Lining Up for Daggers

Britain’s Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) has announced its shortlists of nominees for nine 2016 Dagger Awards. Two of these collections of competitors—for the Non-fiction Dagger and the Short Story Dagger—have not altered since May’s announcement of this year’s longlisted works. If you’d like brief descriptions of each book in the competition, refer to the CWA Web site.

CWA Goldsboro Gold Dagger
(for the best crime novel of the year):
• Black Widow, by Christopher Brookmyre (Little, Brown)
• Blood Salt Water, by Denise Mina (Orion)
• Dodgers, by Bill Beverly (No Exit Press)
• Real Tigers, by Mick Herron (John Murray)

CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger
(for the best crime thriller of the year):
• The Cartel, by Don Winslow (William Heinemann)
• The English Spy, by Daniel Silva (HarperCollins)
• Rain Dogs, by Adrian McKinty (Serpent’s Tail)
• Real Tigers, by Mick Herron (John Murray)
• Make Me, by Lee Child (Bantam Press)

CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger
(for the best debut crime novel):
• Fever City, by Tim Baker (Faber and Faber)
• Dodgers, by Bill Beverly (No Exit Press)
• Freedom’s Child, by Jax Miller (HarperCollins)
• Eileen, by Ottessa Moshfegh (Jonathan Cape)
• The Good Liar, by Nicholas Searle (Viking)

CWA Endeavour Historical Dagger
(for the best historical crime novel):
• The House at Baker Street, by Michelle Birkby (Pan)
• The Other Side of Silence, by Philip Kerr (Quercus)
• A Book of Scars, by William Shaw (Quercus)
• The Jazz Files, by Fiona Veitch Smith (Lion Fiction)
• Striking Murder, by A.J. Wright (Allison & Busby)
• Stasi Child, by David Young, (Twenty7Books)

CWA Non-fiction Dagger:
• The Golden Age of Murder: The Mystery of the Writers Who Invented the Modern Detective Story, by Martin Edwards (HarperCollins)
• Sexy Beasts: The Hatton Garden Mob, by Wensley Clarkson (Quercus)
• You Could Do Something Amazing with Your Life (You Are Raoul Moat), by Andrew Hankinson (Scribe)
• A Very Expensive Poison: The Definitive Story of the Murder of Litvinenko and Russia’s War with the West, by Luke Harding
(Guardian Faber)
• Jeremy Hutchinson’s Case Histories: From Lady Chatterley’s Lover to Howard Marks, by Thomas Grant (John Murray)
• John le Carré: The Biography, by Adam Sisman (Bloomsbury)

CWA Short Story Dagger
(for a short crime story published in the UK):
• “As Alice Did,” by Andrea Camilleri (from Montalbano’s First Cases, by Andrea Camilleri; Pan Macmillan)
• “On the Anatomization of an Unknown Man (1637) by Frans Mier,” by John Connolly (from Nocturnes 2: Night Music, by John Connolly; Hodder & Stoughton)
• “Holmes on the Range: A Tale of the Caxton Private Lending Library & Book Depository,” by John Connolly (from Nocturnes 2: Night Music)
• “Bryant & May and the Nameless Woman,” by Christopher Fowler (from London’s Glory, by Christopher Fowler; Bantam)
• “Stray Bullets,” by Alberto Barrera (from Crimes, by Alberto Barrera Tyszka; MacLehose Press)
• “Rosenlaui,” by Conrad Williams (from The Mammoth Book of the Adventures of Moriarty: The Secret Life of Sherlock Holmes’s Nemesis, edited by Maxim Jakubowski; Constable & Robinson)

CWA International Dagger
(for crime fiction translated into English and published in the UK):
• The Truth and Other Lies, by Sascha Arango;
translated by Imogen Taylor (Simon & Schuster)
• The Great Swindle, by Pierre Lemaître;
translated by Frank Wynne (MacLehose Press)
• Icarus, by Deon Meyer;
translated by K.L. Seegers (Hodder & Stoughton)
• The Murderer in Ruins, by Cay Rademacher;
translated by Peter Millar (Arcadia)
• Six Four, by Hideo Yokoyama;
translated by Jonathan Lloyd-Davis (Quercus)

CWA Dagger in the Library
(for the author of the most enjoyed collection of work in libraries):
• Tony Black, published by Black & White
• Alison Bruce, published by Constable & Robinson
• Elly Griffiths, published by Quercus
• Quintin Jardine, published by Headline

Debut Dagger (for the opening of a crime novel by an author
with no publishing contract):
• Dark Valley, by John Kennedy
• The Devil’s Dice, by Roz Watkins
• A Reconstructed Man, by Graham Brack
• A State of Grace, by Rita Catching
• Wimmera, by Mark Brandi

This year’s victorious works and authors will be declared during an awards dinner to be held in London on October 11. Also during that affair, best-selling author Peter James will be presented with this year’s Diamond Dagger. The speaker that evening will be James Runcie, author of The Grantchester Mysteries; master of ceremonies will be crime-fiction authority Barry Forshaw.

(Hat tip to Euro Crime.)