The 2025 longlists for the prestigious Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) Dagger awards, which honour the very best in the crime-writing genre, are announced.
Created in 1955, the world-famous CWA Daggers are the oldest awards in the genre and have been synonymous with quality crime writing for over half a century.
The longlist for the prestigious Gold Dagger,
which is awarded for the best crime novel of the year, includes five debut
novels including Bonnie Burke-Patel’s Died
at Fallow Hall, the debut whodunnit from Kristen Perrin, How to Solve Your Own Murder,
and the first book from bestselling author Harriet
Evans, under her penname, Harriet F Townson: D is for
Death.
The debuts are up against
established authors in the genre, including
RJ
Ellory, Tana French, and Attica Locke.
The Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, sponsored by Ian Fleming Publications Ltd, showcases the thriller of the year.
The longlist for 2025 includes Chris Whitaker with All the Colours of the Dark. Whitaker has previously taken home the CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger in 2017 and CWA Gold Dagger in 2021.
He’s up against firm favourites
including MW Craven with Nobody’s Hero,
Liz Moore’s The God of the Woods,
and Abir Mukherjee’s Hunted.
The much-anticipated ILP John Creasey First Novel Dagger highlights the best debut novels.
Among the rising stars of 2025 is
the debut set in the shadow of the Yorkshire Ripper, Katy Massey’s All of Us Are Sinners, former
prison officer
Claire Wilson’s assured debut, Five by Five, and
the moody neo-noir love letter to New York, An Honest Living by
Dwyer Murphy.
DV Bishop makes two longlists with A
Divine Fury – the Gold and the Historical Dagger. The book is the
fourth in the Cesare Aldo series featuring a sixteenth century detective in
Florence.
The Historical Dagger is sponsored by Morgan Witzel in memory of Dr Marilyn Livingstone. The longlist also includes Clare Whitfield’s Poor Girls: Meet the Female Peaky Blinders, which exposes the criminal underbelly of 1920s London, and Anna Mazzola’s The Book of Secrets set in 17th century Italy.
Maxim Jakubowski, Chair of the CWA Daggers’ committee, said: “Once again our independent and rotating judging panels have come up with surprises galore, highlighting the impressive efforts of both major authors and newcomers, with a convincing demonstration of how diverse and talented the crime, mystery and thriller field is at present. A wonderful embarrassment of outstanding titles.”
The Crime Fiction in Translation
Dagger, sponsored in honour of Dolores Jakubowski, features the smash-hit,
Waterstones Book of the Month, Butter by Asako Yuziki, translated by
Polly Barton.
From France comes Artifice, a thriller with a twist from Claire Berest translated by Sophie Lewis, and the queer debut gangland thriller The Night of Baba Yaga from Japan’s Akira Otani also makes the longlist.
The ALCS Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction includes giants of the genre with John Grisham and Jim McCloskey’s Framed, which looks at ten wrongful convictions, Lynda La Plante’s memoir, Getting Away with Murder and Kate Summerscale’s retelling of the Christie murders, The Peepshow: The Murders at 10 Rillington Place.
The CWA Daggers are one of the
few high-profile awards that honour the
short story.
This year sees multiple
bestselling names from the genre up for the award including Ann Cleeves, Elly Griffiths, Janice Hallet, Clare Mackintosh,
Ruth Ware and Vaseem Khan.
The Best Crime and Mystery Publisher of the Year Dagger, which celebrates publishers and imprints demonstrating excellence and diversity in crime writing, pits big publishing houses including Michael Joseph (Penguin Random House), Hemlock Press (HarperCollins) and Sphere (Little Brown) against independent publishers, Bitter Lemon Press and Canelo.
2025 sees the announcement of two new CWA Dagger Awards.
The Twisted Dagger celebrates psychological thrillers and dark and twisty tales that often feature unreliable narrators, disturbed emotions, a healthy dose of moral ambiguity, and a sting in the tail.
Longlist titles include NJ Cracknell’s The
Perfect Couple, Beautiful People by Amanda Jennings and Catherine
Steadman’s Look in the
Mirror.
Tracy Sierra’s Nightwatching also makes two
longlists: the Twisted and the Gold Dagger.
The Whodunnit Dagger celebrates books that focus on the intellectual challenge at the heart of a good mystery. Books in this category include cosy crime, traditional crime, and Golden Age-inspired mysteries.
Longlisted authors include Tess Gerritsen with The Spy Coast, Tom Spencer with They Mystery of the Crooked Man, and Lisa Hall with The Case of the Singer and the Showgirl.
The Dagger in the Library nominee longlist is voted by librarians and library users, chosen for the author’s body of work and support of libraries. This year sees firm favourites from the genre including Richard Osman, Kate Atkinson, Robert Galbraith, and Barbara Nadel.
The Emerging Author Dagger, which has been going for over 20 years, celebrates aspiring crime novelists and is sponsored by Fiction Feedback.
The competition is open to unpublished authors and is judged on the best opening for an unpublished crime novel. The winner will gain the attention of leading agents and top editors; over two dozen past winners and shortlisted Debut Dagger authors have signed publishing deals to date.
The CWA Diamond Dagger, awarded to an author whose crime-writing career has been marked by sustained excellence, is announced in early spring and in 2025 was awarded to Mick Herron.
The CWA Dagger shortlists will be announced later in the year on 29 May.
The winners will be
announced at the award ceremony at the CWA gala dinner on 3 July.
Bonnie Burke-Patel: I Died
at Fallow Hall (Bedford Square Publishers)
Ben Creed: Man of Bones (Mountain
Leopard Press/Headline)
R J Ellory: The Bell Tower (Orion)
Tana French: The Hunter (Penguin
Books Ltd)
Attica Locke: Guide Me Home (Profile
Books Ltd)
Anna Mazzola: Book of
Secrets (Orion)
Kristen Perrin: How to Solve
Your Own Murder (Quercus)
Tracy Sierra: Nightwatching (Penguin
Books Ltd)
Marie Tierney: Deadly
Animals (Bonnier Books Ltd)
Harriet F Townson: D is for
Death (Hodder & Stoughton)
Bridget Walsh: The Innocents (Pushkin
Press)
I S Berry: The Peacock and
the Sparrow (No Exit Press)
Chris Brookmyre: The Cracked
Mirror (Abacus/Little Brown, Hachette)
M W Craven: Nobody's Hero (Constable/Little
Brown, Hachette)
Blake Crouch: Run (Macmillan/Pan
Macmillan)
Garry Disher: Sanctuary (Viper/Profile
Books)
Dervla McTiernan: What
Happened to Nina? (HarperCollins)
Liz Moore: The God of the
Woods (The Borough Press/(HarperCollins)
Abir Mukherjee: Hunted (Harvill
& Secker/ Penguin Random House)
Stuart Neville: Blood Like
Mine (Simon & Schuster)
Chris Whitaker: All the
Colours of Dark (Orion/Hachette)
Don Winslow: City in Ruins (Hemlock
Press/HarperCollins)
ILP JOHN CREASEY
(NEW BLOOD) DAGGER
Jack Anderson: The Grief Doctor (Bloomsbury/Raven Books)
Eleanor Barker-White: My
Name Was Eden (HarperCollins/ HarperNorth)
Jessica Bull: Miss Austen
Investigates (Penguin Random House/ Michael Joseph)
Justine Champine: Knife
River (Bonnier Books UK/ Manilla Press)
Anders Lustgarten: Three
Burials (Penguin Random House/ Hamish Hamilton)
Gay Marris: A Curtain
Twitcher's Book of Murder (Bedford Square Publishers)
Katy Massey: All Us Sinners (Little,
Brown /Sphere)
Alice McIlroy: The Glass
Woman (Watkins Media/ Datura Books)
Dwyer Murphy: An Honest Living (No
Exit Press)
Marie Tierney: Deadly
Animals (Bonnier Books UK/ Zaffre)
Claire Wilson: Five by Five (Penguin
Random House/ Michael Joseph)
HISTORICAL DAGGER
Emily Critchley: The Undoing
of Violet Claybourne (Bonnier Books UK, Manilla Press)
D.L. Douglas: Dr Spilsbury
and the Cursed Bride (Orion Publishing)
Douglas Jackson: Blood Roses (Canelo)
Chris Lloyd: Banquet of
Beggers (Orion Fiction/Orion Publishing)
Anna Mazzola: The Book of
Secrets (Orion Fiction/Orion Publishing)
Lizzie Pook: Maude Horton’s
Glorious Revenge (Picador)
Sally Smith: A Case of Mice
and Murder (Raven Books/Bloomsbury Publishing)
L.C. Tyler: The Three Deaths
of Justice Godfrey (Constable/Little, Brown)
A.J. West, The Betrayal of
Thomas True (Orenda Books)
Clare Whitfield: Poor Girls (Aries
/ Head of Zeus)
CRIME FICTION IN TRANSLATION
DAGGER
Carlo Fruttero & Franco
Lucentini: The Lover of No Fixed Abode (Bitter Lemon Press) tr.
Gregory Dowling
Anne Mette Hancock: Ruthless (Swift
Press) tr. Tara Chase
Kotaro Isaka: Hotel Lucky
Seven (Harvill Secker) tr. Brian Bergstrom
Andrey Kurkov: The Silver
Bone (Maclehose Press) tr. Boris Dralyuk
Hervé Le Corre: Dogs and
Wolves (Europa Editions UK) tr. Howard Curtis
Pierre Lemaitre: Going to
the Dogs (Maclehose Press) tr. Frank Wynne
Patrícia Melo: The Simple
Art of Killing a Woman (The Indigo Press) tr. Sophie Lewis
Akira Otani: The Night of
Baby Yaga (Faber & Faber) tr. Sam Bett
Satu Rämö: The Clues in the
Fjord (Zaffre) tr. Kristian London
Asako Yuziki: Butter (4th
Estate) tr. Polly Barton
Alia Trabucco Zerán: Clean (4th
Estate) tr. Sophie Hughes
ALCS GOLD DAGGER FOR NON-FICTION
Chris Chan with Patricia Meyer
Chan, Ph.D.: The Autistic Sleuth (MX Publishing)
Jonathan Coffey & Judith
Moritz: Unmasking Lucy Letby (Seven Dials)
Jeremy Craddock: The Lady in
the Lake (Mirror Books)
John Grisham & Jim McCloskey:
Framed (Hodder & Stoughton)
Duncan Harding: The Criminal
Mind (PRH/Michael Joseph)
Henry Hemming: Four Shots in
the Night (Quercus)
Joseph Hone: The Book
Forger (Chatto & Windus)
Emma Kenny: The Serial
Killer Next Door (Sphere)
Lynda LaPlante: Getting Away
with Murder (Zaffre/Bonnier Books)
Jane Rosenberg: Drawn
Testimony (Manilla Press/Bonnier Books)
Kate Summerscale: The
Peepshow: The Murders at 10 Rillington Place (Bloomsbury Circus)
SHORT STORY DAGGER
J.C Berthal: ‘A Date on Yarmouth Pier’
in Midsummer Mysteries edited by Martin Edwards (Flame Tree
Publishing/Flame Tree Collections)
Ann Cleeves: ‘Parkrun’ in Murder
in Harrogate edited by Vaseem Khan (Orion Publishing Group/Orion Fiction)
Elly Griffiths: ‘The Valley of
the Queens’ in The Man in Black and Other Stories (Quercus)
Janice Hallett: ‘Why Harrogate?’
in Murder in Harrogate edited by Vaseem Khan (Orion Publishing
Group/Orion Fiction)
Vaseem Khan: ‘Murder in Masham’
in Murder in Harrogate edited by Vaseem Khan (Orion Publishing
Group/Orion Fiction)
Clare Mackintosh: ‘The Perfect
Smile’ in Murder in Harrogate edited by Vaseem Khan (Orion Publishing
Group/Orion Fiction)
William Burton McCormick: ‘City
Without Shadows’ in Midsummer Mysteries edited by Martin Edwards
(Flame Tree Publishing/Flame Tree Collections)
Meeti Shroff-Shah: ‘A Ruby Sun’
in Beyond and Within: Midsummer Mysteries edited by Martin Edwards
(Flame Tree Publishing/Flame Tree Collections)
Ruth Ware: ‘Murder at the Turkish
Baths’ in Murder in Harrogate edited by Vaseem Khan, (Orion
Publishing Group/ Orion Fiction)
TWISTED DAGGER
NJ Cracknell: The Perfect
Couple (Bloodhound Books)
Clara Dillon: The Playdate (PRH/Penguin
Sandycove)
Caz Frear: Five Bad Deeds (Simon
& Schuster UK)
Kellye Garrett: Missing
White Woman (Simon & Schuster UK)
Andrew Hughes: Emma,
Disappeared (Hachette Books Ireland)
Amanda Jennings: Beautiful
People (HarperCollins/ HQ FICTION)
John Marrs: The Stranger In
Her House (Amazon Publishing/ Thomas & Mercer)
Hannah Richell: The Search
Party (Simon & Schuster UK)
CS Robertson: The Trials Of
Marjorie Crowe (Hodder & Stoughton)
Tracy Sierra: Nightwatching (PRH/
Viking)
Catherine Steadman: Look In
The Mirror (Quercus)
DAGGER IN THE LIBRARY
Richard Osman
Janice Hallett
Kate Atkinson
Barbara Nadel
CJ Tudor
Edward Marston
Julia Chapman
Lisa Jewell
Robert Galbraith
Tim Sullivan
PUBLISHERS’ DAGGER
Bitter Lemon Press
Canelo
Faber & Faber
Michael Joseph (Penguin Random
House)
Hemlock Press (HarperCollins)
Orenda
Orion Books
Pan Macmillan
Quercus
Simon & Schuster
Sphere (Little Brown)
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