Daggers Drawn
About this audiobook
Edgy, twisted, and disturbing, the first Crime Writers’ Association Daggers Award retrospective anthology features bestselling authors Ian Rankin, Jeffery Deaver, John Connolly, Denise Mina, John Harvey, and more.
Keep your secrets close and your daggers drawn.
This first retrospective of the CWA’s Dagger Award winners brings together some of the greatest names in crime fiction to deliver a cutthroat collection of serial killers, grizzled detectives, drug dealers, and master forgers.
Observe as a senior curator at the Tate Gallery constructs the perfect crime in Ian Rankin’s “Herbert in Motion.” Watch an unlikely romance sour into a deadly obsession in Stella Duffy’s “Martha Grace.” Face parents who discover that their child has committed the unthinkable in Denise Mina’s “Nemo Me Impune Lacessit.” And in Jeffery Deaver’s “The Weekender,” an intense hostage situation hits its peak in the most unlikely conclusion.
Here are nineteen CWA Dagger Award-winning short stories from the best of the best in crime fiction.
Contributors include Ian Rankin, Jeffery Deaver, John Connolly, John Harvey, Denise Mina, Julian Rathbone, Martin Edwards, Peter Lovesey, Lauren Henderson, Stella Duffy, Peter O’Donnell (writing as Madeleine Brent), Danuta Reah, Cath Staincliffe, Margaret Murphy, L. C. Tyler, Phil Lovesey, Larry Beinhart, Richard Lange, and Jerry Sykes.
About the author
Maxim Jakubowski is a noted anthology editor based in London, just a mile or so away from where he was born. With over seventy volumes to his credit, including Invisible Blood, thirteen annual volumes of The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries, and titles on Professor Moriarty, Jack the Ripper, Future Crime, and Vintage whodunits. A publisher for over twenty years, he was also the co-owner of London’s Murder One bookstore and the crime columnist for Time Out and then The Guardian for twenty-two years. Stories from his anthologies have won most of the awards in the field on numerous occasions. He is currently the Chair of the Crime Writers’ Association and a Sunday Times bestselling novelist in another genre.
Others, as in, not you
Ian Rankin is a #1 international bestselling author. Winner of an Edgar Award and the recipient of a Gold Dagger for fiction and the Chandler-Fulbright Award, he lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, with his wife and their two sons.
Jeffery Deaver is the #1 international bestselling author of more than thirty novels, three collections of short stories, and a nonfiction law book. His books are sold in 150 countries and translated into 25 languages. He's received or been shortlisted for a number of awards around the world. A former journalist, folksinger, and attorney, he was born outside of Chicago and has a bachelor of journalism degree from the University of Missouri and a law degree from Fordham University. You can visit his website at www.JefferyDeaver.com.
John Connolly is author of the Charlie Parker mysteries, The Book of Lost Things, the Samuel Johnson novels for young adults, and, with his partner, Jennifer Ridyard, is the coauthor of the Chronicles of the Invaders series. His debut, Every Dead Thing, swiftly launched him into the top rank of thriller writers, and all his subsequent novels have been Sunday Times bestsellers. He was the first non-American writer to win the US Shamus award, and the first Irish writer to be awarded the Edgar by the Mystery Writers of America.
John Harvey, best known as a writer of crime fiction, his work translated into more than twenty languages, is also a dramatist, poet, publisher, and occasional broadcaster. The first of his Charlie Resnick novels, Lonely Hearts, was named by the Times as one of the “100 Best Crime Novels of the Century.” The recipient of honorary doctorates from the Universities of Nottingham and Hertfordshire, Harvey was awarded the Crime Writers’ Association Cartier Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement in 2007.
Denise Mina is the author of the Garnethill trilogy, the Paddy Meehan series and the Alex Morrow series. She has won the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award twice and was inducted into the Crime Writers’ Association Hall of Fame in 2014. The Long Drop won the McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Book of the Year 2017 as well as the Gordon Burn Prize and was named by The Times as one of the top ten crime novels of the decade. Conviction was the co-winner of the McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Book of the Year 2019 and was selected for Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine Book Club. Denise has also written plays and graphic novels, and presented television and radio programmes. She lives and works in Glasgow.
Martin Edwards is an award-winning crime author and novelist. His nonfiction book, The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and Their Creators, won the Edgar Award for Best Critical/Biographical Book of 2022. He has received the CWA Diamond Dagger, the highest honor in British crime writing, given for the sustained excellence of his contribution to the genre. His Lake District mystery series have been optioned by ITV. Renowned as the leading expert on the history of Golden Age detective fiction, he won the Crimefest Mastermind Quiz three times and possesses one of Britain’s finest collections of Golden Age novels. Elected to the Detection Club in 2008, he became the first archivist of the club and is also archivist of the Crime Writers’ Association.
Peter Lovesey, the author of more than thirty highly praised mystery novels, has won the British Crime Writers’ Association Silver and Gold Dagger awards as well as the Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement and the Strand Magazine Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014. In the United States, he has received Edgar and Dilys nominations, an Anthony Award and a Macavity Award, and the Ellery Queen Readers Award, among others. In 2018, he was named a Mystery Writers of America Grand Master.
Stella Duffy was born in London, grew up in New Zealand, and now lives in London. She is the author of seven literary novels, including The Room of Lost Things and State of Happiness, both of which were Longlisted for the Orange Prize. The Room of Lost Things won the Stonewall Writer of the Year 2008, and she won the Stonewall Writer of the Year 2010 for Theodora. She is also the author of the Saz Martin detective series. She has written over 45 short stories, including several for BBC Radio 4, and won the 2002 CWA Short Story Dagger for Martha Grace. Her ten plays include an adaptation of Medea for Steam Industry, and Prime Resident and Immaculate Conceit for the National Youth Theatre (UK). In addition to her writing work she is an actor and theatre director.
Cath Staincliffe is an established novelist, radio playwright, and the creator of ITV’s hit series, Blue Murder, starring Caroline Quentin as Detective Inspector Janine Lewis. Cath’s books have been shortlisted for the British Crime Writers Association best first novel award and for the Dagger in the Library and selected as Le Masque de l’Année. Cath is one of the founding members of Murder Squad—a group of Northern crime writers who give readings, talks, and signings around the country. Cath was born in Bradford, Yorkshire, UK and now lives in Manchester, Lancashire with her partner and children.
Margaret Murphy writes internationally acclaimed psychological thrillers. A past Chair of the Crime Writers Association (CWA), the founder of Murder Squad, and a former RLF Writing Fellow and Reading Round Lector, she’s been a country park ranger, a biology teacher, a dyslexia specialist, and a visiting professor in creative writing. A Short Story Dagger and CWA Red Herring award winner, she has also been shortlisted for the “First Blood” Critics Award and the CWA Dagger in the Library.
Larry Beinhart is the award-winning author of Wag the Dog, which inspired the film starring Robert DeNiro, as well as several other novels, including Salvation Boulevard and No One Rides for Free.
Richard Lange is the author of the story collections Dead Boys and Sweet Nothing and the novels This Wicked World, Angel Baby, and The Smack. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the International Association of Crime Writers’ Hammett Prize, a Crime Writers’ Association Dagger Award, and the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in Los Angeles.
Maxwell Caulfield is a film, stage, and television actor best known for his roles as Michael Carrington in the 1982 film Grease 2 and Miles Colby in the television shows The Colbys and Dynasty. His other acting credits include the films Gettysburg, The Real Blonde, and Emmerdale. He has won six AudioFile Earphones Awards.
Gabrielle de Cuir is a Grammy-nominated and Audie Award-winning producer whose narration credits include the voice of Valentine in Orson Scott Card’s Ender novels, Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Tombs of Atuan, and Natalie Angier’s Woman, for which she was awarded AudioFile magazine’s Golden Earphones Award. She lives in Los Angeles where she also directs theatre and presently has several projects in various stages of development for film.
Justine Eyre is an award-winning audiobook narrator who has recorded over three-hundred titles. Named a 2013 AudioFile Best Voice, she has won an Audie Award and multiple Earphones Awards. Classically trained and multilingual, she performs on stage, television, and film and has had roles in King Lear and The Crucible, on Two and a Half Men and Mad Men, and in multiple indie-circuit films.
Alex Hyde-White is an actor and a producer of two films and hundreds of audiobooks thru his label Punch Audio.
Juliet Mills is a highly acclaimed actress. She won an Emmy Award for QB VII and a Tony nomination for her role in Five Finger Exercise, and was one of the stars of the daytime drama show Passions.
Kate Orsini is a native of Talladega, Alabama. She earned a double major in Theatre and French Literature from Vassar College. She’s performed on stage, in film, and on TV. She currently recurs on NCIS: LA, and stars in the Zoom episodic, “The Corona Dialogues,” produced by Bonnie Hunt, for which she won Best Actress at the London Independent Film Festival.
Kevin Baker is the author of one previous novel, Sometimes You See It Coming, and served as chief historical researcher for the recently published The American Century by Harold Evans. He is married and lives in New York City.John Rubenstein won a Theater World Award, a Tony, and a Drama Desk Award for his performances in Pippin and Children of a Lesser God.
Stefan Rudnicki is an award winning audiobook narrator, director and producer. He was born in Poland and now resides in Studio City, California. He has narrated more than three hundred audiobooks and has participated in over a thousand as a writer, producer, or director. He is a recipient of multiple Audie Awards and AudioFile Earphones Awards as well as a Grammy Award, a Bram Stoker Award, and a Ray Bradbury Award. He received AudioFile’s award for 2008 Best Voice in Science Fiction and Fantasy. Along with a cast of other narrators, Rudnicki has read a number of Orson Scott Card's best-selling science fiction novels. He worked extensively with many other science fiction authors, including David Weber and Ben Bova. In reviewing the twentieth anniversary edition audiobook of Card’s Ender's Game, Publishers Weekly stated, "Rudnicki, with his lulling, sonorous voice, does a fine job articulating Ender's inner struggle between the kind, peaceful boy he wants to be and the savage, violent actions he is frequently forced to take." Rudnicki is also a stage actor and director.
