaking by Amanda Cassidy (Canelo)
• The Local by Joey Hartstone (Pushkin Vertigo)
• London in Black by Jack Lutz (Pushkin Vertigo)
• Dirt Town by Hayley Scrivenor (Macmillan)
• No Country for Girls by Emma Styles (Sphere)
• Outback by Patricia Wolf (Embla)

Historical Dagger

• The Darkest Sin by D V Bishop (Macmillan)
• The Clockwork Girl by Anna Mazzola (Orion)
• The Homes by J B Mylet (Viper)
• The Bangalore Detectives Club by Harini Nagendra (Constable)
• Blue Water by Leonora Nattrass (Viper)
• Hear No Evil by Sarah Smith (Two Roads)

Crime Fiction in Translation Dagger 

• Good Reasons to Die by Morgan Audic, translated by Sam Taylor (Mountain Leopard Press)
• The Red Notebook by Michel Bussi, translated by Vineet Lal (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
• Even the Darkest Night by Javier Cercas, translated by Anne McLean (MacLehose Press)
• Bad Kids by Zijin Chen, translated by Michelle Deeter (Pushkin Vertigo)
• The Bleeding by Johana Gustawsson, translated by David Warriner (Orenda Books)
• The Anomaly by Hervé Le Tellier, translated by Adriana Hunter (Penguin Michael Joseph)

Short Story Dagger 

• ‘The Disappearance’ by Leigh Bardugo, in Marple (HarperCollins)
• ‘The Tears of Venus’ by Victoria Dowd & Delilah Dowd, in Unlocked (The D20 Authors)
• ‘The Beautiful Game’ by Sanjida Kay in The Perfect Crime, edited by Vaseem Khan and Maxim Jakubowski (HarperCollins)
• ‘Paradise Lost’ by Abir Mukherjee in The Perfect Crime, edited by Vaseem Khan and Maxim Jakubowski (HarperCollins)
• ‘Runaway Blues’ by C J Tudor, in A Sliver of Darkness (Penguin Random House)
• ‘Cast A Long Shadow’ by Hazell Ward, in Cast a Long Shadow, edited by Katherine Stansfield and Caroline Oakley (Honno Press)

ALCS Gold Dagger for non-fiction 

• The Poisonous Solicitor by Stephen Bates (Icon Books)
• The Life of Crime by Martin Edwards (HarperCollins)
• Unlawful Killings: Life by Love and Murder: Trials at the Old Bailey by Wendy Joseph (Transworld)
• Tremors in the Blood: Murder by Obsession and the Birth of the Lie Detector by Amit Katwala (HarperCollins)
• To Hunt a Killer by Julie Mackay and Robert Murphy (HarperCollins)
• About a Son by David Whitehouse (Orion Publishing Group)

Dagger in the Library 

• Ben Aaronovitch
• Sophie Hannah
• Mick Herron

Publishers’ Dagger

• Harper Fiction (HarperCollins)
• Mantle (PanMacmillan)
• Michael Joseph (Penguin Random House)
• Pushkin Vertigo (Pushkin Press)
• Quercus (Hachette)
• Viper (Profile Books)

Début Dagger 

• Bulldog Murphy by Chris Corbett
• Male, Unknown by Chris Griffiths
• Sideways by Jeff Marsick
• Heist by James Pierson
• The Line of Least Resistance by Jeff Richards
• Cradle of Storms by Margaret Winslow