CWA Twisted Dagger Shortlist 2025
Last year I worked my way through much of the CWA Daggers shortlists while on holiday in Sicily. This past week I've been in Crete, and I decided to take the opportunity to do the the same thing.
I don't really want to spend my week blogging, so I decided that instead of writing full posts/reviews of these books I'll instead just share brief thoughts about them. To avoid this post being ridiculously long I'm splitting my reads for the week into two (or more) posts.
This first post is just the books from the Twisted Dagger Shortlist. I'm not a voter for the Daggers, but if I were, I think my pick for this award would be Tracy Sierra’s Nightwatching, with The Trials Of Marjorie Crowe coming in a close second place.
Nightwatching - Tracy Sierra
I really, really loved this, and frankly the rest of the shortlist is going to have to do well to impress me more than this did. It's smart, brilliantly written, unpredictable and wonderfully surprising, and I can't remember the last time I read a book so deeply infused with complete dread on every page.
The first half is tense and scary, but it's really in the second half where this novel comes into its own. The exploration of the way female victims of male violence are treated by the police, medical professionals, and society at large is chilling, and it's all expertly delivered. This is one of my few five star reads, and easily one of my favourites of the year.
The Stranger In Her House - John Marrs
Occasionally I get about halfway through a book and feel like I'm not enjoying it enough to continue, but for whatever reason I decide not to DNF it. This was one of those books, and I wish I'd just stopped when I first had that thought because it wasn't worth sticking with.
The blurbs on the cover tell us that Marrs is “brilliant at twists” but I disagree. The twist that's central to this book was telegraphed so clearly that I saw it coming a mile off, and the final twist at the end is so farfetched that it was just annoying. Not impressed by this.
The Trials Of Marjorie Crowe - C. S. Robertson
I loved this. It's quiet and careful and personal, a slow burning tale of a community bubbling over with rage. It's short but feels very deep, with centuries of history imbuing every moment. Marjorie is a very likable main character, and there's real horror in the way the community turns on her and begins to blame her for all their woes. Much like Nightwatching this has a lot to say about the way women - and in this case, particularly older women who don't fit into the comfortable boxes society wants to put them in - are treated both by men and by the structures of society, though where Nightwatching feels angry about it this mostly feels sad about it. A very good read.
Look In The Mirror - Catherine Steadman
I have a tradition of going to the cinema on my own on my birthday and just seeing whatever happens to be playing. A few years ago the film I saw was Escape Room 2, having not seen the first one. I expected nothing from it, but I had a great time and when I got home I immediately watched the first one.
This book is part Escape Room and, at least for a little bit, part The Bourne Identity. It's ridiculous but in a very fun way, and I had a blast with it. Last year I was actively seeking out this sort of book and couldn't find many that I actually liked, so I'm very happy to have read this one. This was a perfect beach read.
Beautiful People - Amanda Jennings
This was just fine. It says it's for fans of Saltburn but really there's very little in common between the two, unless you book that film down to “a working class protagonist tries to fit in with richer classmates at university” - and really that's a very small part of this book. It also really bothered me that the characters - including the protagonist - kept talking about the main character sounding like one of the Gallagher brothers when she's from Knutsford, which is very much not in Manchester. I sort of wish southern writers (Jennings is from London) would stop trying to portray northern characters if they can't be bothered to learn anything about the north. It's sort of funny that the main character's art career begins as a caricaturist, since every single character in this book is a caricature. Maybe that's the point, but if so it didn't land for me.
But anyway. This was a fun read but the message about predatory men isn't delivered with anywhere near as well as it is in The Trials Of Marjorie Crowe or Nightwatching, both of which are much better books than this. This was a solid six out of ten but I'll have forgotten about it by the end of the week.
Emma, Disappeared - Andrew Hughes
When I first started reading this shortlist, this was the book I was most looking forward to, and I'm very happy that it turned out to be good. It's interesting to read this in the context of the rest of the shortlist, since so many of the novels here are about male violence towards women from the female perspective. This one puts us into the head of the violent man, and I think it does it really well.
It's hard to talk about this without giving much away, so I'll just say that I enjoyed it and it's worth picking up.