2025 CWA Dagger Awards Announced

The 2025 winners of the prestigious Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) Dagger Awards, which honour the very best in the crime-writing genre, have been announced.

Created in 1955, the world-famous CWA Daggers are the oldest awards in the genre and have been synonymous with quality crime writing for over half a century.

The awards were announced this evening 3^rd July 2025 at the CWA gala dinner at De Vere Grand Connaught Rooms, London.

The prestigious KAA Gold Dagger, sponsored by Kevin Anderson & Associates, which is awarded for the best crime novel of the year, went to Anna Mazzola for Book of Secrets.

Inspired by real events, prosecutor Stefano Bracchi investigates why men are dying in unnatural numbers months after the plague has ravaged Rome. Judges praised it as an expertly crafted ‘engrossing cat-and-mouse thriller’ set in 17th century Rome.

The Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, sponsored by Ian Fleming Publications Ltd, showcases the thriller of the year and was awarded to Lou Berney for his masterful thriller, Dark Ride, where an unlikely hero goes up against a deadly crime boss. Judges praised it as ‘sublime thriller full of heartache and humanity’ and a ‘moving yet nail-biting novel.’

The much-anticipated ILP John Creasey First Novel Dagger which highlights the best debut novels of the year went to Katy Massey’s debut set in the shadow of the Yorkshire Ripper, All Us Sinners. Judges praised it as ‘vivid and brutally honest’ and an ‘important and bold take on the Yorkshire Ripper murders told with passion and respect from the point of view of the women who were never heard.’

The Historical Dagger, sponsored by Morgan Witzel in memory of Dr Marilyn Livingstone, went to A.J. West with The Betrayal of Thomas True which is set in the excitement and squalor of London’s underworld in the year 1710.

Nadine Matheson, Chair of the CWA, said: "This has been another exemplary year, and our judges once again faced the exciting but difficult task of selecting from a truly impressive shortlist. The winners reflect the strength, diversity, and continuing legacy of crime writing today.

“I would also like to extend our congratulations to the winners of the Twisted Dagger and the Whodunnit Dagger, Tracy Sierra and Lisa Hall. The inclusion of these two new categories continues to highlight the evolution and innovation happening within the genre.”

The Crime Fiction in Translation Dagger, sponsored in honour of Dolores Jakubowski, was awarded to the debut gangland thriller The Night of Baba Yaga from Japan’s Akira Otani translated by Sam Bett – hot-on-the-heels from winning the 2025 CrimeFest Specsavers Debut Crime Novel of the Year.

Judges said: “Like a manga cartoon, this savage depiction of Japanese yakuza life is relentlessly violent if only to highlight the deep humanity of its fish out of water characters. Mean and lean, this saga sparkles with originality and delivers a splendid if bizarre love story.” 

The Night of Baba Yaga pipped another Japanese bestseller to the post, Asako Yuzuki’s Butter translated by Polly Barton.

The ALCS Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction was awarded to Kate Summerscale’s retelling of the Christie murders, The Peepshow: The Murders at 10 Rillington Place. It was praised as a ‘remarkable read, riveting without ever being salacious’ offering a fresh perspective on one of Britain’s most notorious cases.

The CWA Daggers are one of the few high-profile awards that honour the short story. This year Short Story Dagger went to the academic and expert on Agatha Christie, J.C Bernthal, for A Date on Yarmouth Pier, praised as a ‘mini-masterpiece with a killer twist.’

2025 saw the announcement of two new CWA Dagger Awards.

The Twisted Dagger celebrates psychological thrillers and dark and twisty tales that often feature unreliable narrators, disturbed emotions, a healthy dose of moral ambiguity, and a sting in the tail. 

It was awarded to Nightwatching by Tracy Sierra, a slow-burning tale of a mother who will do anything to protect her children. The books unusual voice captured the judges, who praised it as, ‘horrific, compelling, nerve-shreddingly tense and cleverly twisted.’

The Whodunnit Dagger celebrates books that focus on the intellectual challenge at the heart of a good mystery. Books in this category include cosy crime, traditional crime, and Golden Age-inspired mysteries.

The inaugural winner is Lisa Hall with The Case of the Singer and the Showgirl. Judges admired its cleverly handled twist on a classic mystery featuring Hollywood icons: ‘A glamorous, evocative timeslip mystery that took us right back to sparkling Vegas in the fifties.’ 

The Emerging Author Dagger, which has been going for over 20 years, celebrates aspiring crime novelists, sponsored by Fiction Feedback. The competition is open to unpublished authors, and is judged on the best opening for an unpublished crime novel. Over two dozen past winners and shortlisted Debut Dagger authors have signed publishing deals to date.

2025’s Emerging Author Dagger was awarded to Joe Eurell for Ashland. Judges compared it as Mare of Easttown meets We Begin at the End: “A beautifully written story evoking a powerful sense of place and conveying a rare energy. Rounded characters are portrayed in fascinating depth.” 

Richard Osman was awarded the 2025 Dagger in the Library award. The nominee longlist is voted by librarians and library users, chosen for the author’s body of work and support of libraries. 

Best Crime and Mystery Publisher of the Year Dagger, which celebrates publishers and imprints demonstrating excellence and diversity in crime writing, was awarded to Orenda Books. 

The CWA Diamond Dagger, awarded to an author whose crime-writing career has been marked by sustained excellence, is announced in early spring and in 2025 was awarded to Mick Herron.

Mick Herron said: “I’ve spent the best part of my life – not the majority of it; just the best part – in the crime writers’ community, and to receive this accolade from these friends and colleagues is both a career highlight and a personal joy. I’m touched and thrilled beyond measure, and will try to live up to the honour.”

The 2025 Winners in Full:

The KAA GOLD DAGGER

Book of Secrets by Anna Mazzola: (Orion)

THE IAN FLEMING STEEL DAGGER

Dark Ride by Lou Berney (Hemlock Press/ HarperCollins)

THE ILP JOHN CREASEY FIRST NOVEL DAGGER

All Us Sinners by Katy Massey (Little, Brown /Sphere)

THE TWISTED DAGGER

Nightwatching by Tracy Sierra (PRH/ Viking)

THE WHODUNNIT DAGGER

The Case of the Singer and the Showgirl by Lisa Hall (Hera)

THE HISTORICAL DAGGER (Sponsored in Honour of Dr. Marilyn Livingstone)

The Betrayal of Thomas True by A.J. West, (Orenda Books)

 THE ALCS GOLD DAGGER FOR NON-FICTION

The Peepshow: The Murders at 10 Rillington Place by Kate Summerscale: (Bloomsbury Circus)   

THE CRIME FICTION IN TRANSLATION DAGGER (Sponsored in Honour of Dolores Jakubowski)

The Night of Baba Yaga by Akira Otani:  (Faber) tr. Sam Bett

THE SHORT STORY DAGGER

‘A Date on Yarmouth Pier’ by J.C Bernthal in Midsummer Mysteries edited by Martin Edwards (Flame Tree Publishing/Flame Tree Collections)

THE DAGGER IN THE LIBRARY

Richard Osman

THE DAGGER FOR THE BEST CRIME AND MYSTERY PUBLISHERS

Orenda Books

THE EMERGING AUTHOR DAGGER (sponsored by Fiction Feedback)

Ashland by Joe Eurell, 

 THE CWA DIAMOND DAGGER AWARD

 Mick Herron

The Problem with DNA – 5 historical crime reads

Author Rebecca Alexander writes historical crime fiction as well as fantasy novels.  A Shroud of Leaves is the second book to feature Archaeologist Sage Westfield.  Here she suggests some brilliant historical crime novels.

 Writing crime novels has recently become harder. In the twenty-first century CCTV cameras watch every high street and business. DNA, blood spatter, fibre and hair analysis have become great forensic tools to solve murders.  Before the 1990s these technologies were in their infancy. Few people carried a mobile phone, even less a camera everywhere they went. Crime investigations were based on interviews, careful observation of the scene of crime and the accumulation of evidence. Setting a crime mystery in the pre-DNA days makes the investigation more difficult to solve, but relies on talking to real suspects. When I started writing about an archaeologist who solves a crime in 1580 in A Baby’s Bones, I had even less sources to rely on as all the suspects were long dead. In the sequel, A Shroud of Leaves, Sage Westfield has a direct comparison between modern forensic methods in investigating a contemporary crime, and the limited evidence available in 1992 and 1913.

 I’m not alone in setting crime novels in the pre-technological past. I can suggest a few brilliant reads for more crime novels set in history:

 SJ Parris’s Giordano Bruno series of books (Conspiracy from 2017 is the latest) are set around the 1580s. The books are full of treasonable or heretical plots and horrible murders, and a host of spies and double agents form Bruno’s circle. Bruno, an ex-priest and on the run from the Inquisition, uses his knowledge of people to solve the crimes. Everyone has secrets, everyone is a suspect. 

Antonia Hodgson’s The Devil in the Marshalsea gives us an unusual investigator. In 1727 Tom Hawkins is imprisoned for a debt of ten pounds. Tom fights to be released if he can solve a murder committed inside the chaotic, squalid prison. Well researched, the book shows a society devastated by financial collapse, gambling, exploitation and amorality. Tom, the central character, is our eyes and ears and the prison is as strange and terrifying a place for him as it seems to us. Almost every character is a rogue, including Tom, yet many are likeable, making a living as best they can. This is not a cosy, period drama, this is fast and dramatic with great characters as he solves the crime.

Kate Summerscale’s, The Suspicions of Mr Whicheror The Murder at Road HillHouse is a Victorian murder based on a true story. Summerscale evokes the difficulties of weaving together testimony from family members and servants. No-one dare tell the whole truth, the reader is left as frustrated as Detective Whicher by the divisions of class and education. She never lets us forget the three year old victim, his throat cut, in the servants’ privy.

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood is also based on a true crime, this time from Canada in 1843.  The story of sixteen year old Irish maid Grace Marks, who was convicted of killing her employer (and by implication, his mistress), Alias Grace explores her internal world through the efforts of an early American psychiatrist. Dr Simon Jordan is beguiled by Grace as he is repelled by her crime and the violence of her abusive captivity. The reader is left to weigh the evidence as it’s exposed, much like at the trial, in a mess of half-truths, lies and inexpert evidence.

Graeme Macrae Burnet’s His Bloody Project is a ‘found history’, with witness statements from all parts of the examination (each with their prejudices and lies) including those of the prime suspect’s father, the prison doctor and his own journal. The seventeen-year-old Roderick Macrae is from the remotest part of the west coast of Scotland and is accused of three violent deaths. He is also suspected of ‘moral imbecility’ or madness, and the novel is written so convincingly as a family history it seems real. It asks questions about the effects of brutality and emotional neglect throughout, as well as exploring the murders themselves. Like Alias Grace, it asks questions about the effects of brutality and emotional neglect, as well as exploring Roddy’s relationship with the victims.

From police surgeons photographing the eyes of Jack the Ripper’s victims in 1888 to modern DNA phenotype profiles that can ‘read’ DNA to produce a portrait, scientists have been pushing technology forward to solve crime using evidence rather than flawed witness statements. As a writer, I love those unreliable witnesses and misleading statements. Sage Westfield will keep investigating historical crimes through archaeology because like a lot of us, she is deeply curious about human motivations – even if they end in murder.

A Shroud of Leaves by Rebecca Alexander (£8.99, Titan Books) Out Now

"The victim had been buried in a carved hollow in the grass and shrouded in fallen leaves..." Archaeologist Sage Westfield has her first forensics case: investigating the murder of a teenage girl. Hidden by holly leaves, the girl's body has been discovered on the grounds of a stately home, where another teenage girl went missing twenty years ago - but her body was never found. The police suspect the reclusive owner, Alistair Chorleigh, who was questioned but never charged. But when Sage investigates a nearby burial mound - and uncovers rumours of an ancient curse - she discovers the story of another mysterious disappearance over a hundred years ago. Sage will need both her modern forensics skills and her archaeological knowledge to unearth the devastating truth.

Edgar Award Winners 2017

Mystery Writers of America announced the Winners of the 2017 Edgar Allan Poe Awards, honouring the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction and television published or produced in 2016.

Best Novel
Before the Fall by Noah Hawley (Hachette Book Group – Grand Central Publishing)

Best First Novel by an American Author 
Under the Harrow by Flynn Berry (Penguin Random House – Penguin Books)

Best Paperback Original
Rain Dogs by Adrian McKinty (Prometheus Books – Seventh Street Books)

Best Fact Crime
The Wicked Boy: The Mystery of a Victorian Child Murderer by Kate Summerscale (Penguin Random House – Penguin Press)

Best Critical /Biographical 
Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin (W.W. Norton - Liveright)

Best Short Story
"Autumn at the Automat” – In Sunlight or in Shadow by Lawrence Block (Pegasus Books)

Best Juvenile 
OCDaniel by Wesley King (Simon & Schuster – Paula Wiseman Books)

Best Young Adult
Girl in the Blue Coat by Monica Hesse (Hachette Book Group – Little, Brown BFYR)

Best Television Episode Teleplay 
"A Blade of Grass" – Penny Dreadful, Teleplay by John Logan (Showtime)

Robert L Fish Memorial Award
"The Truth of the Moment" – Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine  by E. Gabriel Flores (Dell Magazines)

GRAND MASTER
Max Allan Collins
Ellen Hart

RAVEN AWARD
Dru Ann Love

ELLERY QUEEN AWARD 
Neil Nyren

* * * * * *

THE SIMON & SCHUSTER - MARY HIGGINS CLARK AWARD
The Shattered Tree by Charles Todd (HarperCollins Publishers – William Morrow)

The Edgar® Awards were presented to the winners at the 71st Gala Banquet, on 27 April, 2017 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, New York City. Congratulations to all!

Books to Look Forward to From Bloomsbury

Helen and Ellie are identical twins - like two peas in a pod, everyone says. The girls know this isn't true, though: Helen is the leader and Ellie the follower. Until they decide to swap places: just for fun, and just for one day. But Ellie refuses to swap back...And so begins a nightmare from which Helen cannot wake up. Her toys, her clothes, her friends, her glowing record at school, the favour of her mother and the future she had dreamed of are all gone to a sister who blossoms in the approval that used to belong to Helen. And as the years pass, she loses not only her memory of that day but also herself - until eventually only 'Smudge' is left. Twenty-five years later, Smudge receives a call from out of the blue. It threatens to pull her back into her sister's dangerous orbit, but if this is her only chance to face the past, how can she resist? Beside Myself is a compulsive and darkly brilliant psychological thriller by Ann Morgan and is about family and identity - what makes us who we are and how very fragile it can be and is due to be published in January 2016. 

Sidney Chambers and the Dangers of Temptation is by James Runcie and is due to be published in June 2016. It's the summer of love in late 1960s England. The Apollo 11 astronauts are preparing to land on the moon, the war in Biafra dominates the news and Basil D'Oliveira has just been dropped from the England cricket team before a test series in apartheid South Africa. In the midst of all this change, Sidney Chambers, the loveable English clergyman continues his amateur sleuthing investigations. A bewitching divorcee enlists Sidney's help in convincing her son to leave a hippy commune; at a soiree on Grantchester Meadows during May Week celebrations a student is divested of a family heirloom; Amanda's marriage runs into trouble; Sidney and Hildegard holiday behind the Iron Curtain; Mrs Maguire's husband returns from the dead and an arson attack in Cambridge leads Sidney to uncover a cruel case of blackmail involving his former curate. In the rare gaps between church and crime, Sidney struggles with a persistent case of toothache, has his first flutter at the Newmarket races and witnesses the creation of a classic rock song.

Jonathan is a private investigator in a decaying eastern European city, consumed by his

work and his failing marriage. Approached one day by an elderly couple, he is presented with a faded photograph of their daughter, missing for nearly two decades. Troubled by the image of the little girl, who was the same age when she vanished as his own daughter is now - he is compelled to find her. But one night, soon after taking on the case, as he walks across the bridge spanning the river that divides the city, he encounters a young woman crouched at the foot of a stone angel - a woman who suddenly leaps into the icy water below. Without thinking, Jonathan plunges after her, and is soon drawn into her ghostly world of confusion, coincidence and intrigue, and the city he thought he knew turns strange and threatening. Haunting and deeply moving, The Drowned Detective is an intoxicating, atmospheric exploration of relationships, lies and betrayal and is due to be published in February 2016.

The death of a postman, Jorgen Kramer Nielsen, looks like a straightforward accident, the prefect case for Detective Inspector Konrad Simonsen to return to after a severe heart attack.  However, as new forensic evidence comes to light, the facts of Nielsen’s life unravel.  The postman is linked to the disappearance of an English teenager almost 40 years previously and as Simonsen and his team try to pull all of the threads together it becomes clear that events leading to his death were more sinister than anyone imagined.  The Vanished is by Lotte Hammer and Søren Hammer and is due to be published in March 2016.

How far would you go to protect the people you love?  When young painter Marianne Glass is found dead in her snow covered Oxford garden, Rowan Winter, her once closest friend, knows it wasn’t an accident.  Marianne had paralysing vertigo: she would never have gone so close to the roof edge.  Rowan’s pursuit of the truth about her old friend’s death takes her into every corner of her life, from bohemian East London to the professional art world in which Marianne had made her name.  Rowan is determined to find out what really happened – but some secrets are better left uncovered, and others are lethal.  Keep You Close is by Lucie Whitehouse and is due to be published in April 2016. 

Terrorists are nothing new.  The year is 1368 and Granada is under threat from violent extremists.  Enter Abu Abdallah, the penniless globetrotter who has wives and concubines on three continents and is still searching for the right woman, and his West African slave Sinan, the one with the brawn, the brains, the looks – and demons from the past.  Granada’s labyrinthine palace –citadel, Alhambra, is nearing its triumphant completion.  But Sinan and Abu Abdallah are drawn to a darker maze, where baffling mysteries threaten to ruin the balance of Muslim-Christian power in Spain.  Alhambra is by Tim Mackintosh-Smith and is due to be published in March 2016. 

Early in the morning of Monday 8 July 1895, thirteen-year-old Robert Coombes and his twelve-year-old brother Nattie set out from their small, yellow brick terraced house in east London to watch a cricket match at Lord's. Their father had gone to sea the previous Friday, leaving the boys and their mother at home for the summer. Over the next ten days Robert and Nattie spent extravagantly, pawning family valuables to fund trips to the theatre and the seaside. During this time nobody saw or heard from their mother, though the boys told neighbours she was visiting relatives. As the sun beat down on the Coombes house, an awful smell began to emanate from the building. When the police were finally called to investigate, what they found in one of the bedrooms sent the press into a frenzy of horror and alarm, and Robert and Nattie were swept up in a criminal trial that echoed the outrageous plots of the 'penny dreadful' novels that Robert loved to read.  The Wicked Boy is by Kate Summerscale and is due to be published in May 2016.

Mourad Hafiz appears to have dropped out of university and disappeared. Engaged by his family to try and find him, Makana comes to believe that the Hafiz boy became involved in some kind of political activity just prior to his disappearance. But before he can discover more, the investigation is sidetracked: a severed head turns up on the riverbank next to his home, and Makana finds himself drawn into ethnic rivalry and gang war among young men from South Sudan. The trail leads from a church in the slums and the benevolent work of the larger-than-life Rev. Preston Corbis and sister Liz to the enigmatic Ihsan Qaddus and the Hesira Institute.  The fifth installment of this acclaimed series is set in Egypt in December 2005. While Cairo is torn by the protests by South Sudanese refugees demanding their rights, President Mubarak has just been re-elected by a dubious 88 percent majority in the country's first multi-party elections. In response to what appears to be flagrant election-rigging, there are early stirrings of organized political opposition to the regime. Change is afoot and Makana is in danger of being swept away in the seismic shifts of his adopted nation. City of Jackals is by Parker Bilal and is due to be published in July 2016.