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Mick Herron, Lee Child and John Banville longlisted for CWA Dagger awards
Mick Herron, James Wolff, Jo Callaghan and Lee Child have been longlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) Dagger awards, alongside John Banville, Maud Ventura and many others.
The longlists have been announced today at the CWA annual conference in Brighton. Authors in contention for the Gold Dagger include debut novelist Nilanjana Roy’s Black River (Pushkin), Herron’s The Secret Hours (Baskerville), Chris Hammer’s Dead Man’s Creek (Wildfire Books), and Dennis Lehane’s Small Mercies (Abacus).
Ian Rankin, John le Carré, Reginald Hill and Ruth Rendell have all been past winners of the prestigious Gold Dagger, which is awarded for the best crime novel of the year. Also in the category this year are historical crime writer Alis Hawkins’ A Bitter Remedy (Canelo) – which is also competing in the Historical Dagger category— journalist Julia Haeberlin’s Night Will Find You (Penguin), and author Maz Evans Over My Dead Body (Headline).
"Our independent panels of expert judges have mulled, cogitated, debated, and, when all else has failed, challenged each other to duels, in their sterling efforts to pick longlists from the incredible array of books submitted to each Dagger," said CWA chair Vaseem Khan. "The Daggers are the gold standard of awards in the genre, and Dagger recognition has often served as a stepping stone for careers. More importantly, a Dagger longlisting means that genre readers can be assured of quality."
The Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, which is sponsored by Ian Fleming Publications Ltd, showcases the thriller of the year. The list for 2024 includes The Man in the Corduroy Suit (Bitter Lemon Press) by Wolff, who was a British intelligence officer for over ten years, as well as Linwood Barclay’s The Lie Maker (HQ), David Baldacci’s Simply Lies (Macmillan), and Karin Slaughter’s After that Night (HarperCollins).
The John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger highlights the best debut novels, and the list this year features Callaghan’s In The Blink of An Eye (Simon & Schuster UK), Margot Douaihy’s Scorched Grace (Pushkin Vertigo), and Bridget Walsh’s The Tumbling Gir (Gallic Books).
Booker Prize winner Banville is a contender on the Historical Dagger longlist for The Lock-Up (Faber & Faber), and is up against other established names including Ambrose Parry, longlisted for Voices of the Dead (Canongate Books), and S G MacLean, vying for the prize for The Winter List (Quercus Fiction). Meanwhile, the list for the Crime Fiction in Translation Dagger includes titles like Yrsa Sigurðardóttir’s The Prey, translated by Victoria Cribb (Hodder & Stoughton), Ventura’s My Husband, translated by Emma Ramadan (Hutchinson Heinemann), and Javier Castillo’s The Snow Girl, translated by Isabelle Kaufeler (Penguin Books).
The ALCS Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction list includes Nicholas Shakespeare’s Ian Fleming: The Complete Man (Vintage), The Art Thief by Michael Finkel (Simon & Schuster), and No Comment by Jess McDonald (Raven Books). Meanwhile, the CWA Daggers features short stories by Child, Robert Scragg, Sanjida Kay and Rachel Amphlett.
The Dagger in the Library nominees are chosen by librarians and library users, and celebrate the author’s body of work and support of libraries. This year’s list features MW Craven, Anthony Horowitz, Vaseem Khan and L J Ross. And the Best Crime and Mystery Publisher of the Year Dagger, which celebrates publishers and imprints demonstrating "excellence and diversity" in crime writing, spotlights big publishing houses like Harper Fiction and Simon & Schuster, as well as independents like Joffe Books and Canelo.
Finally, the Debut Dagger category for aspiring crime novelists is open to unpublished authors, and is judged on the best opening for an unpublished crime novel. It features Katherine Ahlert’s Burnt Ranch, Caroline Arnoul’s Unnatural Predators and Matt Coot’s Vilomah.
The CWA Diamond Dagger, awarded to an author whose crime-writing career has been marked by sustained excellence, was jointly awarded to Lynda La Plante and James Lee Burke earlier this Spring.
The shortlists for the awards will be announced on 10th May at the CrimeFest convention in Bristol, and the winners will be revealed at the CWA gala dinner on 4th July.
