Crime fiction and the CWA Daggers
This is a post I've been meaning to write for a while, purely because I don't like having a big gap on the list of books where I haven't written about anything.
Something I've realised over the past couple of years is that I really like crime fiction and thrillers, but only a very specific type of those genres. If you've read much of this blog it's probably not surprising that my tastes here tend towards the literary end of the spectrum rather than the big commercial books.
I have the same problem with crime/thrillers as I do with literary fiction, which is an issue of discovery. I'm deeply immersed in SFF and horror communities online and have been for a very long time, so finding new things to read is easy, but that's not the case for other genres. I could of course spend time seeking out those communities but frankly I don't want to increase the time I spend online, and a quick search of Reddit (I know, I know) shows me that the few subreddits dedicated to crime and thrillers are much less active than similar communities for SFF and horror.
For literary fiction I tend to turn to the Booker longlist to find things to read (though I should find other avenues for discovery there, too). And this year I finally realised that there are probably industry awards for crime fiction, and that I could be reading them. So I turned to the CWA Daggers. And it turns out that there are a lot of categories. For my own reference, here they are:
- Gold Dagger for best crime novel. Eligible books include thrillers, mysteries, police procedurals, psychological suspense novels and spy fiction
- Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for best thriller.
- ILP John Creasey New Blood Dagger for best crime novel by a first-time author.
- Historical Dagger for best historical crime novel.
- Crime Fiction in Translation Dagger, which does exactly what it says on the tin.
There are also a couple of additional awards like lifetime achievment, short stories, and non-fiction, among others, but I only have limited time to read things and so I didn't really pay attention to them when I was looking into this.
2025 will also have a couple of new categories. First, the Whodunnit Dagger, for "books where the sex, swearing, and bloodletting take place offstage–books that focus on the intellectual challenge at the heart of a good mystery, and which revolve around often quirky characters. Books in this category include cosy crime, traditional crime, and Golden Age-inspired mysteries". I suspect that I will have an even mix of books I love and hate in this category, and I'm going to put it on my reading list next year. There will also be the Twisted Dagger, for "psychological thrillers, dark and twisty tales that often feature unreliable narrators, disturbed emotions, a healthy dose of moral ambiguity, and a sting in the tail".
A couple of weeks ago I went to wedding in Sicily (thankfully entirely paid for by the bride and groom, because I absolutely can't afford a week in Sicily right now). Crime and thrillers are very much my holiday reads, so I decided to make as big a dent in the Daggers as I could. While I was away I read the shortlists for the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger and started on the New Blood Dagger. Here are some brief notes from my reading journal about those books.
Jordan Harper - Everybody Knows
The winner of the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, this is a fast-paced thriller that I really enjoyed. It makes LA feel grimy and dangerous in a way that reminds me of films like Collateral. It also has a lot to say about money, power, and the men who wield it, and it's obviously operating in a post-Weinstein/Epstein landscape. There are a lot of spinning plates here but they all come together in a really satisfying way. Our protagonists are never painted as being without sin, either, despite clearly believing that they're above the muck, and it's nice to see an investigative novel that's explicitly anti-cop.
S.A. Cosby - All The Sinners Bleed
This was really good, and I think I liked it more than Everybody Knows. Southern noir might be my new favourite genre and I'm definitely going to read more by Cosby. I never really knew where this was going and the reveal at the end was incredibly satisfying.
Kotaro Isaka - The Mantis
A very weird book. Initially gripping but it lost me fast, and the Japanese attitude to women and relationships is very off-putting. Once it switched to the son's point of view towards the end of the novel it became more interesting, but it all felt a little pointless and nothing really worked for me.
Eli Cranor - Ozark Dogs
Possibly my biggest disappointment of this shortlist, because it starts incredibly strong and I was ready to love it. Unfortunately it dropped off fast and I spent the second half of the book debating whether to DNF.
Femi Kayode - Gaslight
I remember enjoying this, though now that I'm writing this post a month or so later I don't remember much about it and all I have written in my reading journal is that I liked it enough to leave a reminder to read the first book in this series. I remember enjoying the setting of a megachurch and the machinations of power and religion, and Taiwo is a strong lead character who I'd like to spend more time with.
The other book on the shortlist is Drowning by T.J. Newman, which I DNFd very quickly as it's exactly the sort of trashy commercial thriller that I don't tend to enjoy. All I've written in my journal is, "how on earth did this get nominated for a Dagger?"
As well as that shortlist I also made a start on the New Blood dagger, DNFing Amy Chua's The Golden Gate (it wasn't bad but the setting just doesn't do anything for me and it couldn't hold my attention) and devouring Jo Callaghan's In The Blink of An Eye, which is a smart, (mostly) well-written, gripping thriller about a jaded cop being assisted on cold cases by a trial AI assistant. It was both surprisingly and pleasingly predictable in equal measure, and I liked it enough that I immediately read the sequel Leave No Trace.
That second book isn't as good as the first one, but it was still enjoyable. The flaws in Callaghan's writing were a bit more visible here - possibly the result of it having been turned around so quickly after the first novel - and while the case itself is actually much more interesting than the case in the first book it felt like it had fewer twists and turns, which made it less surprising and therefore less engaging. I still enjoyed it, though, and I'll likely seek out the third book when it appears.
As for the other categories, the one I definitely want to try and dig into is the Dagger for Crime Fiction in Translation. That probably won't be this year, but I'll likely add those books to my 2025 reading list when I compile it in January. I'd like to read more fiction in translation next year anyway, so this feels like a good way of scratching both that itch and my crime fiction itch.