McDonald & Dodds is set in Bath, England. It's about a pair of unlikely cops thrown together. They have built a great relationship and crime solving success. It's clever and fun!
Fans are not taking this lying down. A petition has been started at Change.org.
"ITV says the show just doesn't have the viewers. Let's show them who's watching! If ITV won't have it back, some other platform. If it worked for Shakespeare & Hathaway, it could work for M&D!"
What do you think?
Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement in Crime Writing – Lynda LaPlante and James Lee Burke
Gold Dagger for Best Crime Novel of the Year – Una Mannion for Tell Me What I am
Ian Fleming Steel Dagger – Jordan Harper for Everybody Knows
ILP John Creasey New Blood Dagger – Jo Callaghan for In the Blink of an Eye
Historical Dagger – Jake Lamar for Viper’s Dream
ALCS Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction – Nicholas Shakespeare for Ian Fleming: the Complete Man
Dagger for Crime Fiction in Translation – Maud Ventura for My Husband, translated by Emma Ramadan
Short Story Dagger – Sanjida Kay for The Divide
Dagger for the Best Crime & Mystery Publisher – Pushkin/Vertigo
Debut Dagger – Richard Jerram for Makoto Murders
Dagger in the Library – Anthony Horowitz
Gary Oldman plays Jackson Lamb, the unpleasant dissolved head of a group of dejected British spies. His band of spooks are called Slow Horses because they've messed up their careers in a variety of ways. Lamb always reinforces their failures.
I missed the first episode of Season 3 because I was watching the first episode of Shetland, Season 8. So many great seasons premiering this month and next.
I highly recommend you read Mick Herron's Slough Mysteries. They're great. Terrific writing, fabulous characters, and great plots. Read them in order.
Let me know what you think of Slow Horses, the TV series.
Elly Griffiths for Bleeding Heart Yard
Gillian McAllister for Wrong Place Wrong Time
Historical Crime Book of the Year
Tom Hindle for A Fatal Crossing
Genre-Busting Book of the Year
Erin Keely for The Skeleton Key
Debut Book of the Year
Nita Prose for The MaidAudiobook of the Year
Adele Parks, narrated by Kristin Atherton for One Last Secret
The Thalia Proctor Lifetime Achievement Award for her invaluable contribution to fiction publishing
Jane Wood
Publishing Campaign of the Year 2023
Viking BooksUK for The Bullet that Missed by Richard Osman.
Gold Dagger
The Kingdoms of Savannah, by George Dawes Green (Headline)
The Lost Man of Bombay, by Vaseem Khan (Hodder & Stoughton)
A Killing in November, by Simon Mason (Riverrun)
The Clockwork Girl, by Anna Mazzola (Orion)
The Winter Guest, by W.C. Ryan (Zaffre)
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)
May God Forgive, by Alan Parks (Canongate)
John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger
A Good Day to Die, by Amen Alonge (Quercus)
The Local, by Joey Hartstone (Pushkin Vertigo)
London in Black, by Jack Lutz (Pushkin Vertigo)
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)
ALCS Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction
The Poisonous Solicitor: The True Story of a 1920s Murder Mystery, by Stephen Bates (Icon)
The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and their Creators, by Martin Edwards (Collins Crime Club)
Unlawful Killings: Life, Love and Murder: Trials at the Old Bailey, by Wendy Joseph (Doubleday)
Tremors in the Blood: Murder, Obsession and the Birth of the Lie Detector, by Amit Katwala (Mudlark)
To Hunt a Killer: How I Brought Melanie Road’s Murderer to Justice, by Julie Mackay and Robert Murphy (Harper Element)
About A Son: A Murder and A Father’s Search for Truth, by David Whitehouse (Phoenix)
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)
The Anomaly, by Hervé Le Tellier, translated by Adriana Hunter (Michael Joseph)
Short Story Dagger
“The Disappearance,” by Leigh Bardugo (from Marple; HarperCollins)
“The Tears of Venus,” by Victoria Dowd and Delilah Dowd (from Unlocked; The D20 Authors)
“The Beautiful Game,” by Sanjida Kay (from The Perfect Crime)
“Paradise Lost,” by Abir Mukherjee (from The Perfect Crime)
“Runaway Blues,” by C.J. Tudor (from A Sliver of Darkness, by C.J. Tudor; Michael Joseph)
“Cast a Long Shadow,” by Hazell Ward (from Cast a Long Shadow, edited by Katherine Stansfield and Caroline; Honno Welsh Women’s Press)
Today is is Boxing Day. I've put together a list of over 1400 mysteries that take place at Christmas, and although I'm sure several of the mysteries on the list continue mystery and mayhem through Boxing Day, the day after Christmas. I've only found a few mysteries that focus or start specifically on Boxing Day.
One Boxing Day Mystery is Nicholas Blake's Thou Shell of Death (1936). Nicholas Blake is the pseudonym of Cecil Day Lewis, the late British poet laureate.
Thou Shell of Death features Fergus O'Brien, WWI flying ace. Fergus receives four letters predicting that he will be murdered on Boxing Day. Despite this, or maybe because of this, he plans a party and invites all the suspects (there are several people who might want to do him in) plus private detective Nigel Strangeways. O'Brien does die, and it's up to Nigel Strangeways with the help of Inspector Blount of Scotland Yard to solve the crime. This is Blount's first appearance in the series. Thou Shell of Death is an oldie but goodie, especially if you like houseparty mysteries.
There are three other novels that focus on Boxing Day. A frozen body is found on Boxing Day in Viveca Sten's In Harm's Way. Another mystery is Gilbert Adair's The Act of Roger Murgatroyd that takes place entirely on Boxing Day. This is part of his series of novels about Evadne Mount, and is clearly a play on Agatha Christie novels. In another Boxing Day mystery, Death at Sandringham House by C.C. Benison, Her Majesty the Queen, along with her housemaid Jane Bee, investigates.
Thanks to Aubrey Nye Hamilton for the Boxing Day addition of Murder After Christmas by Rupert Latimer. It's a British Crime Library Classic, and I've just ordered it.
And, Keith Raffel points out that the murder in A Fatal Grace by Louise Penny takes place the day after Christmas.. Boxing Day, for sure.
And, if you're unfamiliar with Boxing Day, it's the day after Christmas, when "servants and tradesmen traditionally would receive gifts from their superiors." Today it's a National Holiday in most of the British Commonwealth and former British colonies.
As far as why it's called Boxing Day, there are several different theories:
A ‘Christmas Box' in Britain is a name for a Christmas present.
Boxing
Day was a day off for servants and when they received a ‘Christmas Box’
from the master. The servants would also go home to give ‘Christmas
Boxes’ to their families.
A box to collect money for the poor was placed in Churches on Christmas day then opened the next day.
Great sailing ships when setting sail would have a sealed box
containing money on board for good luck. If the voyage were a success the
box was given to a priest, opened at Christmas and the contents given
to the poor.
Are there any other Boxing Day Mysteries I've forgotten?
CWA (Crime Writers Association - UK) Daggers Awards 2020. Winners were announced today at a wonderful Zoom Awards Ceremony hosted by Barry Forshaw. So glad I got to attend.
DIAMOND DAGGER
Martin Edwards
GOLD DAGGER
Michael Robotham: Good Girl, Bad Girl (Sphere)
IAN FLEMING STEEL DAGGER
Lou Berney: November Road (Harper Fiction)
JOHN CREASEY (NEW BLOOD) DAGGER
Trevor Wood: The Man on the Street (Quercus Fiction)
SAPERE BOOKS HISTORICAL DAGGER
Abir Mukherjee: Death in the East (Harvill Secker)
CRIME FICTION IN TRANSLATION DAGGER
Hannelore Cayre: The Godmother, translated by Stephanie Smee (Old Street Publishing)
SHORT STORY DAGGER
Lauren Henderson: #Me Too in Invisible Blood, edited by Maxim Jakubowski (Titan Books)
ALCS GOLD DAGGER FOR NON-FICTION
Casey Cep: Furious Hours (William Heinemann)
DAGGER IN THE LIBRARY
Christopher Brookmyre
DEBUT DAGGER
Josephine Moulds: Revolution Never Lies
PUBLISHERS’ DAGGER
Orenda Books
