Starting Out

Tomorrow should bring us highly publicized announcements, from Britain’s Crime Writers’ Association, of which authors and published books have been longlisted for the 2022 Dagger awards. But the CWA has already released its inventory of 10 nominees in one Dagger category: the 2022 Debut Dagger. That prize is given for the opening of a crime or mystery novel (3,000 words in length, plus a synopsis of the completed work) to an author “who has not yet had a full-length novel traditionally published,” as Wikipedia explains.

Here are the contenders:

• Henry’s Bomb, by Kevin Bartlett
• Lufkin, Texas, by Katherine Futers
• Holloway Candle, by Laura Ashton Hill
• The 10-12, by Anna Maloney
• The Mercy Seat, by Rachel Nixon
• The Two Murders at Manor Park, by Elizabeth Opalka
• Blood Castle, by Shylashri Shankar
• Dead Reckoning, by Jennifer Slee and Jessica Slee
• The Dead of Egypt, by David Smith
• The Dieppe Letters, by Liz Rachel Walker

The names of all Dagger winners are slated to be declared during a “live gala dinner event” in London on Wednesday, June 29.