Thursday, May 29, 2025

Hits with Brits: 2025 Dagger Nominees



After recently signing up several new sponsors for its prestigious annual Dagger Awards, Britain’s Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) today announced its 2025 shortlists of candidates for those prizes—including two new ones, the Twisted Dagger and the Whodunnit Dagger.

KAA Gold Dagger:
A Divine Fury, by D.V. Bishop (Macmillan)
The Bell Tower, by R.J. Ellory (Orion)
The Hunter, by Tana French (Penguin)
Guide Me Home, by Attica Locke (Profile)
The Book of Secrets, by Anna Mazzola (Orion)
I Died at Fallow Hall, by Bonnie Burke-Patel (Bedford Square)

Ian Fleming Steel Dagger:
Dark Ride, by Lou Berney (Hemlock Press)
Nobody’s Hero, by M.W. Craven (Constable)
Sanctuary, by Garry Disher (Viper)
Hunted, by Abir Mukherjee (Harvill & Secker)
Blood Like Mine, by Stuart Neville (Simon & Schuster)
City in Ruins, by Don Winslow (Hemlock Press)

ILP John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger:
Miss Austen Investigates, by Jessica Bull (Michael Joseph)
Knife River, by Justine Champine (Manilla Press)
Three Burials, by Anders Lustgarten (Hamish Hamilton)
A Curtain Twitcher’s Book of Murder, by Gay Marris (Bedford Square)
All Us Sinners, by Katy Massey (Sphere)
Deadly Animals, by Marie Tierney (Zaffre)

Historical Dagger:
A Divine Fury, by D.V. Bishop (Macmillan)
Banquet of Beggars, by Chris Lloyd (Orion)
The Book of Secrets, by Anna Mazzola (Orion)
The Betrayal of Thomas True, by A.J. West (Orenda)
Poor Girls, by Clare Whitfield (Head of Zeus/Aries)

Crime Fiction in Translation Dagger:
Dogs and Wolves, by Hervé Le Corre,
translated by Howard Curtis (Europa Editions UK)
Going to the Dogs, by Pierre Lemaitre,
translated by Frank Wynne (Maclehose Press)
The Night of Baby Yaga, by Akira Otani,
translated by Sam Bett (Faber & Faber)
The Clues in the Fjord, by Satu Rämö,
translated by Kristian London (Zaffre)
Butter, by Asako Yuzuki,
translated by Polly Barton (4th Estate)
Clean, by Alia Trabucco Zerán,
translated by Sophie Hughes (4th Estate)

ALCS Gold Dagger for Non-fiction:
Unmasking Lucy Letby: The Untold Story of the Killer Nurse, by Jonathan Coffey and Judith Moritz (Seven Dials)
The Lady in the Lake: A Reporter’s Memoir of a Murder, by Jeremy Craddock (Mirror)
Framed: Astonishing True Stories of Wrongful Convictions, by John Grisham and Jim McCloskey (Hodder & Stoughton)
The Criminal Mind, by Duncan Harding (Michael Joseph)
Four Shots in the Night: A True Story of Stakeknife, Murder, and Justice in Northern Ireland, by Henry Hemming (Quercus)
The Peepshow: The Murders at 10 Rillington Place, by Kate Summerscale (Bloomsbury Circus)

Short Story Dagger:
• “The Glorious Twelfth,” by S.J. Bennett (from Midsummer Mysteries, edited by Martin Edwards; Flame Tree)
• “A Date on Yarmouth Pier,” by J.C. Bernthal (from Midsummer Mysteries)
• “Why Harrogate?” by Janice Hallett (from Murder in Harrogate, edited by Vaseem Khan; Orion)
• “City Without Shadows,” by William Burton McCormick (from Midsummer Mysteries)
• “A Ruby Sun,” by Meeti Shroff-Shah (from Midsummer Mysteries)
• “Murder at the Turkish Baths,” by Ruth Ware (from Murder in Harrogate)

Whodunnit Dagger (for “cosy crime, traditional mysteries, and Golden Age crime” stories):
A Death in Diamonds, by S.J. Bennett (Zaffre)
Murder at the Christmas Emporium, by Andreina Cordani (Zaffre)
The Case of the Singer and the Showgirl, by Lisa Hall (Hera)
A Good Place to Hide a Body, by Laura Marshall (Hodder & Stoughton)
A Matrimonial Murder, by Meeti Shroff-Shah (Joffe)
Murder at the Matinee, by Jamie West (Brabinger)

Twisted Dagger (for “psychological and suspense thrillers”):
Emma, Disappeared, by Andrew Hughes (Hachette Ireland)
Beautiful People, by Amanda Jennings (HQ)
The Stranger in Her House, by John Marrs (Thomas & Mercer)
The Trials of Marjorie Crowe, by C.S. Robertson (Hodder & Stoughton)
Nightwatching, by Tracy Sierra (Viking)
Look in the Mirror, by Catherine Steadman (Quercus)

Dagger in the Library (“for a body of work by an established crime writer that has long been popular with borrowers from libraries”):
• Kate Atkinson
• Robert Galbraith
• Janice Hallett
• Lisa Jewell
• Edward Marston
• Richard Osman

Publishers’ Dagger (“awarded annually to the Best Crime and Mystery Publisher of the Year”):
• Bitter Lemon Press
• Faber & Faber
• Orenda Books
• Pan Macmillan
• Simon & Schuster

Emerging Author Dagger (“for the opening of a crime novel by an unpublished writer,” formerly called the Debut Dagger):
• Loftus Brown, Bahadur Is My Name
• Shannon Chamberlain, Funeral Games
• Hywel Davies, Soho Love, Soho Blood
• Joe Eurell, Ashland
• Shannon Falkson, The Fifth
• Catherine Lovering, Murder Under Wraps

The winners in each of these categories will be revealed during an awards ceremony in London on July 3.

Mick Herron, author of the Slough House series, was previously announced as this year’s recipient of the CWA Diamond Dagger.

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