Barry Award Nominations 2023

 

Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine have announced the Barry Award Nominations for 2023. 

Novels in each category are arranged in alphabetical order based on the author’s last name.

Best Mystery or Crime Novel

The Accomplice by Steve Cavanagh (orion)

Desert Star by Michael Connelly (Little,Brown) 

The Dark Flood, Deon Meyer (Atlantic Monthly)

Shifty’s Boys by Chris Offutt (Grove Press)

Secret Identity by Alex Segura (Flatiron Books)

City on Fire by Don Winslow (William Morrow)

Best Debut Mystery or Crime Novel

Before You Knew My Name by Jacqueline Bublitz (Atria/Emily Bestler)

Don’t Know Tough by Eli Cranor (Soho Crime)

Shutter by Ramona Emerson (Soho Crime)

The Maid by Nita Prose (Ballantine)

Blood Sugar by Sascha Rothchild (Putnam)

Dirt Creek by Hayley Scrivenor (Flatiron)

Best Thriller

In the Blood by Jack Carr (Atria/Emily Bester)

Winter Work by Dan Fesperman (Knopf)

Sierra Six by Mark Greaney (Berkley)

Bad Actors by Mick Herron (Soho Crime)

Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn (Berkley)\

Goering’s Gold by Richard O’Rawe (Melville House)

Congratulations to all the nominated authors and books. Winners will be announced at the Opening Ceremonies of Bouchercon San Diego on 31 August 2023

Dan Fesperman on the Return of Claire Saylor

 

Claire Saylor, the American protagonist of my new spy novel, The Cover Wife, is the sort of character who is always pushing boundaries and breaking rules to find out things she's not supposed to know. She can sneak up on you that way. Give her a small role to play and she'll turn it into a bigger one, even if you're the writer who created her.

My initial authorly assumption about Claire was that she would be a minor character in my previous novel, Safe Houses. I figured she'd be useful for a few key scenes in her home city of Paris, where she was a CIA operative in 1979. Then I'd say goodbye, dispatching her to that vague netherworld where underused characters go to wait -- usually in vain -- for their next casting call. For many authors, that's a crowded place that we don't often care to visit, lest we do something embarrassing like forget someone's name, or the time when we first encountered them.

"What do you mean you don't remember me? I saved your ass on that climactic scene in your first novel!"

"Yes, well, can I get you a drink, maybe? Oh, and have you met this lovely person over here, uh, his name's right on the tip of my tongue..."

Claire refused to go to that room. Much in the same way she takes advantage of her dismissive station chiefs, exploiting their lack of attention, she began insinuating herself into one additional scene after another. I warmed to her company. She was enjoyable to write, smart and witty, and the next thing I knew she had become a full-blown sidekick. She even forced her way into the final scenes of the book's other plot line, a sequence of events occurring thirty-five years later.

Her performance was so compelling that I decided she'd earned a starring role in The Cover Wife, so here she is, working a case (or maybe, as she soon learns, two of them at once, with layers of meaning that must be unpeeled one at a time) in Hamburg in 1999, at a time when a few impassioned young Islamic radicals were just beginning to think big and bold about the mark they might be able to make in the West, as long as no one found out what they were up to.

You'll also find her in my next book, Winter Work, in which shell be working for the CIA in Berlin in 1990, four months after the Wall came down. But that, as they say, is another story. (I've only completed the first draft, with plenty of work remaining, so please be patient with me).

Yet, I certainly don't see Claire as a "series" character. In fact, it feels like a bit of a stretch to even characterize these books as a Claire Saylor Trilogy. That's partly because, for all her success in claiming a bigger role in Safe Houses, she still wasn't the main character. Those roles belonged to a young CIA operative named Helen Abell (who, by the way, has an important cameo in The Cover Wife), and to a couple of other folks. And in the book yet to come, Winter Work, she will share center stage with a scene-stealing old hand from the Stasi's foreign intelligence branch, a fellow named Emil Grimm.Also, it isn't as if these books are chronological. If you were to plot out Claire Saylor's life as portrayed in these three successive novels, you'd realize that they cover four parts of her career, and do quite a bit of jumping around in the process. Safe Houses, set in 1979 and 2014, gives you Parts 1 and 4, The Cover Wife (1999), gives you Part 3. Winter Work (1990), will give you Part 2.

Haphazard? Not really. It's simply the way her life's story evolved in the telling of these tales. I think of the non-chronological nature of these books as being more in the way that longtime friends, seated at a bar, will swap memorable old tales from their past as they drink, hopping inevitably from one year to the other, in no fixed order.

In Claire's case, at least she still has a place at the table, instead of moldering in that back room with all those characters whose names I've forgotten. Because, obviously, I'm intrigued by her. My hope now is that you'll enjoy her company as much as I have.

‘The Cover Wife’ by Dan Fesperman is published by Head of Zeus on 6th July

Paris, October 1999. CIA agent Claire Saylor's career has stalled, thanks to unorthodox behaviour in her past. So when she's told she'll be going undercover in Hamburg to pose as the wife of an academic who has published a controversial interpretation of the Quran's promise to martyrs, she assumes the job is a punishment. But when she discovers her team leader is Paul Bridger, another Agency maverick, she realises there may be more to this mission than meets the eye - and not just for professional reasons.  Meanwhile, Mahmoud, a recent Moroccan émigré in Hamburg, has become involved with a group of radicals at his local mosque. The deeper he's drawn into the group, the more he is torn between his obligations to them and his feelings toward a beautiful westernized Muslim woman. As Claire learns the truth about her mission, and Mahmoud grows closer to the radicals, their paths are on a collision course that could have disastrous repercussions far beyond the CIA.

More information about Dan Fesperman and his books can be found on his website. You can also follow him on Twitter @DanFesperman

Books to Look Forward to From Head of Zeus

January 2021 

The Scorpion's Tail is by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. After a shoot-out leaves a senior FBI agent gravely wounded, Corrie Swanson finds herself under investigation. Her supervisor assures her she's not to blame and the black mark on her record will be cleared in short order. But Corrie finds she cannot shake off an overwhelming feeling of guilt. As a distraction, she takes on a new case involving a fifty-year-old, mummified corpse discovered in a hidden enclave at High Lonesome, a long-abandoned New Mexico ghost town. Quickly out of her depth, she realizes she needs the help of her old enemy, archaeologist Nora Kelly. The two women soon uncover a startling truth: the deceased was poisoned, and died clutching a priceless artifact. Can the two women solve the mystery of the scorpion's tail? Or will they - like others before them - die in the attempt?

Anyone can be a traitor. FBI Agent Peter Sutherland waits in the White House Situation Room. He monitors an emergency line for calls that might never come... Then the phone rings. A terrified young woman says two people have been murdered and the killer might still be in the house with her. One of the victims gave her this phone number with urgent instructions: 'Tell them OSPREY was right. It's happening...' The call thrusts Peter into the heart of a conspiracy years in the making. There's a Russian mole in the U.S. Government and Peter must uncover who it is. The nation's at stake and innocent lives are in his hands. The Night Agent is by Matthew Quirk.

The Pact is by Dawn Goodwin. I'll kill yours, if you kill mine. Maddie's life has come crashing down around her. Her husband has left her and moved on with a new woman and baby. No longer can she run from the past that's been haunting her. The past has destroyed her future. In a new flat, trying to start a new life, Maddie meets Jade and her young son, Ben. All too swiftly Maddie finds the dark thoughts whirring through her brain. But Jade's different, she loves Ben, doesn't she? As the two women begin to open up about their exes over a few glasses of wine, Jade conjures a plan, a pact. She'll kill Maddie's if Maddie kills hers. Laughing it off, Maddie returns to her normal life. But what if it wasn't a joke at all...

Can you defeat an enemy you can't fight? The Taskforce - a highly classified Special Forces unit - finds an ex-member in serious trouble. Clifford Delmonty was working at an Australian F 35 facility when he saw something he shouldn't have. Now he's on the run from Chinese agents. Yet Delmonty's attackers are a dangerous part of a bigger scheme. China plans to bait Taiwan into all-out war by destabilizing their government and manipulating Taiwan's artificial intelligence defence system. As the threat of conflict reaches boiling point, Pike Logan, top Taskforce operator and ex-soldier, realises that what is being seen is not what is happening. With the help of a Taiwanese intelligence agent, he races to prevent a catastrophic conflict from consuming a whole region of the world - and the lives of his teammates. American Traitor is by Brad Taylor. 

February 2021

Falcon Bay was the world's most popular soap opera, filmed on location on a tiny, idyllic island off Jersey. But with ratings falling, a new network owner, the beautiful and malevolent Madeline Kane, arrives on the private island determined to do whatever it takes to get the show back to number one.Writer Farrah, star Catherine and producer Amanda are the driven, ambitious women who keep the show on the road. But Farrah is losing episodes to the network's lead male writer, Catherine is terrified of the public falling out of love with her and Amanda's evil husband Jake, vice president of the network, is plotting to get his wife kicked off the show. In a true battle of the sexes, these women will do anything to stay on top. But can they team up to bring down their rivals? Or will jealousy and revenge tear their friendship apart? As their story reaches its shocking climax, one thing is certain: only the most ruthless woman will survive... Ruthless Women is by Melanie Blake.

Accident is by Dawn Goodwin. Veronica Pullman's comfortable suburban life comes to a shuddering halt when her young daughter, Grace, tragically dies in a car accident. Months later, unable to come to terms with her daughter's death, detached from her husband and alienated from her friends and family, a chance encounter on a rainy street pushes her into an unlikely new friendship. Scarlet is everything Veronica could've been: feisty, adventurous, unpredictable. But as she approaches what would have been Grace's 10th birthday, it becomes clear to Veronica that the friendship she thought was saving her life could be costing her everything. Consumed by grief and left questioning her own sanity, is there anyone she can really trust or is someone out to torment her as part of their twisted game.

Spoils of the Dead is by Dana Stabenow. It's Labor Day in Blewestown, Alaska, and it seems most of the town's thirty-five hundred residents have turned out to celebrate - or to cause trouble. Not Liam Campbell, though. He's checking out the local watering hole in his new town. He's finally made it out of Newenham and is ready for a quiet life with his wife.He's been in town for about a week when an archaeologist invites him out to his dig site outside of town. He's on the verge of a momentous discovery, one he says will be worth the State Trooper's time. Two days later, the archaeologist is dead, murdered on his own dig site. And Liam Campbell is about to learn that he's traded one troubled bush town for another.

Operation Treadstone made Jason Bourne, but he's not the only agent they trained. After the revival of Operation Treadstone, former operative Adam Hayes has retreated to Africa, determined to escape the black-ops CIA program for good. Hayes knows just how destructive the program can be, as it turns government agents into nearly superhuman assassins. But his quiet life in Africa changes irrevocably, when Hayes is attacked by extremists while flying a charitable mission in Burkina Faso. Forced to make an emergency landing, his plane is damaged and he is left in a hornet's nest of trouble. In order to get back in the air, Hayes agrees to transport a passenger - Zoe Cabot, the daughter of a tech baron - to a small coastal city. But on arrival, Zoe is abducted. Searching for the missing girl, Hayes runs afoul of multiple enemies, including a rogue Treadstone operative, all of whom are searching for him - and for the information about a wire transfer of millions of dollars bound for the relief effort in Burkina Faso. Hayes must outrun and outgun the factions that are hunting him, and prevent the theft of the much-needed millions from one of Africa's poorest nations. Robert Ludlum's™The Treadstone Exile is by Joshua Hood.

March 2021

The Woman in the Wood is by M K Hill. Three years ago, Danny 'Abs' Cruikshank, star of reality show Laid in Essex!, was living the dream. And then, on the night of the party, everything changed. It was supposed to be an intimate weekend gathering. Just a few close friends in a remote cottage in Wales. But after a night of heavy drinking in the village pub, a local girl was reported missing, presumed dead. Abs and his friends had been the last to see her alive. No-one was ever charged, but the controversy destroyed Abs's career. So now, three years later, the celebrity who once captured the heart of millions is opening Southend's new branch of Quidstore. And then one of Abs's mates is murdered. Does someone know what really happened that night in Wales? DI Sasha Dawson and her team must race against the clock to find the killer before they strike again - but first she must discover what happened to Rhiannon Jenkins on the night she vanished. Will the truth set Abs free? Or bury him?

I Am Vengeance is by Mason Cross.. Vengeance is in my heart. Murder in my mind. With the help of Special Agent Marcus Williams, notorious murderer Francis Ackerman Jr. works on a twenty-year old cold case connected to a string of abductions surrounding the Navajo Nation. Their investigation leads them deep into the largest American Indian reservation in the US, where a drug gang has established its own kingdom. When one of his team goes missing, Ackerman has no choice but to declare war...

Dark Sky is by C J Box. The governor of Wyoming has given game warden Joe Pickett the thankless assignment of taking a tech baron on a hunting trip. But unbeknownst to them, as they trek further into the wilderness, a hunter is hot on their heels. Joe must rely on his wits and his knowledge of the outdoors to protect himself and his charge. Meanwhile, when Joe's closest friend Nate Romanowski and his own daughter Sheridan learn of the threat to his life, they follow him into the woods to rescue him, and all three come together for one final showdown.

The Long Dark Road is by P R Black. The governor of Wyoming has given game warden Joe Pickett the thankless assignment of taking a tech baron on a hunting trip. But unbeknownst to them, as they trek further into the wilderness, a hunter is hot on their heels. Joe must rely on his wits and his knowledge of the outdoors to protect himself and his charge. Meanwhile, when Joe's closest friend Nate Romanowski and his own daughter Sheridan learn of the threat to his life, they follow him into the woods to rescue him, and all three come together for one final showdown.

April 2021

Jack Taylor has finally traded in his violent life in Galway for a quiet retirement in the country. But on a day trip back into the city, Jack is hit by a truck and left in a coma, mysteriously without a scratch on him. When he awakens weeks later, he finds Ireland in a frenzy over the so-called 'Miracle of Galway'. People have become convinced that the two children who tended to him are saintly, and the site of the accident sacred. The Catholic Church isn't so sure, and Jack is commissioned to help find the children to verify the miracle or expose the stunt. But Jack isn't the only one looking for these children, and he'll need all the help he can get - and a stiff drink of Jameson - once he finds them. A Galway Epiphany is by Ken Bruen.

If you go into the woods, you're in for a dark surprise. Thirty years ago, three girls followed a stranger into the woods. Only two returned. The surviving pair have never been able to remember what happened or what the fate of the third girl was. Local rumours talk of hippies and drugs and mystic rituals, but no one has learned the truth. This story is just what Rowan Blake needs. He's in debt, his journalistic career is in tatters - as well as his damaged body - and he's retreated to the Lake District to write. Yet even Rowan isn't prepared for the evil he is about to unearth, for the secrets that have been buried in that wood for far too long... Into The Woods is by David Mark.

Kiss Me, Kill Me is by Louise Mullins. I practise my shock-horror face in the mirror for the seventh time. 'My husband, he's . . . dead.' Bethan Phillips has only one thing on her mind: killing her rich and elderly husband for his fortune. But after several thwarted attempts, it is a horrific accident while holidaying together in Snowdonia that takes Humphrey down. Now she must pretend he's alive, continuing social gatherings alone under the guise he is undertaking business abroad. Because someone witnessed her leaving Humphrey to die, and should the police investigate his death they'll discover the series of 'accidents' he's survived in the previous few days... and it won't take them long to connect the dots. There are many reasons Bethan would rather the police didn't look too closely at her. Or the life she lived before becoming Bethan Philips. Unfortunately for her, DI Emma Locke is on the case.

May 2021

Seat 7a is by Sebastien Fitzek. Psychiatrist Mats Kruger knows that his irrational fear of flying is just that - irrational. He knows that flying is nineteen times safer than driving. He also knows that if something does happen on a plane, the worst place to be is seat 7A. That's why on his first plane journey in 20 years - to be with his only daughter as she gives birth - he's booked seat 7A, so no one else can sit there. If no one is sat there, surely nothing will go wrong. But shortly after take-off, Mats receives a worrying phone call. The caller has kidnapped his daughter and will murder her - and her unborn child - unless Mats convinces the pilot to crash the plane, killing everyone on board.. As the plane nears its destination, Mats must make an impossible choice and face the fact he might be the arbiter of his own worst fear.

London, 1940. A woman lies dead in a bombed-out house. It looks like she's another tragic casualty of the Blitz, until police pathologist Aleck Northcote proves she was strangled and placed at the scene. But Northcote himself has something to hide. And when his past catches up with him, he too is murdered. Tewkesbury, 2020. Beneath the vast stone arches of Tewkesbury Abbey, a man has been fatally stabbed. He is Roddy March, an investigative journalist for a podcast series uncovering miscarriages of justice. He was looking into the murder of police pathologist Dr Aleck Northcote - and was certain he had uncovered Northcote's real killer. Stella Darnell used to run a detective agency alongside her cleaning business. She's moved to Tewkesbury to escape from death, not to court it - but Roddy died in her arms and, Stella is someone impelled to root out evil when she finds it. Now she is determined to hunt down Roddy's killer - but then she finds another body... The Distant Dead is by Lesley Thomson.

Face of Evil is by George Morris De'Ath. If you play games with a killer... you can't afford to lose. Looking for a subject for her book about evil, Lydia Tune travels to the infamous Mortem Asylum in Richmond, Virginia. Her target is Jason Devere, a death row serial killer notorious for his precise and grotesque murders. Lydia is beautiful, ruthless and manipulative - she always gets what she wants. She knows the only way to get Jason to speak is to engage him in a dangerous battle of wits. Local detective and old friend Alex Gilbey warns her off the case, but he has no idea just how far Lydia will go to court darkness. The more Lydia digs into Jason's story, the clearer it becomes that there is a bigger story to uncover. But the problem with playing with killers is that they never play nice...

June 2021

The Cover Wife is by Dan Fesperman. Paris, October 1999. CIA agent Claire Saylor is looking after low-level surveillance ops. Her career has stalled after a misguided dalliance with her handler Paul Bridger - so when Bridger asks Claire to join a team, she prepares herself for a stint on tea duties. But in fact, he's finally put her back in the game. She'll be going undercover as the wife of Professor Winston Armitage - an expert in the Quran and its translations. He's presenting his controversial new theory on the fabled promise of 72 virgins for each martyr, and needs protection. But when Claire arrives in Hamburg, it soon becomes clear that this is no routine protection job: she's there to uncover a conspiracy that will lead to the 9/11 terror attacks. And if she blows her cover, she could lose her life...

It's now or never for Gemma, will she finally be able to step away from a life of crime? Mob boss Alfie has new rivals in town - and they might be more than a match for the Essex gangster. Between defending his turf, appeasing his crime lord father and holding onto the woman of his dreams, Alfie knows that something's got to give... Nathan's recovering from his coma and trying to come to terms with his wife's bombshell secret - that her son Luca was fathered by Alfie. Unconvinced of Gemma's loyalty, he turns to his estranged ex-con father for help... Gemma will do anything to give her son a normal life - and she's surprised to find she has unexpected allies. But when the moment of truth arrives, can she trust Nathan to protect her and Luca? Forgive and Forget is by Stephanie Harte.

The Taken Girl is by Glenn Cooper. They were taken. They returned. They never aged. A family is abducted. There are no signs of a struggle. Their Italian holiday villa is untouched. There are no ransom demands. The parents and two little girls, Victoria and Elizabeth, have simply vanished. The daughters are returned. Four years later, the girls appear back at the family's holiday home. But they are the exact same ages they were at the time of their abduction. Their parents are still nowhere to be seen. Only one man can solve the mystery. Marcus Handler, a retired CIA officer, is hired to investigate. He wants Victoria and Elizabeth's disappearance explained. But his hunt for answers leads Marcus to a disturbing truth and a reckoning with his own troubled past...

Hour of the Assassin is by Matthew Quirk. Think like a killer. Act like a hero. His job is to protect them. As a secret service agent, Nick Averose spent a decade guarding the most powerful people in the US. Now, he's a mock killer, testing the security around the highest officials to find vulnerabilities, before America's enemies can. But now someone's out to get him. Nick's latest assignment leads him to the home of a former CIA director. But when he breaches the director's study, Nick is entangled in a vicious crime. One that will shake Washington to its foundations. He's the perfect scapegoat. Nick needs to find out who is framing him for the crime and why. If he can't uncover the truth, a dark conspiracy will consume him and everyone else within the Oval Office...

July 2021

Kyiv is by Graham Hurley. On Sunday 22nd June, 1941, at 03.05, three and a half million Axis troops burst into the Soviet Union along a 1,800 mile front to launch Operation Barbarossa. The southern thrust of the attack was aimed at the Caucuses and the oil fields beyond. Kyiv was the biggest city to stand in their way. Within six weeks, the city was under siege. Surrounded by Panzers, bombed and shelled day and night, Soviet Commissar Nikita Krushchev was amongst the senior Soviet officials co-ordinating the defence. Amid his cadre of trusted personnel is British defector Bella Menzies, once with MI5, now with the NKVD. With the fall of the city inevitable, the Soviets plan a bloody war of terror that will extort a higher toll on the city's inhabitants than the invaders. As the noose tightens, Bella finds herself trapped, hunted by both the Russians and the Germans.

Amber is by Heather Burnside. Nobody to call. With a mother unfit for purpose and a brother who despises her, working girl Amber can rely on no one but herself - until the meanest pimp in Manchester, Kevin Pike, offers her his protection. Unfortunately, this attracts the fury of Cora, a prostitute no one wants to get on the wrong side of... Nowhere to hide. When Cora is found strangled to death, the late-night city streets feel increasingly exposed with a killer on the loose. And as Amber grows closer to Kevin, she realises his security comes at a price she might not be willing to pay... Nothing to lose. Amber is frozen in fear, knowing one wrong move will risk her life. But then she discovers a horrifying secret that forces her to choose: stay or run?

After thwarting the violent international fascist syndicate known as Nemesis, Evan Ryder returns to Washington, D.C., only to find her secret division of the Department of Defense shut down and her deceased sister's children missing. Now the target of a cabal of American billionaires who were among Nemesis's supporters, Evan and her former boss, Ben Butler, must learn to work together as partners - and navigate their intricate past - as they hunt down her family's kidnappers. Their search will take them from Istanbul to Odessa to an ancient church deep within the Carpathian Mountains of Romania. And all along the way, an unimaginable enemy stalks in the shadows, an adversary whose secretive past will upend Evan's entire world, and might just annihilate her. The Kobalt Dossier is by Eric Van Lustbader.

The Guest House is by David Mark. How much would you pay to survive? Mum-of-three Ronni Ashcroft had just pieced her life back together after her husband left. On a remote spur of the Scottish Highlands, she kept her successful guest house going and even met a new man, Bishop. But it turned out that Bishop had secrets. He had shady connections and shadier plans to use the coastal town as a European gateway for drugs, guns - and something far worse. Now he's disappeared, and Ronnie wants answers. Is he in trouble or simply ignoring her? Was she just his play-thing from the start? And, most importantly, is he dragging them both into something that neither of them will survive?

You are her therapist. Kristina is a successful therapist in central Oslo. She spends her days helping clients navigate their lives with a cool professionalism that has got her to the top. She is your client. But when her client Leah arrives at her office clearly distressed, begging Kristina to come to her remote cabin in the woods, she feels the balance she's worked hard to achieve begin to slip. But out here in the woods When Leah fails to turn up to her next two sessions, Kristina reluctantly heads out into the wilderness to find her. Nothing is as it seems. Alone and isolated, surrounded by snow and trees, Kristina soon realises what a huge mistake she has made... Cabin Fever is by Alex Dahl.

The Runner is by P R Black. You can't escape him. He abducts lone joggers and forces them to run for their lives. When he catches them, he pulls out his blade...Now he's locked away and will be in prison for years. They call him a psychopath, a murderer, the 'Woodcutter Killer'. But what if you just found out you're supposed to call him father?

August 2021

Farewell to the Liar is by D K Fields. There's power in stories. But power can be deadly.Detective Cora Gorderheim is a detective no longer. Stripped of her badge by the corrupt chief inspector, Cora's job now is to protect her sister, Ruth, the new Wayward storyteller. Ruth must tell her tale of the Tear widening if people are to know the truth of what's happening in the Union of Realms. But Lowlander Chambers Morton wants the Wayward to change their election story, and will stop at nothing to achieve this - including murder. Keeping Ruth alive in Fenest is hard enough, but when the sisters set sail for West Perlanse the dangers come thick and fast. And slowly Cora realises she must make a terrible choice: her sister's life, or the future of the Union.

The Soul Breaker destroys women. He doesn't kill them, or mutilate them. But he leaves them completely dead inside, paralysed and catatonic. His only trace a note left in their hands. There are three known victims when suddenly the abductions stop. The Soul Breaker has tired of his game, it seems. Meanwhile, a man has been found in the snow outside an exclusive psychiatric clinic. He has no recollection of who he is, or why he is there. Unable to match him to any of the police's missing people, the nurses call him Casper. Casper makes little progress regaining his memory, but he grows restless and wants to leave the clinic to piece together the few clues to his life. But the weather has taken a turn for the worse, and the clinic becomes completely cut off to the world outside. No one is able to reach the clinic, and its staff and patients cannot leave. So when the head psychiatrist is found trembling, naked and distraught, with a slip of paper clasped in her hands, it seems somehow the Soul Breaker has returned... The Soul Breaker is by Sebastian Fitzek.

September 2021

It's not who you know, it's what you know about them . . . Among Washington D.C. power players, everyone has something to hide, including Sean Serrat, a Supreme Court lawyer. Sean transformed his misspent youth into a model adulthood, and now has one of the most respected legal careers in the country. But just as he learns he's on the short list to be nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court, his daughter, Abby, a talented and dedicated law student, goes missing. When Abby's lifeless body is discovered shoved into a shelf at the Supreme Court Library, Sean is wracked with grief. Does her murder have anything to do with the secret he's been keeping for years? He follows the footsteps of his daughter's last days and stumbles over secrets within his own family - as well as the lies of some of the most powerful people in the country. People who will stop at nothing to prevent Sean from exposing the truth . .. The Advocate's Daughter is by Anthony Franze.

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The 2019 Barry Award Winners

Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine announced the Barry Award Winners of the Barry Awards at the Dallas Bouchercon Opening Ceremonies. 

Best Novel

November Road by Lou Berney (Morrow)  

Best First Novel

The Chalk Man by C. J. Tudor (Crown)

Best Paperback Original 

The Ruin by Dervla McTiernan (Penguin) 

Best Thriller

Safe Houses by Dan Fesperman, (Knopf)

Congratulations to all! 

Countdown to the Daggers

The countdown is on for the world-famous Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) Daggers, which honour the very best in crime writing.

Tickets are now available for the Dagger Awards gala dinner, which takes place from 6.30pm at the Leonardo Royal Hotel London City.

The oldest awards in the genre, created in 1955, the CWA Daggers have been synonymous with quality crime writing for over half a century. 

The night is compered by Barry Forshaw, one of the UK’s leading experts on crime fiction.

Barry Forshaw said: “It's a starry evening showcasing the most prestigious prizes in the crime fiction world - the Oscars of the genre - and I'm always pleased and privileged to emcee it. Not least for the chance to rub shoulders with the very best writers and publishers at a very convivial event.”

A Dagger is considered something of a holy grail for crime authors as well as one of the highlights on the awards’ calendar for the publishing world.

Winners of the Daggers - including the Gold for best crime novel, the Ian Fleming Steel for best spy or thriller, the ALCS Gold for Non-fiction, the John Creasey (New Blood) for first-time authors, and the Sapere Books Historical Dagger - will be announced on the night.

UK Libraries have also shortlisted six crime authors for the prestigious Dagger in the Library. M C Beaton, Mark Billingham, John Connolly, Kate Ellis, C J Sansom and Cath Staincliffe have been nominated by librarians, chosen for their body of work and their support of libraries.

The 10 coveted Daggers will also be complemented by a new category for the book trade - the Best Crime and Mystery Publisher of the Year.

Robert Goddard has already been announced as the recipient of the elite Diamond Dagger. Goddard will be presented with the award on the night in celebration of his career and contribution to the crime genre.

Guest speaker on the night is the writer, broadcaster, dramatist and journalist Lynne Truss, famed for Eats, Shoots and Leaves alongside her comic crime novel, A Shot in the Dark.

Tickets are limited. For ticket details and to book a place –

https://thecwa.co.uk/the-daggers/cwa-dagger-awards-gala-dinner-2019 

or contact admin@thecwa.co.uk Discounts are available for tables of 10 or 12.

2019 CWA DAGGER SHORTLIST IN FULL:

CWA GOLD DAGGER

Claire Askew: All the Hidden Truths (Hodder & Stoughton)

M W Craven: The Puppet Show (Constable)

Christobel Kent: What We Did (Sphere)

Donna Leon: Unto Us a Son is Given (William Heinemann)

Derek B Miller: American by Day (Doubleday)

Benjamin Wood: A Station on the Path to Somewhere Better (Scribner)

CWA IAN FLEMING STEEL DAGGER

Megan Abbott: Give Me Your Hand (Picador)

Dan Fesperman: Safe Houses (Head of Zeus)

Luke Jennings: Killing Eve: No Tomorrow (John Murray)

Stephen Mack Jones: Lives Laid Away (Soho Crime)

Holly Watt: To the Lions (Raven Books)

Tim Willocks: Memo from Turner (Jonathan Cape)

CWA JOHN CREASEY (NEW BLOOD)

Claire Askew: All the Hidden Truths (Hodder & Stoughton)

Alex Dahl: The Boy at the Door (Head Of Zeus)

Chris Hammer: Scrublands (Wildfire)

Vicky Newham: Turn a Blind Eye (HQ)

Laura Shepherd-Robinson: Blood and Sugar (Mantle)

Vanda Symon: Overkill (Orenda)

CWA ALCS GOLD DAGGER FOR NON-FICTION

Sue Black: All That Remains (Doubleday)

Mikita Brottman: An Unexplained Death (Canongate)

Claire Harman: Murder by the Book (Viking)

Kirk Wallace Johnson: The Feather Thief (Hutchinson)

Ben Macintyre: The Spy and the Traitor (Viking)

Hallie Rubenhold: The Five (Doubleday)

CWA INTERNATIONAL DAGGER 

Dov Alfon: A Long Night in Paris, tr Daniella Zamir (Maclehose Press )

Karin Brynard: Weeping Waters, tr Maya Fowler & Isobel Dixon (World Noir)

Gianrico Carofiglio: The Cold Summer, tr Howard Curtis (Bitter Lemon Press)

Keigo Higashino: Newcomer, tr Giles Murray (Little, Brown)

Håkan Nesser: The Root of Evil, tr Sarah Death (Mantle)

Cay Rademacher: The Forger, tr Peter Millar (Arcadia Books)

CWA SAPERE BOOKS HISTORICAL DAGGER

Liam McIlvanney: The Quaker (Harper Fiction)

S G MacLean: Destroying Angel (Quercus Fiction)

Abir Mukherjee: Smoke and Ashes (Harvill Secker)

Alex Reeve:  The House on Half Moon Street (Raven Books)

C J Sansom: Tombland (Mantle)

Laura Shepherd-Robinson: Blood and Sugar (Mantle)

CWA SHORT STORY DAGGER

Martin Edwards: Strangers in a Pub in ‘Ten Year Stretch’ edited by Martin Edwards and Adrian Muller (No Exit Press)

Syd Moore: Death Becomes Her in ‘The Strange Casebook’ by Syd Moore (Point Blank Books)

Danuta Reah: The Dummies’ Guide to Serial Killing in ‘The Dummies’ Guide to Serial Killing and other Fantastic Female Fables’ (Fantastic Books)

Teresa Solana: I Detest Mozart in ‘The First Prehistoric Serial Killer and Other Stories’ by Teresa Solana (Bitter Lemon Press)

Lavie Tidhar: Bag Man in ‘The Outcast Hours’ edited by Mahvesh Murad and Jared Shurin (Solaris)

DAGGER IN THE LIBRARY

M C Beaton

Mark Billingham

John Connolly

Kate Ellis

C J Sansom

Cath Staincliffe

DEBUT DAGGER 

(A competition for the opening of a crime novel by an uncontracted writer)

Shelley Burr: Wake

Jerry Crause: The Mourning Light

Catherine Hendricks: Hardways                                                                                

David Smith: The Firefly                                                                               

Fran Smith: A Thin Sharp Blade  

BEST CRIME & MYSTERY PUBLISHER DAGGER

Faber & Faber

Harper Fiction (HarperCollins)

HQ (HarperCollins)

No Exit Press (Oldcastle Books) 

Orenda Books

Pushkin Vertigo (Pushkin)

Raven Books

DIAMOND DAGGER        

Presented to Robert Goddard.                 

2019 Barry Award Nominations

Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine announced the Barry Award Nominees. Winners will be announced on October 31 at the Dallas Bouchercon Opening Ceremonies. Congratulations to all!

Best Novel
November Road by Lou Berney,(Morrow) 
Dark Sacred Night by Michael Connelly, (Little, Brown)
The Shadow We Hide by Allen Eskens, (Mulholland)
Depth of Winter by Craig Johnson, (Viking)
Leave No Trace by Mindy Mejia,(Atria)
A Necessary Evil by Abir Mukherjee, (Pegasus)

Best First Novel
My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite,(Doubleday)
Need to Know by Karen Cleveland, (Ballantine)
Dodging and Burning by John Copenhaver,(Pegasus)
Sweet Little Lies by Caz Frear, (Harper)
Bearskin by James A. McLaughlin, (Ecco)
The Chalk Man by C. J. Tudor (Crown)

Best Paperback Original 
A Sharp Solitude by Christine Carbo, (Atria)
Dead Pretty by David Mark, (Blue Rider Press)
The Ruin by Dervla McTiernan, (Penguin)
The Hollow of Fear by Sherry Thomas,(Berkley)
Resurrection Bay by Emma Viskic, (Pushkin Vertigo)

Best Thriller
The Terminal List by Jack Carr, (Atria)
Safe Houses by Dan Fesperman,(Knopf)
London Rules by Mick Herron, (Soho)
Forever and  a Day by Anthony Horowitz, (Harper)
Light it Up by Nick Petrie, (Putnam)
The King Tides by James Swain, (Thomas & Mercer) 

Warming Back Up to the Cold War by Dan Fesperman

The Cold War spy novel, left for dead in 1989 beneath the ruins of the Berlin Wall, is looking pretty healthy these days. After three decades of mouldering in the grave it has clawed its way back to relevance, partly by emerging in the guise of another sub-genre, the historical spy novel.

Works for me. Or it had better, I suppose, since my latest book, Safe Houses, is a Cold War spy novel wrapped inside a contemporary murder mystery. Whatever you prefer to call it, I am happy for its resurrection, both as a reader and a writer.

Nostalgia is certainly part of the appeal. In so many of today’s spy tales – whether in fiction or in the news – the stakes involve an imminent danger to the general public. In most Cold War novels, the casualties were usually the players within the game – the spymasters themselves, and their many vulnerable agents. Danger, but at arm’s length.

I also miss the days when spies had to rely more on brain power and nimble footwork than on cell phones, tracking chips, drones, CCTV, data mining or satellite imagery. And while many readers are fascinated by these advances (I know I am, and I’ve often used them in previous books), it can be a relief to make them all disappear.

So, we switch off the shining screen on that beeping little micro-computer in our pockets, and curl up instead with the vicarious thrills of some shadowy figure from the recent past as he makes a chalk mark on a wall. Neo-primitivism in all its comforting glory.

Even John le Carre couldn’t resist getting in on this vibe, with his retrospective tour through George Smiley’s greatest hits in his most recent novel, A Legacy of Spies. It was a wonderful gift to all of us who have dearly missed Smiley and his people. But the twist that made it work was the way Le Carre turned all those old operations on their heads, by looking at them from the inside-out, and finally holding the spymasters accountable for the human costs they’d once written off as the price of doing business.

And that illustrates the challenge for the rest of us who wish to revisit the Cold War in our writing. It’s not enough to fight the same battles as before – the old, gray rivalry of Us vs. Them, East vs. West. We must find something new to say, or at least offer a fresh point of view.

I tried to do so in Safe Houses by examining fault lines and tensions within the Agency itself. Never mind the Soviets for a moment. Instead, ask yourself what might happen if one of your own people began playing by his own rules, and for his own benefit, and while taking his own special brand of casualties. And what if the only players taking action to stop him were three women, fighting a hierarchy that had only reluctantly let them in through the door? Or, in another of the book’s subtexts, what would happen if a spinoff spy organization, long presumed gone, turned out to still be hiding within the deeper folds of this shadowy business?

The irony is that the intelligence community’s contemporary misdeeds have probably helped create this urge to re-examine past practices. When an outfit begins freely admitting to off-the-books imprisonments, “enhanced” interrogations and extrajudicial assassinations by drone, it’s pretty much inevitable that reporters and, yes, novelists will soon begin poking into the past for evidence that this mentality is really nothing new.

So, welcome back, Cold War novel. After twenty-nine years, it looks like we’ve got some catching up to do.

Safe House by Dan Fesperman (Published by Knopf on 3rd July 2018)

West Berlin, 1979. Helen Abell oversees the CIA’s network of safe houses, rare havens for field agents and case officers amidst the dangerous milieu of a city in the grips of the Cold War. Helen’s world is upended when, during her routine inspection of an agency property, she overhears a meeting between two people unfamiliar to her speaking a coded language that hints at shadowy realities far beyond her comprehension. Before the day is out, she witnesses a second unauthorised encounter, one that will place her in the sight lines of the most ruthless and powerful man at the agency. Her attempts to expose the dark truths about what she has witnessed will bring about repercussions that reach across decades and continents into the present day, when, in a farm town in Maryland, a young man is arrested for the double murder of his parents, and his sister takes it upon herself to find out why he did it.

Author and travel journalist Dan Fesperman is the winner of two Crime Writer’s Association Dagger Awards.  Lie in the Dark won the Crime Writers’ Association of Britain’s John Creasey Memorial Dagger Award for best first crime novel, The Small Boat of Great Sorrows won their Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award for best thriller.  The Prisoner of Guantánamo won the Dashiell Hammett Award from the International Association of Crime.   More information about Dan Fesperman and his books cn be found on his website www.danfesperman.com