2018 Dagger Award Ceremony

On Thursday 25^th October at the Grange City Hotel the CWA announced the winners of the 2018 CWA Daggers, honoured Michael Connelly as this years Diamond Dagger recipient and also honoured David Stuart David, Mike Stotter, Ali Karim and I with Red Herring Awards for generously giving our time and expertise benefiting the CWA and the wider crime community.

The short list of the nominees is listed below with the winner in bold.

Gold Dagger
The Liar by Steve Cavanagh (Orion)
London Rules by Mick Herron (John Murray)
Since We Fell by Dennis Lehane (Little Brown)
Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke (Serpent’s Tail)
A Necessary Evil by Abir Mukherjee (Harvill Secker)
Resurrection Bay by Emma Viskic (Pushkin Vertigo)

The CWA Historical Dagger
Nucleus by Rory Clements (Zaffre Publishing)

Money in the Morgue by Ngaio Marsh & Stella Duffy (HarperCollins)

A Necessary Evil by Abir Mukherjee (Harvill Secker)
Lightning Men by Thomas Mullen (Little Brown)
Fire by L. C. Len Tyler (Constable)
Nine Lessons by Nicola Upson (Faber & Faber)

The CWA Short Story Dagger 
The Last Siege of Bothwell Castle by Chris Brookmyre from Bloody Scotland (Historic Environment Scotland)
Second Son by Lee Child from No Middle Name: The Complete Collected Jack Reacher Stories (Bantam Press)
Smoking Kills by Erin Kelly from “The Body” Killer Women Crime Club Anthology 2 Edited by Susan Opie (Killer Women Ltd)
Nemo Me Impune Lacessit by Denise Mina from Bloody Scotland (Historic Environment Scotland)
Accounting for Murder by Christine Poulson from Mystery Tour: CWA Anthology of Short Stories Edited by Martin Edwards (Orenda Books)

The CWA International Dagger 
Zen and the Art of Murder by Oliver Bottini tr. Jamie Bulloch (MacLehose)
Three Days and a Life by Pierre Lemaitre tr. Frank Wynne (MacLehose)
After the Fire by Henning Mankell tr. Marlaine Delargy (Harvill Secker)
The Frozen Woman by Jon Michelet tr. Don Bartlett (No Exit Press)
Offering to the Storm by Dolores Redondo tr. Nick Caistor & Lorenza Garzía, (HarperCollins)
The Accordionist by Fred Vargas tr. Sian Reynolds (Harvill Secker)

Ian Fleming Steel Dagger
London Rules by Mick Herron (John Murray Publishers)
If I Die Before I Wake by Emily Koch (Harvill Secker)
Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke (Serpent’s Tail)
An Act of Silence by Colette McBeth (Wildfire)
The Chalk Man by C J Tudor (Michael Joseph)
The Force by Don Winslow (HarperFiction)

The CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger
Gravesend by William Boyle (No Exit Press)
I.Q by Joe Ide (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
Girl In Snow by Danya Kukafka (Picador)
Lola by Melissa Scrivner Love (Point Blank)
East Of Hounslow by Khurrum Rahman (HQ)
Resurrection Bay by Emma Viskic Pushkin Vertigo

CWA Debut Dagger
The Eternal Life of Ezra Ben Simeon by Bill Crotty
The Last Googling of Beth Bailly by Luke Melia
Riverine Blood by Joseph James
Original Sins by Linda McLaughlin
Trust Me, I’m Dead by Sherryl Clark

CWA ALCS Gold Dagger For Non-Fiction
Black Dahlia Red Rose by Piu Eatwell (Coronet)
Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann (Simon & Schuster)
Blood on the Page by Thomas Harding (Heinemann)
The Fact of a Body by Alexandria Mariano-Lesnevich (Macmillan)
A False Report by Christian Miller & Ken Armstrong (Hutchinson)
Rex V Edith Thompson by Laura Thompson (Head of Zeus)

CWA Dagger In The Library 
Selected by nominations from libraries.
Martin Edwards
Nicci French
Simon Kernick
Edward Marston
Peter May
Rebecca Tope

CWA Diamond Dagger Recipient
Michael Connelly

Congratulations to all the nominated authors and winners.

The night was full of surprises and all the winners were worthy.  Huge congratulations to Michael Connelly for being honoured with the Diamond Dagger.   Attica Lock who won the Ian Fleming Dagger for Bluebird, Bluebird (which was also one of my favourite reads of the year when it was published) won the Edgar earlier on in the year for the same book.  It is not often that this happens.  In the case of Henning Mankell wining the international Dagger I am not sure whether or not this is the first time it has been awarded posthumously I strongly suspect so. 

It was incredibly nice to catch up with so many people especially Craig Sisterton the convenor of the Ngaio Marsh Awards along with the lovely Stella Duffy whose novel was not only shortlisted for the Historical Dagger but also the Ngaio Marsh Award as well.  Of course my fellow judges of the Short Story Dagger, Sophie Goodfellow and Gaynor Coules. Steve Cavanagh and to finally get to meet his lovely wife Tracey after being online friends. Ruth Dudley-Edwards, Martin Edwards and of course the incomparable Barry Forshaw to name a few.

A shout-out was also given to Capital Crime the new crime festival that is due to take place in London. Information about the festival can be found on the website. (http://www.capitalcrime.org) .

A big thanks to everyone who organised the award ceremony.

Criminal Splatterings!

According to Digital Spy, the BBC released a picture  (see  left) of Merlin star Colin Morgan in his new role on the three-part series Quirke, starring Gabriel Byrne as a Dublin pathologist who solves crimes in the 1950s.  The series is based on characters from the crime thrillers of Booker Prize winner John Banville (a/k/a Benjamin Black) and has been filming since November 2012.

If you have not listened to it yet, then there is an excellent podcast with the likes of Gillian Flynn, Michael Koryta and Joseph Wambaugh who talk about their writing and their books.  The podcast can be heard here.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Johnny Depp is due to star as gangster thriller Black Mass, which recounts the real-life story of South Boston criminal mastermind Whitey Bulger.  Bulger is considered to be the most infamous criminal in the history of South Boston.  He became an FBI informant in order to take down a rival Mafia family, only to be double-crossed by the government and prosecuted himself.

Filming has just started on the BBC 1 legal thriller The Escape Artist.  The Escape Artist is an original three-part suspense thriller set in the world of criminal law.  David Tennant plays Will Burton, a talented junior barrister who specialises in spiriting people out of tight legal corners, hence his nickname of “The Escape Artist”.  Will is in high demand, as he has never lost a case.  However, when his talents acquit the prime suspect in a horrific murder trial, that brilliance comes back to bite him with unexpected and chilling results.  The Escape Artist features David Tennant and Sophie Okonedo.  A three part series The Escape Artist is due to be shown in 2013.

In what could be said to be serendipity according to the Guardian Agatha Christie was once investigated by MI5 who feared that she had a spy at Bletchley Park.  Their reasoning is because she named one of her characters in her wartime novel N or M Major Bletchley.

Whilst not strictly crime fiction related, I am pleased to learn that Thunderbirds is due to return to the small screen in 26 half-hour episodes fifty years after the first episode was shown.  Thunderbirds Are Go has been commissioned by ITV and will be shown in 2015.  The full article can be read here.

Interesting article in the Independent on Lynn Shepherd’s new novel A Treacherous Likeness which sees her Victorian private detective Charles Maddox delving into the outrageous and early life of Mary Shelley, the creator of Frankenstein.  The full article can be found here.

In the Independent Jane Jakeman interviews Gold Dagger winner Belinda Bauer who talks about setting her latest novel Rubbernecker in Cardiff.  The full article can be read here.

The always-interesting Lynda La Plante in the Telegraph claims that the criminal justice system favours criminals instead of victims.  The full article can be read here.

Hodder are due to publish the psychological thriller Under Your Skin by Sabine Durrant in April.  The trailer for the novel can watched below.

According to The Bookseller, Quercus have bought a new crime series set in Hong Kong by author Duncan Jepson in a two-book deal.  The article can be read here.  The first book in the series Emperors Once More is set in 2015 and follows detective Alex Soong as he investigates a conspiracy, which dates back to the Boxer Rebellion.

Interested in learning more about Italian crime fiction?  If so then join Ilaria Meliconi founder of Hersilia Press and writer, journalist and editor of Crime Time Barry Forshaw as they discuss all things Italian and crime.  Where?  Belgravia Bookshop, When?  21 February 2013.  Time?  6:30pm. More information can be found here.

According to Deadline.com Bradley Cooper has signed to star in and produce the upcoming adaptation of James Renner's novel The Man From Primrose Lane.  Southland writer Chad Feehan is adapting the story, about a true-crime writer who finds himself at the centre of a chain of serial murders and "must look outside the parameters of what he believed to be true about time and space" in order to solve the mystery. 

Also according to Deadline.com Nikolaj Arcel and Rasmus Heisterberg, who are the screenwriters behind the Swedish adaptation of Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo are due to adapt The Power of The Dog the thriller by Don Winslow.  They will be joined by Shane Salerno who was also co-wrote the screenplay of another Winslow adaptation, Savages.  The Power of The Dog is the story of a 30-year struggle between a hardened agent and a family of cartel kingpins in Mexico.  Shane and Winslow are also teaming up on the screenplay adaptation of Winslow’s Satori, which is in pre-production at Warner Bros.

According to Digital Spy, it looks like Tom Hardy and Noomi Rapace have signed on to star in spy thriller Child 44, which is based on the novel by Tom Rob Smith.  Child 44 is about a 1950s-era Soviet police officer who tries to solve a string of child murders.  The script has been penned by The Wire writer Richard Price.  Child 44 won the 2008 Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for best thriller and also the Waverton Good Read Award for first novels and the Galaxy Book Award for Best Newcomer with Child 44.