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2013 CWA Dagger Winners Announced

andrew_taylorCelebrating its 60th year, the British Crime Writers’ Association has announced the first batch of its coveted Daggers Awards. The Gala Awards Dinner was held on Monday 15 July at Kings Place in London and was hosted by television personality and former Tory MP, Gyles Brandreth. The highlights of the Awards (so far announced) are:

  • Andrew Taylor has won his third CWA Ellis Peters Historical Dagger for his novel The Scent of Death. No one else has won the award three times.
  • The CWA International Dagger has been shared by two French authors, Fred Vargas (for Ghost Riders of Ordebec) and Pierre Lemaitre (for Alex). Fred Vargas has previously won the Award in 2006, 2007 and 2009.
  • The CWA Diamond Dagger 2013 was presented to Lee Child, from last year’s winner, Frederick Forsyth.
  • Finn Clarke was awarded the CWA Debut Dagger for the unpublished novel, Call Time.
  • The 2013 CWA Non-Fiction Dagger was presented to Paul French for Midnight in Peking, which told the story of the murder of a former UK consul in Peking in 1938.
  • Stella Duffy won the CWA Short Story Dagger for her story Come Away with Me, which first appeared in The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime Volume 10, edited by Maxim Jakubowski.
  • The longlists were announced for the CWA Gold, Steel and John Creasey Daggers. They were:

CWA Gold Dagger Longlist

  • Belinda Bauer for Rubbernecker (Bantam/Transworld)
  • Lauren Beukes for The Shining Girls (HarperCollins)
  • Sam Hawken for Tequila Sunset (Serpent’s Tail)
  • Mick Herron for Dead Lions (Soho Crime)
  • Becky Masterman for Rage Against the Dying (Orion)
  • Sara Paretsky for Breakdown (Hodder & Stoughton)
  • Michael Robotham for Say You’re Sorry (Sphere)
  • Don Winslow for The Kings of Cool (Heinemann)

 CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Longlist

  • Roger Hobbs for Ghostman (published by Transworld)
  • Liz Jensen for The Uninvited (Bloomsbury)
  • Malcolm Mackay for The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter (Pan Macmillan)
  • Stuart Neville for Ratlines (Random House)
  • Mark Oldfield for The Sentinel (Head of Zeus)
  • Andrew Williams for The Poison Tide (John Murray)
  • Robert Wilson for Capital Punishment (Orion)

CWA John Creasy Dagger Longlist

  • Roger Hobbs for Ghostman (Doubleday)
  • Hanna Jameson for Something You Are (Head of Zeus)
  • Malcolm Mackay for The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter (Mantle)
  • Becky Masterman for Rage Against the Dying (Orion)
  • Derek B Miller for Norwegian by Night (Faber and Faber)
  • Thomas Mogford for Shadow of the Rock (Bloomsbury)
  • Michael Russell for The City Of Shadows (Avon)
  • M D Villiers for City of Blood (Harvill Secker)

The CWA Chair, Alison Joseph said:

“The announcement of the Daggers Awards is always an exciting moment in the CWA’s calendar… The Awards Dinner is an opportunity to celebrate the best of our genre, to award our most talented authors and, most important of all, to introduce our ever-growing readership to more books they will enjoy.”

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Anthony Awards 2013

2013 Anthony Awards

Bouchercon, the World Mystery Convention, has announced the 2013 Anthony Award Nominees.

Bouchercon XLIV will be held in Albany, New York, from September 19-22 and the winners will be chosen by the convention’s full time members.

BEST NOVEL
dare_meDare Me – Megan Abbott
The Trinity Game – Sean Chercover
Gone Girl – Gillian Flynn
The Beautiful Mystery – Louise Penny
The Other Woman – Hank Phillippi Ryan

BEST FIRST NOVEL
Don’t Ever Get Old – Daniel Friedman
The Professionals – Owen Laukkanen
The Expats – Chris Pavone
The 500 – Matthew Quirk
Black Fridays – Michael Sears

BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL
Whiplash River – Lou Berney
Murder for Choir – Joelle Charbonneau
And She Was – Alison Gaylin
Blessed are the Dead – Malla Nunn
Big Maria – Johnny Shawbig_maria_johnny_shaw

BEST SHORT STORY
“Mischief in Mesopotamia” – Dana Cameron, EQMM, Nov 2012
“Kept in the Dark” – Shelia Connolly, Best New England Crime Stories: Blood Moon
“The Lord is My Shamus” – Barb Goffman, Chesapeake Crimes: This Job is Murder
“Peaches” – Todd Robinson, Grift, Spring 2012
“The Unremarkable Heart” – Karin Slaughter, MWA Presents: Vengeance,

BEST CRITICAL NONFICTION WORK
Books to Die For – John Connolly and Declan Burke, editors
Blood Relations – Joseph Goodrich, editor
More Forensics and Fiction – DP Lyle, MD
The Grand Tour – Mathew Prichard, editor
In Pursuit of Spenser – Otto Penzler, editor

BestCrimeBooks.com congratulates each and every nominee and wishes them all the very best of luck.

The Anthony Awards are given out annually at Bouchercon. The nominating ballots for the 2013 Anthony Awards have been e-mailed to most registered attendees, as of 3/2/13.  Others will receive ballots as their registration is processed.

The Anthony Awards are named after the esteemed California-based writer and critic, Anthony Boucher (1911-1969). Boucher’s real name was William Anthony Parker White. From 1942 to 1947 he reviewed popular fiction for the San Francisco Chronicle. He became a popular and respected editor,  giving many influential writers their start. He wrote five mystery novels under as Anthony Boucher – starting with teh ground-breaking The Case of the Seven of Calvary in 1937,  and another two under another pseudonym HH Holmes.

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Macavity Award Nominees 2012 | Anthony Awards 2012

Anthony Boucher of Bouchercon 2012Mystery Readers International have announced the 2012 Macavity Award Nominees. Also known as the “Anthonies”, these awards are the ultimate accolade in the crime wand mystery reading world.

The winners will be announced at Bouchercon, the World Mystery Convention, which is to be held in Cleveland at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, over the weekend of October 4-7. The award is named after the “mystery cat” in T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats). To be nominated, books and Stories need to have been published in the USA during 2011.

The nonimees are:

Best Mystery Novel

1222 by Anne Holt, translated by Marlaine Delargy (Scribner)
Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead by Sara Gran (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz (Mulholland Books)
The Ridge by Michael Koryta (Little, Brown)
A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny (Minotaur)
The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes by Marcus Sakey (Dutton)
Hell & Gone by Duane Swierczynski (Mulholland Books)

Best First Mystery Novel

 Learning to Swim by Sara J. Henry (Crown)
Nazareth Child by Darrell James (Midnight Ink)
Turn of Mind by Alice LaPlante (Atlantic Monthly)
All Cry Chaos by Leonard Rosen (Permanent Press)
The Informationist by Taylor Stevens (Crown)
Before I Go To Sleep by S. J. Watson (Harper)

Best Mystery-Related Nonfiction

Books, Crooks and Counselors: How to Write Accurately About Criminal Law and Courtroom Procedure by Leslie Budewitz (Linden)
Agatha Christie: Murder in the Making: More Stories and Secrets from Her Notebooks by John Curran (HarperCollins)
Wilkie Collins, Vera Caspary and the Evolution of the Casebook Novel by A.B. Emrys (McFarland)
The Savage City: Race, Murder, and a Generation on the Edge by T.J. English (William Morrow)
The Sookie Stackhouse Companion by Charlaine Harris (Ace)

Best Mystery Short Story

“Disarming” by Dana Cameron (EQMM, June 2011)
“Facts Exhibiting Wantonness” by Trina Corey (EQMM, Nov. 2011)
“Palace by the Lake” by Daryl Wood Gerber (Fish Tales: The Guppy Anthology, Wildside Press)
“Truth and Consequences” by Barb Goffman (Mystery Times Ten, Buddhapuss Ink)
“Heat of Passion” by Kathleen Ryan (A Twist of Noir, Feb. 14, 2011)
“The Man Who Took His Hat Off to the Driver of the Train” by Peter Turnbull (EQMM, March/April 2011)

Sue Feder Historical Mystery Award
Naughty in Nice by Rhys Bowen (Berkley)
Narrows Gate by Jim Fusilli (AmazonEncore)
Dandy Gilver and the Proper Treatment of Bloodstains by Catriona McPherson (Thomas Dunne/Minotaur)
Mercury’s Rise by Ann Parker (Poisoned Pen)
Troubled Bones by Jeri Westerson (Minotaur)
A Lesson in Secrets by Jacqueline Winspear (Harper)

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Best Crime Books

Best crime books are our passion and we will not countenance anything but the best, you understand. North American readers may be confused by our title: what you call mysteries are what we call crime books. This mighty genre covers a wealth of writing, from thrillers and suspense novels, to survival, hard-boiled noir and Golden Age mysteries. We enjoy such sub-genres as the political thriller, courtroom dramas, the techno-thriller, police procedurals, private dicks, a spot of adventure and even a heist or two.

Best Crime Books: A Study In ScarletBest Crime Books: Some Of Our Favorite Authors

Our favourite authors include (no particular order), James Crumley, James Elroy, Elmore Leonard, Patricia Highsmith, Colin Dexter, James Lee Burke, Alfalfa Burke, George V Higgins, W R Burnett, Agatha Christie, Anthony Boucher, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Andrea Camilleri, Henning Mankell, Steig Larsson, Robert B Parker, Mark Timlin, Lawrence Block, Edmund Crispin, Mary Higgins Clark, Margaret Millar, Elizabeth Peters, William McIlvanney, John Creasey, Ken Follett, Lee Child, Ian Fleming, Ed McBain/ Peter Leonard, Evan Hunter, Loren D. Estleman, Charles Willeford, Reginald Hill, James Follett, David Peace, James Patterson, Ross Thomas, Joseph Conrad, Robert Crais, George P Pelecanos, Frances Fyfield, Colin Bateman, Michael Gilbert, Michael Innes, Ngaio Marsh, Jonathan Latimer, Margery Allingham, Dan Kavanagh, Carl Hiaasen, Michael Crichton, Scott Turow, John le Carré, Gérard de Villiers, Charles Dickens, John D MacDonald, Ross McDonald, Ian Rankin, Ruth Rendell, Kyotaro Nishimura, Ira Levin, Mickey Spillane, Irving Wallace, John Dickson Carr, John Grisham, Walter Mosley, John Dickson Carr, Peter Lovesey, Robert Ludlum, Dashiell Hammett, Wilkie Collins, Raymond Chandler, Daphne du Maurier, James M Cain, Mario Puzo, Edgar Wallace, Erle Stanley Gardner, Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Georges Simenon, Jim Thompson, Eric Ambler, Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, Len Deighton, Dorothy L Sayers, Donald E Westlake, Thomas Harris, Umberto Eco, Tony Hillerman, Edgar Allan Poe and E C Bentley.

Best Crime Books: 5 Great Crime Novels

Sometimes we don’t why the best crime books are our favourites. Sometimes they’re not even classed as proper crime or mystery books.

Brighton Rock by Graham Greene

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon

The Ice Harvest by Scott Phillips

Wobble To Death by Peter Lovesey

Killshot by Elmore Leonard

Those are five wonderful novels but are they really the best crime books of all time. Of course not, but you’ve got to start somewhere. On a different day a different person would pick a totally different list of best crime novels. On a different day the same person would also pick a completely different list.

The thing about crime and mystery novels is that much of it comes down to preference. A big factor is style. Then there’s mood. Some aficionados rate P.D. James as one of our greatest living (or dead) authors; others can’t stand her or her writing. Elmore Leonard is seen by many as the finest author ever to pen a thriller, whereas others can’t see what the fuss is all about. During his lifetime, Edgar Wallace was one of the most read authors on the planet, who could write a novel in a week or less. Now it is hard to see what all the fuss was about. Different times, different styles, different likes and dislikes.

When it comes to the best crime books, everyone has an opinion and every opinion is valid. Happy reading!