The CWA’s Dagger longlists were announced at the CWA annual conference. Longlisted authors, books and publishers can be viewed on the CWA website. The announcement video is on the CWA’s YouTube channel.
Individual longlists are featured on the website as below:
ILP John Creasey New Blood Dagger
ALCS Gold Dagger for Non-fiction
Crime Fiction in Translation sponsored in honour of Dolores Jakubowski
Dagger for the Best Crime and Mystery Publisher
Debut Dagger sponsored by ProWritingAid
As the CWA celebrates its 70th year, the Dagger longlists are once again released – and as always a high proportion of the longlisted authors are from smaller or independent publishers and are not always the best-known names – although many of those feature too!
Several titles appear on more than one Dagger longlist: Anna Mazzola’s The Clockwork Girl is on the Historical and the Gold Dagger longlists. The Ink Black Heart by Robert Galbraith (Sphere) appears on the Gold and the Ian Fleming Steel while SG MacLean’s The Bookseller of Inverness (Quercus) features on the Gold and the Historical. The Botanist (Little, Brown) by M W Craven, who won the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger in 2022, appears in this year’s list. His fifth novel in the hugely popular Washington Poe and Tilly Bradshaw series has stiff competition with novels by favourites Harlan Coben, Linwood Barclay and Alice Feeney also featuring on that longlist.
Amanda Cassidy, an award-winning journalist, has her first novel Breaking (Canelo) in the ILP John Creasey New Blood longlist, with its new sponsor, International Literary Properties. Australian writer Hayley Scrivenor also features with her debut Dirt Town (Pan Macmillan), a number one Australian bestseller.
Blackstone Fell by 2020’s Diamond Dagger winner Martin Edwards (Head of Zeus) features on the Historical Dagger longlist, while his non-fiction opus The Life of Crime (HarperCollins) is longlisted for the ALCS Gold Dagger for Non-fiction. Another notable book on the ALCS Non-fiction list is The Life Inside (Picador) by Andy West, who teaches philosophy in prisons. DV Bishop contends with Edwards and MacLean for the Historical Dagger with The Darkest Sin (Pan Macmillan) as do Gretta Mulrooney with Death at the Dolphin (Joffe Books) and Jack Jewers with The Lost Diary of Samuel Pepys (Moonflower Books).
In the Crime Fiction in Translation Dagger, sponsored in honour of Dolores Jakubowski, Deon Meyer (trans. KL Seggers) with The Dark Flood (Hodder & Stoughton) is up against French novelist Johana Gustawsson (trans. David Warriner) with The Bleeding (Orenda Books).
Vaseem Khan’s Lost Man of Bombay is on the Gold Dagger longlist and, in the Short Story Dagger, Khan features as co-editor with Maxim Jakubowski of several longlisted stories from The Perfect Crime (Harper Collins) anthology, including his own story, ‘Death in Darjeeling’. Abir Mukherjee’s ‘Paradise Lost’ in the same anthology is also on the longlist, together with stories by novelists CJ Tudor, Laura Lippman and John Grisham in other anthologies, and a mother–daughter team of Victoria and Delilah Dowd with ‘The Tears of Venus’ in Unlocked (The D20 Authors) – Delilah is only 16.
The Dagger in the Library, for an author popular with borrowers and notable for supporting libraries, features names such as the ever-popular Ben Aaronovitch, Sophie Hannah and, for the first time on this list, Mick Herron with his wonderful Jackson Lamb novels.
The Dagger for the Best Crime & Mystery Publisher features the weightiest names in crime fiction publishing today: the might of the likes of Simon & Schuster and Michael Joseph are set against Canelo and Bitter Lemon Press.
The Debut Dagger, sponsored by ProWritingAid, is for unpublished writers but longlisted are 10 novel openings from authors who, if past lists are anything to go by, are likely to go on to have successful careers.
Last but very far from least, the winner of the 2023 Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement has already been announced and goes to Walter Mosley.
Dagger shortlists will be announced at CrimeFest in Bristol on Friday 12 May – together with the winner of the Margery Allingham Short Mystery Prize, a competition the CWA run in partnership with the Margery Allingham Society. The longlist, featuring short-story stars such as Antony M Brown, Ajay Chowdhury, and Chris Curran, is on the CWA website here.
New sponsor for the John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger
The CWA is delighted to announce a new sponsor for the John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger. CWA Chair, Maxim Jakubowski, welcomes ILP (International Literary Properties).
“It is with great pleasure that the CWA welcomes ILP to its roster of Dagger sponsors. And we are overjoyed by the fact that ILP represent the estate of the late John Creasey, who not only created the CWA but whose name is associated with the New Blood Dagger for best debut novel. There could be no better serendipity and we are delighted to welcome ILP on board.”
Emma Bell, SVP Creative and Brand and Executive Producer for ILP said: “John Creasey was a truly original talent. His tenacity and flair is an inspiration for writers everywhere and so it is fitting that his spirit is celebrated annually through the John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger. Working closely with his son, Richard, to introduce his timeless stories and characters to new global audiences is a privilege.”
The CWA would like to thank all its sponsors: ALCS, Ian Fleming Publications, ProWritingAid and the Jakubowski family, who continue to provide invaluable support.
Tickets for the Daggers awards dinner on sale
Tickets can be bought directly from the CWA website for the most prestigious literary event of the crime writing year, in London on Thursday 6 July. Guest speaker for the evening will be Charlie Higson, author of the phenomenally successful Young Bond series, which sold over a million copies in the UK and has been translated into 24 languages. https://www.charliehigson.co.uk/ MCs for the evening will once again be the sparkling double act of Victoria Selman and Barry Forshaw. Tickets are first come first served. Discounted tables of 10 may be booked. Book tickets here.
