Are These Daggers Which I See Before Me?

Had I not been out of my office all day (taking care of a precocious 2-year-old), I would have found time earlier to post these longlists of contenders for seven Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) Dagger Awards. The nominees were announced during a Friday reception at CrimeFest, taking place this weekend in Bristol, England.

A CWA press release about the longlists notes: “Several titles appear on more than one list: The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, by Stuart Turton, and Resurrection Bay, by Emma Viskic, both appear on the longlist for the CWA Gold Dagger and the John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger, while A Necessary Evil, by Abir Mukherjee, is on the Gold and the Historical longlists. Meanwhile, London Rules, by Mick Herron, appears on the Gold and the Ian Fleming Steel longlists—he won the Ian Fleming last year with Spook Street, just as Mukherjee won the Historical with A Rising Man.”

CWA Gold Dagger:
• Head Case, by Ross Armstrong (HQ)
• The Liar, by Steve Cavanagh (Orion)
• London Rules, by Mick Herron (John Murray)
• Since We Fell, by Dennis Lehane (Little, Brown)
• Sunburn, by Laura Lippman (Faber and Faber)
• Bluebird, Bluebird, by Attica Locke (Serpent’s Tail)
• You Don’t Know Me, by Imran Mahmood (Michael Joseph)
• A Necessary Evil, by Abir Mukherjee (Harvill Secker)
• The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, by Stuart Turton (Raven)
• Resurrection Bay, by Emma Viskic (Pushkin Vertigo)

CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger:
• The Spy’s Daughter, by Adam Brookes (Sphere)
• The Switch, by Joseph Finder (Head of Zeus)
• London Rules, by Mick Herron (John Murray)
• 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)
• A Necessary Evil, by Abir Mukherjee (Harvill Secker)
• Fierce Kingdom, by Gin Phillips (Doubleday)
• The Chalk Man, by C.J. Tudor (Michael Joseph)
• The Force, by Don Winslow (HarperFiction)

CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger:
• Gravesend, by William Boyle (No Exit Press)
• IQ, by Joe Ide (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
• Soho Dead, by Greg Keen (Thomas & Mercer)
• Girl in Snow, by Danya Kukafka (Picador)
• Lola, by Melissa Scrivner Love (Point Blank)
• East of Hounslow, by Khurrum Rahman (HQ)
• Ravenhill, by John Steele (Silvertail)
• My Absolute Darling, by Gabriel Tallent (Fourth Estate)
• The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, by Stuart Turton (Raven)
• Resurrection Bay, by Emma Viskic (Pushkin Vertigo)

CWA International Dagger:
• Zen and the Art of Murder, by Oliver Bottini,
translated by Jamie Bulloch (MacLehose Press)
• The Shadow District, by Arnaldur Indridason,
translated by Victoria Cribb (Harvill Secker)
• Three Days and a Life, by Pierre Lemaitre,
translated by Frank Wynne (MacLehose Press)
• After the Fire, by Henning Mankell,
translated by Marlaine Delargy (Harvill Secker)
• The Frozen Woman, by Jon Michelet,
translated by Don Bartlett (No Exit Press)
• Offering to the Storm, by Dolores Redondo,
translated by Nick Caistor and Lorenza Garzía (HarperCollins)
• Three Minutes, by Anders Roslund and Börge Hellström,
translated by Elizabeth Clark Wessel (Quercus/Riverrun)
• Snare, by Lilja Sigurdardóttir,
translated by Quentin Bates (Orenda)
• The Accordionist, by Fred Vargas,
translated by Sian Reynolds (Harvill Secker)
• Can You Hear Me? by Elena Varvello,
translated by Alex Valente (Two Roads/John Murray)

CWA Historical Dagger:
• A Necessary Evil, by Abir Mukherjee (Harvill Secker)
• Death in the Stars, by Frances Brody (Piatkus)
• Fire, by L.C. Tyler (Constable)
• Lightning Men, by Thomas Mullen (Little, Brown)
• Merlin at War, by Mark Ellis (London Wall)
• Money in the Morgue, by Ngaio Marsh and Stella Duffy (HarperCollins)
• Nine Lessons, by Nicola Upson (Faber and Faber)
• Nucleus, by Rory Clements (Zaffre)
• Prussian Blue, by Philip Kerr (Quercus)
• The Mitford Murders, by Jessica Fellows (Sphere)

CWA Short Story Dagger:
• “The Corpse on the Copse,” by Sharon Bolton (from Killer Women: Crime Club Anthology #2: The Body, edited by Susan Opie;
Killer Women)
• “The Last Siege of Bothwell Castle,” by Chris Brookmyre (from Bloody Scotland; Historic Environment Scotland)
• “Too Much Time,” by Lee Child (from No Middle Name: The Complete Collected Jack Reacher Stories, by Lee Child; Bantam Press)
• “Second Son,” by Lee Child (from No Middle Name)
• “Authentic Carbon Steel Forged,” by Elizabeth Haynes (from Deadlier: 100 of the Best Crime Stories Written by Women, edited by Sophie Hannah; Head of Zeus)
• “Smoking Kills,” by Erin Kelly (from Killer Women:
Crime Club Anthology #2)
• “Nemo Me Impune Lacessit,” by Denise Mina (from Bloody Scotland)
• “Accounting for Murder,” by Christine Poulson (from Mystery Tour: CWA Anthology of Short Stories, edited by Martin Edwards; Orenda)
• “Faking a Murder,” by Kathy Reichs and Lee Child (from Match Up, edited by Lee Child; Sphere)
• “Trouble Is a Lonesome Town,” by Cathi Unsworth (from Deadlier: 100 of the Best Crime Stories Written by Women)

CWA Dagger in the Library:
(Selected by nominations from libraries)
• Simon Beckett
• Martina Cole
• Martin Edwards
• Nicci French
• Sophie Hannah
• Simon Kernick
• Edward Marston
• Peter May
• Rebecca Tope

Shortlists in all of these categories are anticipated by July, with winners to be declared during a Dagger Awards dinner in London on Thursday, October 25.

It was apparently also made known during today’s CrimeFest reception that Russell Day’s “The Value of Vermin Control” has won the 2018 Margery Allingham Short Story Competition. As the aforementioned press release explained, this contest “is open to published and unpublished writers alike; unusual in writing competitions. The story itself must be unpublished.”