CWA Dagger Award Winners

[J. Kingston Pierce]

Thanks to the wonders of technology (i.e., contributor Ali Karim at the London presentation ceremony with a cell phone in his hand), we’ve just received this year’s list of Dagger Award winners. These commendations are, of course, given out by the British Crime Writers’ Association (CWA). And now to the winners, with a couple of commendations to mention as well:

Duncan Lawrie Dagger: THE BROKEN SHORE, by Peter Temple (Quercus)

Duncan Lawrie International Dagger: WASH THIS BLOOD CLEAN FROM MY HAND, by Fred Vargas (Harvill Secker)

The Ian Fleming Steel Dagger: SHARP OBJECTS, by Gillian Flynn (Wiedenfeld & Nicholson)

CWA New Blood Dagger: SHARP OBJECTS, by Gillian Flynn (Wiedenfeld & Nicholson)

CWA Debut Dagger (for unpublished novels by unpublished authors): THE SWEETNESS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PIE, by Alan Bradley (Canada). Highly commended by the judges: PARIAH, by David Jackson (UK)

Dagger in the Library: Stuart MacBride. Highly commended by UK libraries: C.J. Sansom

Still to be announced later in the year: the winner of the CWA Short Story Award, and the list of nominees for this year’s Ellis Peters Historical Dagger.

For a complete list of winners and nominees, check out The Rap Sheet’s report here.

[Karen from AustCrime]

I can't begin to tell you how thrilled I am about this result. The Broken Shore is a magnificently Australian novel - it was such a joy to read something that evokes the place and the people so strongly, and does that in a good, real, believable story that has some notional feeling of the reality of the communities in which it is set.

At the Melbourne Writers Festival in 2005 there was a general buzz around about this book - helped in not some small measure by John Harvey who took every chance he could to mention that he had just read it, and how highly he regarded it. Ever since that festival the "buzz" has been getting louder and louder.

You have no idea the happy dancing that's going on around here. No doubt Mr Temple will be gracious, but he bloody well earned this!

[Ali]

It was Peter Temples Night

Ali