Congratulations to all the winners and nominees of the British Crime Writers’ Association’s 2021 Dagger Awards. After you see the winners and nominees, check for them in the Web Store. https://store.poisonedpen.com/ Several awards aren’t covered here, but you can find the complete listing at https://therapsheet.blogspot.com/.
Chris Whitaker won the CWA Gold Dagger for the crime novel of the year. Congratulations!
Highly commended: Blacktop Wasteland, by S.A. Cosby (Headline); House of Correction, by Nicci French (Simon & Schuster)
Also nominated: City of Ghosts, by Ben Creed (Welbeck); Troubled Blood, by Robert Galbraith (Sphere); The Postscript Murders, by Elly Griffiths (Quercus); and Midnight Atlanta, by Thomas Mullen
(Little, Brown)
Ian Fleming Steel Dagger:When She Was Good, by Michael
Robotham (Sphere)
Also nominated: Troubled Blood, by Robert Galbraith (Sphere); The Nothing Man, by Catherine Ryan Howard (Atlantic); The Devil and the Dark Water, by Stuart Turton (Raven); One by One, by Ruth Ware (Harvill Secker); and We Begin at the End, by Chris Whitaker (Zaffre)
John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger:The Creak on the Stairs,
by Eva Björg Ægisdóttir (Orenda)
Also nominated: City of Ghosts, by Ben Creed (Welbeck); The One That Got Away, by Egan Hughes (Sphere); The Bone Jar, by S.W. Kane (Thomas & Mercer); Fortune Favours the Dead, by Stephen Spotswood (Wildfire); and Three Fifths, by John Vercher (Pushkin Press)
Sapere Books Historical Dagger:Midnight at Malabar House,
by Vaseem Khan (Hodder & Stoughton)
Also nominated: Snow, by John Banville (Faber and Faber); The Unwanted Dead, by Chris Lloyd (Orion Fiction); The City Under Siege, by Michael Russell (Constable); Skelton’s Guide to Domestic Poisons, by David S. Stafford (Allison & Busby); and The Mimosa Tree Mystery, by Ovidia Yu (Constable)
ALCS Gold Dagger for Non-fiction:Written in Bone: Hidden Stories in What We Leave Behind, by Sue Black (Doubleday)
Also nominated: We Keep the Dead Close: A Murder at Harvard and a Half Century of Silence, by Becky Cooper (Heinemann); These Are Not Gentle People, by Andrew Harding (MacLehose Press); Dancing with the Octopus: The Telling of a True Crime, by Debora Harding (Profile); The Book of Trespass: Crossing the Lines that Divide Us, by Nick Hayes (Bloomsbury Circus); and Agent Sonya: Lover, Mother, Soldier, Spy, by Ben MacIntyre (Viking)
Crime Fiction in Translation Dagger:The Disaster Tourist, by Yun Ko-eun, translated by Lizzie Buehler (Serpent’s Tail)
Also nominated: Anxious People, by Fredrik Backman, translated by Neil Smith (Michael Joseph); The Coral Bride, by Roxanne Bouchard, translated by David Warriner (Orenda); Three, by D.A. Mishani, translated by Jessica Cohen (Riverrun); To Cook a Bear, by Mikael Niemi, translated by Deborah Bragan-Turner (MacLehose Press); and The Seven Doors, by Agnes Ravatn, translated by Rosie Hedger (Orenda)
Dagger in the Library (“for a body of work by an established crime writer that has long been popular with borrowers from
libraries”): Peter May
Also nominated: C.L. Taylor, Lisa Jewell, James Oswald, Denise Mina, and L.J. Ross
Martina Cole received the 2021 Diamond Dagger award for lifetime achievement.