CWA Daggers Awards Longlists 2020

CWA (Crime Writers Association - UK) Daggers Awards 2020 Longlists. Winners will be announced on October 22.

GOLD DAGGER

Claire Askew: What You Pay For (Hodder & Stoughton)
Gary Bell: Beyond Reasonable Doubt (Raven Books)
Lou Berney: November Road (Harper Fiction)
MW Craven: Black Summer (Constable)
John Fairfax: Forced Confessions (Little, Brown)
Lucy Foley: The Guest List (Harper Fiction)
Elly Griffiths: The Lantern Men (Quercus Fiction)
Chris Hammer: Silver (Wildfire)
Mick Herron: Joe Country (John Murray)
SG MacLean: The Bear Pit (Quercus Fiction)
Patrick McGuinness: Throw Me to the Wolves (Jonathan Cape)
Abir Mukherjee: Death in the East (Harvill Secker)
Alex North: The Whisper Man (Michael Joseph)
Scott Phillips: That Left Turn at Albuquerque (Soho Crime)
Michael Robotham: Good Girl, Bad Girl (Sphere)
Tim Weaver: No One Home (Michael Joseph)

IAN FLEMING STEEL DAGGER

Lou Berney: November Road (Harper Fiction)
Tom Chatfield: This is Gomorrah (Hodder & Stoughton)
Karen Cleveland: Keep You Close (Bantam Press)
AA Dhand: One Way Out (Bantam Press)
Eva Dolan: Between Two Evils (Raven Books)
Helen Fields: Perfect Kill (Avon)
Oliver Harris: A Shadow Intelligence (Little, Brown)
Peter Heller: The River (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
Greg Iles: Cemetery Road (Harper Fiction)
David Koepp: Cold Storage (HQ)
Adrian McKinty: The Chain (Orion Fiction)
Alex North: The Whisper Man (Michael Joseph)
Andrew Taylor: The King’s Evil (Harper Fiction)

JOHN CREASEY (NEW BLOOD) DAGGER

Steph Cha: Your House Will Pay (Faber & Faber)
Sherryl Clark: Trust Me, I'm Dead (Verve Books)
Samantha Downing: My Lovely Wife (Michael Joseph)
Philippa East: Little White Lies (HQ)
Andrew James Greig: Whirligig (Fledgling Press)
AS Hatch: This Dark Little Place (Serpent's Tail)
James Von Leyden: A Death in the Medina (Constable)
Deborah Masson: Hold Your Tongue (Corgi)
Owen Matthews: Black Sun (Bantam Press)
Felicity McLean: The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone (Point Blank)
Robin Morgan-Bentley: The Wreckage (Trapeze)
Trevor Wood: The Man on the Street (Quercus Fiction)

SAPERE BOOKS HISTORICAL DAGGER

Alis Hawkins: In Two Minds (The Dome Press)
Philip Kerr: Metropolis (Quercus Fiction)
SG MacLean: The Bear Pit (Quercus Fiction)
Abir Mukherjee: Death in the East (Harvill Secker)
SW Perry: The Serpent’s Mark (Corvus)
Alex Reeve: The Anarchists’ Club (Raven Books)
Gareth Rubin: Liberation Square (Michael Joseph)
SD Sykes: The Bone Fire (Hodder & Stoughton)
Andrew Taylor: The King’s Evil (Harper Collins)
Lynne Truss: The Man That Got Away (Raven Books)
Nicola Upson: Sorry for the Dead (Faber & Faber)
Ovidia Yu: The Paper Bark Tree Mystery (Constable)

CRIME FICTION IN TRANSLATION DAGGER

Edoardo Albinati: The Catholic School, translated by Anthony Shugaar (Picador)
Marion Brunet: Summer of Reckoning, translated by Katherine Gregor (Bitter Lemon Press)
Hannelore Cayre: The Godmother, translated by Stephanie Smee (Old Street Publishing)
K Ferrari: Like Flies from Afar, translated by Adrian Nathan West (Canongate Books)
Jorge Galán: November, translated by Jason Wilson (Constable)
Johana Gustawsson: Blood Song, translated by David Warriner (Orenda Books)
Jørn Lier Horst: The Cabin, translated by Anne Bruce (Michael Joseph)
Sergio Olguin: The Fragility of Bodies, translated by Miranda France (Bitter Lemon Press)
Leonardo Padura: Grab a Snake by the Tail, translated by Peter Bush (Bitter Lemon Press)
Antti Tuomainen: Little Siberia, translated by David Hackston (Orenda Books)

SHORT STORY DAGGER

Fiona Cummins: Dead Weight in Exit Wounds, edited by Paul B Kane and Marie O’Regan (Titan Books)
Jeffery Deaver: Connecting the Dots in Invisible Blood, edited by Maxim Jakubowski (Titan Books)
Jeffery Deaver: The Bully in Exit Wounds, edited by Paul B Kane and Marie O’Regan (Titan Books)
Paul Finch: The New Lad in Exit Wounds, edited by Paul B Kane and Marie O’Regan (Titan Books)
Christopher Fowler: The Washing in Invisible Blood, edited by Maxim Jakubowski (Titan Books)
Christopher Fowler: Bryant and May and The Devil's Triangle in Bryant and May: England's Finest (Doubleday)
Lauren Henderson: #Me Too in Invisible Blood, edited by Maxim Jakubowski (Titan Books)
Louise Jensen: The Recipe in Exit Wounds, edited by Paul B Kane and Marie O’Regan (Titan Books)
Dean Koontz: Kittens in Exit Wounds, edited by Paul B Kane and Marie O’Regan (Titan Books) 
Syd Moore: Easily Made in 12 Strange Days of Christmas (Point Blank Press)

ALCS GOLD DAGGER FOR NON-FICTION

Casey Cep: Furious Hours (William Heinemann)
Julia Ebner: Going Dark: The Secret Social Lives of Extremists (Bloomsbury Publishing)
Peter Everett: Corrupt Bodies (Icon Books)
Caroline Goode: Honour: Achieving Justice for Banaz Mahmod (Oneworld Publications)
Joanna Jolly: Red River Girl (Virago)
Jodi Kantor & Megan Twohey: She Said (Bloomsbury Circus)
Sean O’Connor: The Fatal Passion of Alma Rattenbury (Simon & Schuster)
Adam Sisman: The Professor and the Parson: A Story of Desire, Deceit and Defrocking (Profile Books)
Susannah Stapleton: The Adventures of Maud West, Lady Detective (Picador)
Fred Vermorel: Dead Fashion Girl: A Situationist Detective Story (Strange Attractor Press)

DAGGER IN THE LIBRARY

Benjamin Black
Christopher Brookmyre
Jane Casey
Paul Finch
Alex Gray
Mick Herron
Quintin Jardine
Lisa Jewell
Erin Kelly
Adrian McKinty
Denise Mina
James Oswald

DEBUT DAGGER

Barbara Austin: Lowlands
Anna Caig: The Spae-Wife
Loraine Fowlow: Undercut
Leanne Fry: Whipstick
Kim Hays: Pesticide
Jack Kapica: Blogger’s End
Nicholas Morrish: Emergency Drill
Josephine Moulds: Revolution Never Lies
Michael Munro: Bitter Lake
Karen Taylor: Grim Fairy Tale
Jane Wing: Dark Pastimes
Sarah Yarwood-Lovett: A Generation of Viper

PUBLISHERS’ DAGGER

Allison & Busby
Bitter Lemon
Harvill Secker
Head of Zeus
HQ
Michael Joseph
Orenda
Orion
Pushkin Vertigo
Raven
Severn House
Sphere

HT: Euro Crime

HARDBOILED TIED IN RIBBONS: Guest post by Janet Rogers

JANET ROGER:
HARDBOILED TIED IN RIBBONS

There are properly extended reviews of Hill, Jackson & Rizzuto’s recent The Annotated Big Sleep. You might for example try Geoff Nicholson, in the Los Angeles Review of Books. My interest isn’t nearly expert enough for that. It’s simply a fascination with the decades of the 1940s and 50s - and with the generation that came through them - that Raymond Chandler wrote about and for. His seven novels, featuring private eye Philip Marlowe, were published at intervals through those two decades, more or less. The Big Sleep, published 1939, was the first.

So this is not a review. Instead, it leans heavily on The Annotated Big Sleep, in order to marvel at how fast the world of a novel dates. We know the past is another country. The shock is that we become expatriates so soon. The Big Sleep, after all, was published just about within living memory. Yet already we profit immensely from reading it with notes: notes on the shaping events, on the language and idiom, the manners, mannerisms, habits and prejudices of the times. Without them, there are commonplaces that go missing. References pass by. On practically every page.

Not least, we profit from notes on the world of hardboiled fiction that The Big Sleep was about to transform. The hardboiled school was everywhere on the newsstands when Chandler first enrolled in it, and Hill, Jackson & Rizzuto are revelatory here about its catalogue of accessories. The gumshoe? Blondes and blackmail? Hard liquor? The camera eye? They hardly get you started on the hardboiled themes, motifs and devices that Chandler was accommodating, when he shouldered The Big Sleep into the ranks of dark, toughened-up mystery writing. Like his readers, in 1939 Chandler knew his way around dark from direct experience, and could see plenty more tough on the horizon. But by then he’d also worked at how to put those things on the page, until he had the whole repertory of hardboiled dripping from his fingers.

It had taken time. Chandler had apprenticed himself to the mystery pulps for most of the 1930s. In the midst of the Great Depression, down and out of a job, he’d made a living at a penny-a-word, learning his new craft as he wrote. An English classical education had taught him to analyze. He brought method and application of his own. And as for the learning the ropes, the fellow pulp writers he could crib from were the best; there’s a 1936 photo of Black Mask magazine authors, Chandler in there among them, where Dashiell Hammett stands a head above the rest.

Analyzed, absorbed and then practiced in a score of his Black Mask and Dime Detective stories, Chandler imported those hardboiled accessories, wholesale, into his first full-length novel. And yet, though The Big Sleep was born into cliché on an industrial scale, it was promoted hard by its publisher Knopf and it sold; better than the average from the outset, and triumphantly in paperback. The book has been in print ever since. So what did it do that was so different?

Well, obviously not the storyline. That was bulked up from a handful of Chandler’s earlier pulp outings, and plotting is famously a department where he didn’t overstrain. But while the novel begins from conventionally hardboiled beginnings - a private eye visits a rich client, unsure about why he’s being hired, encounters the loyal butler, acts threatened around alluring women and then fragile around gay men - something very different is also going on.

To delight in the detail of those differences, we now have The Annotated Big Sleep. And for the one-liner that cuts to the heart of the matter, there’s still Chandler himself. You’ll know the line I mean, from his essay "The Simple Art of Murder," written when Marlowe’s character and worldview had developed through three more novels. It comes where the writer is reflecting on a transformation in fiction that had worked to produce Hammett, by way of Hemingway. ‘It probably started in poetry;’ he says, ‘almost everything does.’

In Marlowe, Chandler grabs a first-person narrator with both hands, gives his voice to a smart, seen-it-all gumshoe and makes poetry out of his one fixed idea: that aiming for a certain decency, honesty and justice in a corrupting world, is to be his own man. The poetry is in how the gumshoe’s world looks to him. And his rather old-fashioned code is what makes him hero of his own story, an idea that was important to Chandler. ‘In everything that can be called art…’ he says later in The Simple Art of Murder, ‘…there is a quality of redemption.’ It seems that idea - Marlowe’s push back against the odds, his middle-finger defiance that puts heroic in reach of Everyman - hit a general nerve. Perhaps because it did come packaged in the poetry.

As applied to a hardboiled mystery in The Big Sleep, the result is a Chandler original. Marlowe’s début nods to some very stiff, high-sounding principles. But wrapped in what Robert Towne calls Chandler’s lazy lyricism, it waves a wand that makes a gumshoe’s version of uprightness look not only tough but subversive. For a generation with no illusions about the realities behind hardboiled fiction - everyday graft, police complicity, the syndicated rackets, the rainproof rich - Marlowe’s splicing of contempt with his own brand of streetwise integrity, proved magnetic. His style as a survivor-hero became the cool, bought and read by millions through the Cold War, Korea and on.

Those accessories to hardboiled - the ones Chandler worked at through the 1930s - live on. Marlowe did them no harm at all. They’ve become as indispensable as high tea and drawing rooms still are to the cozy English murder. But a handful of writers caught the spark, not only of Chandler’s adroitness with the clichés of hardboiled, but also of the poetry; his lazy lyric of the subversive that ties the clichés in ribbons, and transforms them. The same Robert Towne, for one, in his screenplay for Chinatown. Jonathan Lethem’s Motherless Brooklyn for another. And though, if you’ve come with me this far, you won’t need any extra reason for discovering The Annotated Big Sleep, here’s one anyway. Jonathan Lethem also wrote the foreword.

*** 

Janet Roger is an historical fiction author, writing literary crime. She trained in archaeology, history and Eng. Lit. and has a special interest in the early Cold War. Janet Roger’s Shamus Dust: Hard Winter, Cold War, Cool Murder is a Chandleresque private-eye fiction, set in 1947 post-war London. Published by Troubador in 2019 it won the Beverly Hills Book Award for Crime Fiction, was Fully Booked's Book of the Year and Finalist for the 2020 Montaigne Medal. She is a contributor to The Rap Sheet, CrimeReads, Suspense Magazine, Punk Noir and to Mystery Readers Journal. Shamus Dust has garnered very many five-star reviews, from some of the best-read magazines and award-winning writers in crime fiction. Check out her recent interviews with Deborah Kalb, In Reference to Murder, NB Magazine, Women Writers, Women’s Books - among others. You can find her on: Twitter twitter.com/shamusdust Facebook facebook.com/author.JanetRo…

PRIVATE EYE WRITERS OF AMERICA SHAMUS AWARD NOMINEES 2020

PRIVATE EYE WRITERS OF AMERICA SHAMUS AWARD NOMINEES 2020 for works published in 2019. (The lists below are in alphabetical order by author.) Congratulations for all!

Best Original Private Eye Paperback 

The Skin Game by JD Allen / Midnight Ink

Behind the Wall of Sleep by James DF Hannah / author

Paid in Spades by Richard Helms / Clay Stafford Books

Ration of Lies by M. Ruth Myers / author

The Bird Boys by Lisa Sandlin / Cinco Puntos Press

Best Private Eye Short Story 

“The Smoking Bandit of Lakeside Terrace” by Chad Baker in EQMM May/June

“Sac-A-Lait Man” by O’Neil De Noux in EQMM Sept/Oct
“The Dunes of Saulkrasti” by William Burton McCormick in EQMM Sept/Oct
“The Fourteenth Floor” by Adam Meyer in Crime Travel anthology from Wildside Press

“Weathering the Storm” by Michael Pool in The Eyes of Texas anthology from Down & Out Books

 Best Private Eye Novel 

The Tower of Songs by Casey Barrett / Kensington

Lost Tomorrows by Matt Coyle / Oceanview

The Shallows by Matt Goldman / Forge

Below the Line by Michael Gould / Dutton

The Cold Way Home by Julia Keller / Minotaur

Grantchester: Series 5 on Masterpiece Mystery!

Grantchester Series 5 starts June 14 on PBS Masterpiece Mystery!

Where we left off (from PBS website with spoilers!)
Last season:
Grantchester bid fond farewell to Sidney Chambers (James Norton) and his Sidney Bechet albums when he packed up and left for America, and welcomed newest vicar Will Davenport (Tom Brittney)—and his motorbike and cappuccino machine. Mrs. C and Leonard finally made up after their heartbreaking falling out, when Mrs. C discovered the truth of Leonard’s sexuality. Cathy, with the help of Mrs. C, dispatched of her predatory boss, Mr. Hobbs, and found peace at her job—as well as peace with Geordie. After tragedy struck Will’s family at the end of the season, Will had to face the dilemma of being the man his family expected, or following his own calling. 

Coming up: 
It’s 1957, and Will has finally settled into his role as the vicar of Grantchester, preaching to a packed and adoring congregation. His best friend, Detective Inspector Geordie Keating, has come to accept his wife Cathy’s commitment to her job – well, just about. Mrs C. happily (and deftly) juggles her roles as the vicarage housekeeper and as a well-to-do married woman. And after a trip to Marrakech, even Leonard has managed to carve out some happiness with Daniel, in secret. 

“The main theme that goes through the season is this idea of ‘Eden’,” said Grantchester star Tom Brittney. “Harold Macmillan [British Prime Minister, 1957-1963] was saying at that time in the fifties that Britain had never had it so good. But in actual truth, underneath, there is always this dark side bubbling, and no more than in the village of Grantchester.” 

From a student’s misadventure at one of the local colleges, a hit-and-run that leads them to a secret garden, a murder in a cinema, a death at a controversial drug trial and more, crime never truly stops in Grantchester. As the season goes on, Will’s faith and Geordie’s patience will be thoroughly tested as they are reminded once more that there’s always darkness lurking in their little corner of  Cambridgeshire.'

 

Cartoon of the Day: The Story Coaster

CRIMEFEST AWARDS 2020 NOMINATIONS!

CrimeFest announced their Awards Nominations! Congrats to all!

The 2020 CRIMEFEST Awards were due to be presented at a Gala Dinner during the convention at the Bristol Mercure Grand Hotel this June. In light of Covid-19, the winners will be announced online at crimefest.com and via its social media pages on Tuesday 7 July.

SPECSAVERS DEBUT CRIME NOVEL AWARD
In association with our new headline sponsor, CRIMEFEST is honoured to announce a new award for a crime novel by debut author first published in the British Isles in 2019. Previously unpublished authors bring vital fresh blood to the genre, and CRIMEFEST and Specsavers aim to highlight that contribution with this award.

The winning author receives a £1,000 prize (courtesy of headline sponsor Specsavers) as well as a Bristol Blue Glass commemorative award.

Specsavers Crime Fiction Debut Award nominees:
– Fiona Erskine for The Chemical Detective (Point Blank)
– Katja Ivar for Evil Things (Bitter Lemon Press)
– Carolyn Kirby for The Conviction of Cora Burns (No Exit Press)
– Alex Michaelides for The Silent Patient (Orion Fiction)
– Laura Shepherd-Robinson for Blood & Sugar (Mantle)
– Holly Watt for To The Lions (Raven Books)

AUDIBLE SOUNDS OF CRIME AWARD
The Audible Sounds of Crime Award is for the best unabridged crime audiobook first published in the United Kingdom in 2019 in both printed and audio formats, and available for download from audible.co.uk, Britain’s largest provider of downloadable audiobooks. Courtesy of sponsor Audible UK, the winning author and audiobook reader(s) share the £1,000 prize equally and each receives a Bristol Blue Glass commemorative award.

Audible Sounds of Crime Award nominees:
– Kate Atkinson for Big Sky, read by Jason Isaacs (Penguin Random House Audio)
– Oyinkan Braithwaite for My Sister, the Serial Killer, read by Weruche Opia (W.F. Howes)
– Alex Callister for Winter Dark, read by Ell Potter (Audibe Studios)
– Lee Child for Blue Moon, read by Jeff Harding (Penguin Random House Audio)
– Lisa Jewell for The Family Upstairs, read by Tamaryn Payne, Bea Holland & Dominic Thorburn (Penguin Random House Audio)
– T.M. Logan for The Holiday, read by Laura Kirman (Zaffre)
– Peter May for The Man with No Face, read by Peter Forbes (Quercus, Fiction)
– Alex Michaelides for The Silent Patient, read by Louise Brealey & Jack Hawkins (Orion)

eDUNNIT AWARD
The eDunnit Award is for the best crime fiction ebook first published in both hardcopy and in electronic format in the United Kingdom in 2019. The winner receives a Bristol Blue Glass commemorative award.

eDunnit Award nominees:
– Helen FitzGerald for Worst Case Scenario (Orenda Books)
– Sarah Hilary for Never Be Broken (Headline)
– Andrew Taylor for The King’s Evil (HarperFiction)
– L.C. Tyler for The Maltese Herring (Allison & Busby)
– Holly Watt for To The Lions (Raven Books)
– Don Winslow for The Border (HarperFiction)

H.R.F. KEATING AWARD
The H.R.F. Keating Award is for the best biographical or critical book related to crime fiction first published in the United Kingdom in 2019. The award is named after H.R.F. ‘Harry’ Keating, one of Britain’s most esteemed crime novelists, crime reviewers and writer of books about crime fiction. The winning author receives a commemorative Bristol Blue Glass award.

H.R.F. Keating Award nominees:
– Ursula Buchan for Beyond The Thirty-Nine Steps (Bloomsbury Publishing)
– John Curran for The Hooded Gunman (HarperCollins Crime Club)
– Barry Forshaw for Crime Fiction: A Reader’s Guide (No Exit Press)

LAST LAUGH AWARD
The Last Laugh Award is for the best humorous crime novel first published in the United Kingdom in 2019. The winner receives a Bristol Blue Glass commemorative award.

Last Laugh Award nominees:
– William Boyle for A Friend is a Gift you Give Yourself (No Exit Press)
– Hannah Dennison for Tidings of Death at Honeychurch Hall (Constable)
– Helen FitzGerald for Worst Case Scenario (Orenda Books)
– Christopher Fowler for Bryant & May – The Lonely Hour (Transworld)
– Antti Tuomainen for Little Siberia (Orenda Books)
– L.C. Tyler for The Maltese Herring (Allison & Busby)

BEST CRIME NOVEL FOR CHILDREN
This award is for the best crime novel for children (aged 8-12) first published in the United Kingdom in 2019. The winner receives a commemorative Bristol Blue Glass award.

Nominees for the CrimeFest Award for Best Crime Novel for Children (ages 8-12):
– P.G. Bell for The Great Brain Robbery (Usborne Publishing)
– Vivian French for The Steam Whistle Theatre Company (Walker Books)
– Sophie Green for Potkin and Stubbs (Bonnier Books)
– A.M. Howell for The Garden of Lost Secrets (Usborne Publishing)
– Simon Lelic for The Haven (Hodder Children’s Books)
– Thomas Taylor for Malamander (Walker Books)

BEST CRIME NOVEL FOR YOUNG ADULTS
This award is for the best crime novel for young adults (aged 12-16) first published in the United Kingdom in 2019. The winner receives a commemorative Bristol Blue Glass award.

Nominees for the CrimeFest Award for Best Crime Novel for Young Adults (ages 12-16):
– Kathryn Evans for Beauty Sleep (Usborne Publishing)
– John Grisham for Theodore Boone: The Accomplice (Hodder & Stoughton)
– Samuel J. Halpin for The Peculiar Peggs of Riddling Woods (Usborne Publishing)
– Simon Mason for Hey Sherlock! (David Fickling Books)
– Tom Pollock for Heartstream (Walker Books)
– Nikesh Shukla for The Boxer (Hodder Children’s Books)