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The longlists for the 2024 CWA Dagger Awards are here! Thirteen daggers (lucky 13!) are awarded in total, celebrating the best in crime writing.
In this post, we’ll explore books nominated for 6 of the Daggers – Gold, Steel, New Blood, Historical, In Translation and Dagger in the Library!
How many on this list have you read? We’re always looking for new crime thrillers to read, and what better place to find them than on a nominee list!
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Happy Reading, Friends!
This award is for the best crime novel by an author of any nationality, originally written in English and first published in the UK during 2023. Eligible books include thrillers, mysteries, police procedurals, psychological suspense novels and spy fiction.
Hello? Can you hear me? Probably not. I’m Dr Miriam Price . . . and I’m dead. The local police, who couldn’t investigate their own nostrils, think I drank myself into an early grave. The nerve! I was murdered. I was just too plastered to know whodunnit, that’s all. Unless I prove to my inquest this week that my death was no ‘misadventure’, I’m condemned to 50 years in Limbo. I have to find my killer – but I can’t communicate with any living human. Well, there’s one, but she barely qualifies . . . Winnie – my neighbour and nemesis. It seems the dying can interact with the dead, which is helpful news for me, if not stellar for Winnie. Oh well. She’ll live. Maybe. Suspects? How long have you got? My saintly husband, who’d reached his limit? My best friend, who was anything but? My secret lover, or his wife? My disgruntled colleague? The mother who wrongly holds me responsible for her child’s death? Professor Plum? Your guess is as good as mine. So Winnie – slap on your deerstalker and strap on your granny pants. Let’s catch a killer! Assuming we don’t kill each other first.
This is a stand-alone novel.
Newly-minted homicide detective Nell Buchanan returns to her hometown, annoyed at being assigned a decades-old murder – a ‘file and forget’. But this is no ordinary cold case, her arrival provoking an unwelcome and threatening response from the small-town community. As more bodies are discovered, and she begins to question how well she truly knows those closest to her, Nell realises that finding the truth could prove more difficult – and dangerous – than she’d ever expected. The nearer Nell comes to uncovering the secrets of the past, the more treacherous her path becomes. Can she survive to root out the truth, and what price will she have to pay for it?
This novel also goes under the title ‘The Tilt’ and is Book 2 in the ‘Ivan Lucic & Nell Buchanan’ series. Check out Book One – ‘Treasure & Dirt‘.
Jesus College, Oxford, 1881. An undergraduate is found dead at his lodgings and the medical examination reveals some shocking findings. When the young man’s guardian blames the college for his death and threatens a scandal, Basil Rice, a Jesus College fellow with a secret to hide, is forced to act and finds himself drawn into Sidney Parker’s sad life. The mystery soon attracts the attention of Rhiannon ‘Non’ Vaughan, a young Welsh polymath and one of the young women newly admitted to university lectures. But when neither the college principal nor the powerful ladies behind Oxford’s new female halls will allow her to become involved, Non’s fierce intelligence and determination to prove herself drive her on. Both misfits at the university, Non and Basil form an unlikely partnership, and it soon falls to them to investigate the mysterious circumstances of Parker’s death. But between corporate malfeasance and snake-oil salesmen, they soon find the dreaming spires of Oxford are not quite what they seem.
This is Book One in the ‘Oxford Mysteries‘.
Vivvy Bouchet was only ten when she saved a boy’s life by making an impossible prediction. She doesn’t want to explain it. A wunderkind scientist, she just wants to be left in peace to scan the desert Texas sky with her telescopes in one of the darkest places on earth. But when the boy she saved, now a Fort Worth cop, begs for her help on a cold case, she can’t turn him down. In the past decade, Lizzie Solomon and the Victorian mansion where she disappeared have taken on almost mythic status. Conspiracy theorists feed the frenzy that Lizzie is still buried in the crumbling walls while her mother, who sits in prison convicted of killing her, loudly proclaims her innocence. Paired with a skeptical detective, Vivvy falls deeper into the mystery of why Lizzie has never been found. When a vicious podcaster takes aim at Vivvy’s own secrets–and those of the vanished girl–Vivvy’s life unravels like the mysterious galaxies she chases.
This is a stand-alone novel.
Trying to investigate the Secret Service is like trying to get rid of the stink of dead badger. Hard. For two years the government’s Monochrome inquiry has produced nothing more than a series of dead ends. The Service has kept what happened in the newly reunified Berlin under wraps for decades, and intends for it to stay that way. But then the OTIS file turns up. What classified secrets does it hold? And what damage will it create? All Max Janacek knows is that someone is chasing him through the pitch-dark country lanes and they want him gone.
This is a stand-alone novel.
THE LEGEND 1913.Captain Scott and his four companions reach the South Pole to find their Norwegian rival Roald Amundsen has won the race. Defeated, they set out on the 850-mile journey to their ship. Apsley Cherry-Garrard, the explorer sent out to meet them at One Ton depot, peering South through thick spectacles, sees only an infinity of white, and turns back. A year later Scott’s pitched tent is found, just ten miles from the depot, and the bodies within speak of hunger, the unbearable strain of hauling the sledge, and the brutal winter cold. They lie in a tomb of ice. Cherry is left forever tormented by thoughts of what might have been. THE TRUTH. Ten years after Cherry’s death, Falcon Grey – who as an orphan of the Blitz was brought up at the explorer’s country estate – receives a bequest: a small red notebook that was found in Scott’s tent. It is a diary: and it states that they were not victims of the cold, or hunger, but murder, in the coldest of blood. Suspects range from envious foreign powers – such as the Kaiser’s Germany – to revolutionaries and even Scott’s own men. Vital clues lie in the tent, so Falcon goes South to the ice to see it for himself, but someone is desperate to conceal the truth and will kill to keep the secrets under the ice.
This is a stand-alone novel.
Bombay, 1950. James Whitby, sentenced to death for the murder of prominent lawyer and former Quit India activist Fareed Mazumdar, is less than two weeks from a date with the gallows. In a last-ditch attempt to save his son, Whitby’s father, arch-colonialist, Charles Whitby, forces a new investigation into the killing. The investigation leads Inspector Persis Wadia of the Bombay Police to the old colonial capital of Calcutta, where, with the help of Scotland Yard criminalist Archie Blackfinch, she uncovers a possible link to a second case, the brutal murder of an African-American G.I. during the Calcutta Killings of 1946. How are the cases connected? If Whitby didn’t murder Mazumdar, then who did? And why?
This is Book 4 in the ‘Malabar House’ series. Check out Book One – ‘Midnight at Malabar House‘.
In the summer of 1974 a heatwave blankets Boston and Mary Pat Fennessey is trying to stay one step ahead of the bill collectors. Mary Pat has lived her entire life in the housing projects of ‘Southie’, the Irish American enclave that stubbornly adheres to old tradition and stands proudly apart. One night Mary Pat’s teenage daughter Jules stays out late and doesn’t come home. That same evening, a young Black man is found dead, struck by a subway train under mysterious circumstances. The two events seem unconnected. But Mary Pat, propelled by a desperate search for her missing daughter, begins turning over stones best left untouched – asking questions that bother Marty Butler, chieftain of the Irish mob, and the men who work for him, men who don’t take kindly to any threat to their business.
This is a stand-alone novel.
Deena Garvey disappeared in 2004. She left behind a daughter and a sister. Deena’s daughter grows up in the country. She learns how to hunt, when to seed the garden, how to avoid making her father angry. Never to ask about her absent mother. Deena’s sister stays stuck in the city, getting desperate. She knows the man responsible for her sister’s disappearance, but she can’t prove it. Not yet. Over fourteen years, four hundred miles apart, these two women slowly begin to unearth the secrets and lies at the heart of their family, and the history of power and control that has shaped them both in such different ways. But can they reach each other in time? And will the truth finally answer the question of their lives: What really happened to Deena Garvey?
This is a stand-alone novel.
Adelaide Hills, Christmas Eve, 1959: At the end of a scorching hot day, beside a creek on the grounds of a grand and mysterious house, a local delivery driver makes a terrible discovery. A police investigation is called and the small town of Tambilla becomes embroiled in one of the most shocking and perplexing murder cases in the history of South Australia. Many years later and thousands of miles away, Jess is a journalist in search of a story. Having lived and worked in London for nearly two decades, she now finds herself laid off from her full-time job and struggling to make ends meet. A phone call out of nowhere summons her back to Sydney, where her beloved grandmother, Nora, who raised Jess when her mother could not, has suffered a fall and been raced to the hospital. At Nora’s house, Jess discovers a book that chronicles the police investigation into a long-buried crime: the Turner Family Tragedy of Christmas Eve, 1959. It is only when Jess skims through the pages that she finds a shocking connection between her own family and this once-infamous event — a murder mystery that has never been resolved satisfactorily.
This is a stand-alone novel.
Teetarpur is just a nondescript village outside Delhi – famous for nothing. Until an eight-year-old girl is found swinging from the branch of a Jamun tree, a scarf noosed about her neck. Her father discovers the body, and at the scene of the crime he also finds Mansoor – an itinerant Muslim in the largely Hindu village – upon whom suspicion immediately falls. Sub-Inspector Ombir Singh has only one officer to command, and they have only one working revolver between them, but it’s up to him to find the real killer, and to try to stop the angry villagers from taking violent revenge on Mansoor. With Ombir’s limited resources it’s an almost impossible job – on top of which he’s worn out, by his long career, by the heat and by his wife who he’s sure is having an affair. Can he even be bothered to try?
This is a stand-alone novel.
Sixty-year-old self-proclaimed tea expert Vera Wong enjoys nothing more than sipping a good cup of Wulong and doing some healthy ‘detective’ work on the internet (AKA checking up on her son to see if he’s dating anybody yet). But when Vera wakes up one morning to find a dead man in the middle of her tea shop, it’s going to take more than a strong Longjing to fix things. Knowing she’ll do a better job than the police possibly could – because nobody sniffs out a wrongdoing quite like a suspicious Chinese mother with time on her hands – Vera decides it’s down to her to catch the killer. Nobody spills the tea like this amateur sleuth.
This is a stand-alone novel.
Ian Fleming said there was one essential criterion for a good thriller, ‘one simply has to turn the pages’. Eligible books in this category are thrillers set in any period and include, but are not limited to, spy fiction, psychological thrillers and action/adventure stories.
Following a disastrous divorce, former New Jersey detective Mickey Gibson is now employed by a global investigation company, ProEye, to track down some of the extremely wealthy who seem bent on not paying their debts. Mickey misses police work but it has no place for her new role as the sole carer of two small children. When Mickey is asked by Arlene Robinson, a colleague from ProEye, to inventory an old mansion owned by a notorious former arms dealer, Rutger Novak, she discovers a long-decomposed body in a secret room. Apparently, Novak has cheated ProEye clients out of millions in the past and now they want to nail him. As the police investigation begins, they discover that there is no Arlene Robinson working for ProEye. Nor is there a mansion allegedly belonging to Novak. And the dead man is named as local wealthy recluse Daniel Pottinger.
This is Book One in the ‘Mickey Gibson’ series.
These are some of the last words Jack Givins’s father spoke to him before he was whisked away by witness protection, leaving Jack and his mother to pick up the shattered pieces of their lives. Years later, Jack is a struggling author, recruited by the U.S. Marshals to create false histories for people in witness protection. Jack realises this may be a chance to find his dad – but then he discovers he’s gone missing, and he could be in serious danger. Jack knows he has to track him down. But how will he find a man he’s never truly known? And how will he evade his father’s deadly enemies – enemies who wouldn’t think twice about using his own son against him?
This is a stand-alone novel.
Titus Crown is the first Black sheriff in the history of Charon County, Virginia. In recent decades, Charon has had only two murders. After years of working as an FBI agent, no one knows better than Titus that while his hometown might seem like a land of moonshine, cornbread, and honeysuckle, secrets always fester under the surface. But a year to the day after Titus’s election, a school teacher is killed by a former student. The student is then fatally shot by Titus’s deputies. As Titus investigates the shootings, he unearths terrible crimes, and a serial killer who has been hiding in plain sight, haunting the dirt lanes and woodland clearings of Charon. With the killer’s possible connections to a local church and the town’s harrowing history weighing on him, Titus tries to project confidence about closing the case while concealing a painful secret from his own past. At the same time, he also has to contend with a far-right group that wants to hold a parade in celebration of the town’s Confederate history. Charon is Titus’s home and his heart. But where faith and violence meet, there will be a reckoning.
This is a stand-alone novel.
After his son is convicted of murder, Vietnam War veteran Jeremiah Fitzjurls takes over the care of his granddaughter, Joanna, raising her with as much warmth as can be found in an Ozark junkyard outfitted to be an armoury. He teaches her how to shoot and fight, but there is not enough training in the world to protect her when the dreaded Ledfords, notorious meth dealers and fanatical white supremacists, come to collect on Joanna as payment for a long-overdue blood debt. Headed by rancorous patriarch Bunn and smooth-talking, erudite Evail, the Ledfords have never forgotten what the Fitzjurls family did to them, and they will not be satisfied until they have taken an eye for an eye. As they seek revenge, and as Jeremiah desperately searches for his granddaughter, their narratives collide in this immersive story about family and how far some will go to honour, defend-or in some cases, destroy it.
This is a stand-alone novel.
Your estate agent calls. She’s running late and needs you to show a man around your home. You let him in and begin the tour. But something about him feels wrong … You ask him to leave and he refuses. Then he tells you something about you. Something inconceivable. And then you realise … He doesn’t want your house. He wants YOU.
This is a stand-alone novel.
In Hollywood, nobody talks. But everybody whispers. Welcome to Mae Pruett’s LA. A ‘black-bag’ publicist at one of Hollywood’s most powerful crisis PR firms, Mae’s job isn’t to get good news out, it’s to keep the bad news in and contain the scandals. But just as she starts to question her job and life choices, her boss is gunned down in front of the Beverly Hills Hotel, and everything changes. Investigating with the help of an ex-boyfriend, Mae dives headlong into a neon joyride through the jungle of contemporary Hollywood. Pitted against the twisted system she’s worked so hard to perpetuate, she’s desperately fighting for redemption, and her life.
This is a stand-alone novel.
Kabuto is an ordinary guy; stressed with work, hassled by his wife and disrespected by his son. No wonder he visits his doctor so often. Except ‘the Doctor’ is actually his handler, and Kabuto is a hired assassin. The ‘prescriptions’ the Doctor hands over are his unlucky targets. Because although Kabuto may seem like a small man at home, he’s really good at killing people. Kabuto is worn out with the business of murder. He’s trying to pay his way out of the Doctor’s employment with a few last jobs. But the most lucrative contracts involve taking out other professional assassins and his final assignment puts both him and his family in danger.
This is Book 3 in the ‘Assassins’ series. Check out Book One – ‘Three Assassins‘.
Bishop Jeremiah Dawodu, pastor of a Nigerian megachurch, has been arrested and charged with the murder of his wife, Folasade, the ‘First Lady’ of the church. The arrest was public, humiliating and sensational – sending shockwaves through Lagos – but throughout it all, Bishop Dawodu maintains his innocence. Philip Taiwo, an acclaimed investigative psychologist, is asked by his sister, a member of the church’s congregation, to clear the pastor’s name. With no actual body, it looks to be a simple case and despite Philip’s dislike of organised religion, he agrees to take it on as a favour to his sister. Then the First Lady’s body is found in a nearby lake just as Philip’s beloved family come under attack from someone warning him off the case, and he realises that nothing to do with this investigation will be straightforward. Was it murder or suicide? Is someone framing the Bishop or the First Lady?
This is Book 2 in the ‘Philip Taiwo’ series. Check out Book One – ‘Lightseekers’.
In Siberia, revenge is served ice cold.The epic third instalment from the author of the acclaimed Anthrax Island and Times book of the month, Black Run. An agent the world thinks is dead can be useful. John Tyler has gone rogue, pursuing an international vendetta against those responsible for killing his brother. But he’s lured back by the CIA for one final mission to wipe the slate clean. Simple, for a man like Tyler: journey to an old Soviet-era hotel on an ice-locked island in the frozen wastes of Siberia to obtain information from a Russian scientist about a double agent within NATO. But strange things are afoot, events related to the hotel’s grisly past and the KGB’s Cold war experiments into psychic phenomena. Unexplained deaths revolve around the scientist, and with enemies from Tyler’s own past emerging from the rotting woodwork, he must fight to keep the man alive against the odds. But a killer stalks the hotel’s dilapidated corridors, able, apparently, to kill through concrete walls and sealed doors. As Tyler homes in on the NATO double agent, he quickly realises nothing is as it seems, no-one can be trusted, and his own past is coming back to haunt him.
This is Book 3 in the ‘John Tyler’ series. Check out Book One – ‘Anthrax Island’.
After that night, nothing was ever the same again. Fifteen years ago, Sara Linton’s life changed forever when a celebratory night out ended in a violent attack that tore her world apart. Since then, Sara has remade her life. A successful doctor, engaged to a man she loves, she has finally managed to leave the past behind her. Until one evening, on call in the ER, everything changes. Sara battles to save a broken young woman who’s been brutally attacked. But as the investigation progresses, led by GBI Special Agent Will Trent, it becomes clear that Dani Cooper’s assault is uncannily linked to Sara’s. And it seems the past isn’t going to stay buried forever.
This is Book 11 in the ‘Will Trent’ series. Check out Book One – ‘Triptych’.
British spy Leonard Flood is asked to investigate the poisoning in London of Willa Karlsson, a retired British secret service vetting officer suspected of being a Russian agent. British intelligence is terrified by the possibility that Moscow poisoned her upon her retirement since she was no longer useful to them. When Leonard discovers that he is also a suspect in the investigation and that Willa’s story is less a story of betrayal than one of friendship, he must decide whether to hand her to her masters or to help her to escape.
This is Book 3 in the ‘Discipline Files’ series. Check out Book One – ‘Beside the Syrian Sea’.
This Dagger is for the best crime novel by a first-time author of any nationality, who has their first novel of any kind published in the UK in English during 2023. The author must not have had a novel of any sort published anywhere before under any name whatsoever. In the case of novels with more than one author, all the authors must meet this requirement.
A well-read old dear has an unhealthy interest in murder, in this sharp, witty, and refreshingly original cozy crime novel. Retired librarian and bookshop owner May Morrigan lives in the affluent village of Blackheath with Fletcher, her best friend since they met decades ago, and May’s two dogs. What could be more normal? But May is not your average little old lady. After an unpleasant church volunteer and an annoying local butcher meet their untimely ends, Fletcher and May team up to do some sleuthing. Soon, the elderly pair start working with a young journalist to investigate the case of a missing girl and its possible link to previous unsolved crimes. May finds this new project quite intriguing. She’s never met a murderer before-and now she just may get the chance, if they play their cards right.
This is Book One in the ‘Most Unusual Mysteries‘ series.
In the UK, someone is reported missing every 90 seconds. Just gone. Vanished. In the blink of an eye. DCS Kat Frank knows all about loss. A widowed single mother, Kat is a cop who trusts her instincts. Picked to lead a pilot programme that has her paired with AIDE (Artificially Intelligent Detective Entity) Lock, Kat’s instincts come up against Lock’s logic. But when the two missing person’s cold cases they are reviewing suddenly become active, Lock is the only one who can help Kat when the case gets personal. AI versus human experience. Logic versus instinct. With lives on the line can the pair work together before someone else becomes another statistic?
This is Book One in the ‘Kat and Lock’ Series.
Berkeley, California 1944: A former presidential candidate is assassinated in one of the rooms at the opulent Claremont Hotel. A rich industrialist, Walter Wilkinson could have been targeted by any number of adversaries. But Detective Al Sullivan’s investigation brings up the spectre of another tragedy at the Claremont ten years earlier: the death of seven-year-old Iris Stafford, a member of the wealthy and influential Bainbridge family. Some say she haunts the Claremont still. The many threads of the case keep leading Sullivan back to the three remaining Bainbridge heiresses, now adults: Iris’s sister, Isabella, and her cousins Cassie and Nicole. Determined not to let anything distract him from the truth – not the powerful influence of Bainbridges’ grandmother, or the political aspirations of Berkeley’s district attorney, or the interest of Chinese first lady Madame Chiang Kai-Shek – Sullivan follows his investigation to its devastating conclusion.
This is a stand-alone novel.
When Saint Sebastian’s School becomes the target of a shocking arson spree, the Sisters of the Sublime Blood and their surrounding community are thrust into chaos. Unsatisfied with the officials’ response, sardonic and headstrong Sister Holiday becomes determined to unveil the mysterious attacker herself and return her home and sanctuary to its former peace. Her investigation leads down a twisty path of suspicion and secrets in the sticky, oppressive New Orleans heat, turning her against colleagues, students, and even fellow Sisters along the way. Sister Holiday is more faithful than most, but she’s no saint. To piece together the clues of this high-stakes mystery, she must first reckon with the sins of her checkered past-and neither task will be easy.
This is Book One in the ‘Sister Holiday Mysteries‘ series.
Cilla is a 22-year-old contract killer, specialising in the dry job: a murder interpreted as death by natural causes. Her main client, Vladimir Haugr, is the owner of TGR’s bridge club in London. In return for a flat, a retainer and expenses, Cilla does five jobs a year. She occasionally works freelance. Neither strong, nor beautiful, she isn’t your typical female protagonist. In fact, she is so unremarkable as to render her almost invisible, an advantage in her line of work. She has survived because she is clever, stubborn and lucky. But Cilla knows that, statistically, her luck is about to run out. She must find a way to reinvent herself. Soon. She also knows that she is invaluable to Vladimir Haugr, and that he will never let her go. Will Cilla be able to reinvent herself? And if so, at what cost?
This is a stand-alone novel.
In the end, it did not matter what I said at my trial. No one believed me. Edinburgh, October 1679. Lady Christian is arrested and charged with the murder of her lover, James Forrester. News of her imprisonment and subsequent trial is splashed across the broadsides, with headlines that leave little room for doubt: Adulteress. Whore. Murderess. Only a year before, Lady Christian was newly married, leading a life of privilege and respectability. So, what led her to risk everything for an affair? And does that make her guilty of murder? She wasn’t the only woman in Forrester’s life, and certainly not the only one who might have had cause to wish him dead.
This is a stand-alone novel.
For 6 amateur bakers, competing in Bake Week is a dream come true. When they arrive at Grafton Manor to compete, they’re ready to do whatever it takes to win the ultimate prize- The Golden Spoon. But for the show’s famous host, Betsy Martin, Bake Week is more than just a competition. Grafton Manor is her family’s home and legacy – and Bake Week is her life’s work. It’s imperative that both continue to succeed. But as the competition commences, things begin to go awry. At first, it’s small acts of sabotage. But when a body is discovered, it’s clear that for someone in the competition, The Golden Spoon is a prize worth killing for.
This is a stand-alone novel.
It’s the Fourth of July weekend at the prestigious West Heart country club. Gathered for cocktails on the first evening are just some of the guests: the club president, the treasurer and his pregnant wife, the snooping school boy, the bereaved father, the taciturn caretaker, the prospective member, the private detective. And there will also be a body. And a fiendish mystery to solve. But everything else is all to play for. And you are about to find out that you have a role to play in this mystery too.
This is a stand-alone novel.
Laura has a husband, children, a home in a city she loves. She thinks she can be happy, despite her past. If they only knew my secret. Until someone walks back into her life who she knows will shatter everything. Alexis was her first love. A love so exhilarating, it is impossible to resist. I know I should end it. But I can’t. Then Alexis is found dead, and the police are knocking at Laura’s door. They’re asking her questions and she’s telling them lies. I didn’t kill him. I promise. Someone wants Laura to pay for what she’s been running from. Someone with an obsession that they can’t let go.
This is a stand-alone novel.
You looked away for just a minute. Your daughter is gone, and only you can find her. Because you know exactly who took her. And they’re making her pay for your past. To save one child, you must leave the other. You must return to your old life. And become the woman you left behind years ago. It’s every parent’s worst nightmare. Now it’s your reality.
This is a stand-alone novel.
Who killed Clemmie? Was it the blithe, sociopathic boyfriend? His impossibly wealthy godmother? The gallery owner with whom Clemmie was having an affair? Or was it the result of something else entirely? All the party-goers have alibis. Naturally. This investigation is going to be about aristocrats and Classics degrees, Instagram influencers and whose father knows who. Or is it ‘whom’? Detective Caius Beauchamp isn’t sure. He’s sharply dressed, smart, and thoroughly modern-he discovers Clemmie’s body on his early morning jog. As he searches for the dark truth beneath the luxurious life of these London socialites, a wall of staggering wealth and privilege threatens to shut down his investigation before it’s even begun. Can Caius peer through the tangled mess of connections in which the other half live-and die-before the case is wrenched from his hands?
This is Book One in the ‘DI Caius Beauchamp‘ series.
1876, Victorian London. Minnie Ward, a feisty scriptwriter for the Variety Palace Music Hall, is devastated when her best friend is found brutally murdered. She enlists the help of private detective Albert Easterbrook to help her find justice. Together they navigate London, from its high-class clubs to its murky underbelly. But as the bodies pile up, they must rely on one another if they’re going to track down the killer – and make it out alive.
This is Book One in the ‘Variety Palace Mysteries’ series.
This award is for the best historical crime novel, first published in the UK in English during 2023, and set in any period up to 50 years prior to the year in which the award will be made. For novels that involve passages set later than this time period, at least three quarters of the book should be set in an earlier period.
Surely you would like to be immortalised in art, fixed forever in perfection? Sadler’s Wells, 1933. I would kill to dance like her. Disciplined and dedicated, Olivia is the perfect ballerina. But no matter how hard she works, she can never match identical twin Clara’s charm. I would kill to be with her. As rehearsals intensify for the ballet Coppelia, the girls feel increasingly like they are being watched. And, as infatuation turns to obsession, everything begins to unravel.
This is a stand-alone novel.
The body of a young woman is discovered in a lock-up garage, an apparent suicide. But pathologist Dr Quirke and Detective Inspector Strafford soon suspect foul play.The victim’s sister returns from London to help the two men, but, with relations between them increasingly strained, and their investigation taking them back to events from the final days of the Second World War, can they join the pieces of a hidden puzzle before it’s too late?
This is Book 9 in the ‘Quirke’ series. Check out Book One – ‘Christine Falls’.
In the fall of 1863, the Union Army controls the Mississippi River and much of Louisiana, as the Civil War rolls on. Wade Lufkin is a man without a country or a cause – an idle spectator since New Orleans surrendered, he now paints at his uncle’s plantation. That is until he finds an intriguing new subject. Hannah Laveau is an enslaved woman who stands accused of everything from adultery to insurrection, from magic to murder. But all she wants is to find her missing son – and she will risk her life for it. When Hannah goes on the run, she must dodge the calculating and merciless local constable and the slave catchers that prowl the bayou as she flees through Louisiana, from the cottonmouth snakes and tree-lined swamps to the dingy saloons of New Orleans.
This is a stand-alone novel.
1915, London: Working in the dusty bookshop that her Aunt Violet mysteriously inherited, Hannah Merrill is accustomed to finding twists in every tale. But discovering her beloved best friend Lily-Anne – with a paperknife through her heart – in the middle of the bookshop, is not a plotline she saw coming. The case is anything but textbook. With the discovery of a coded German message, and Hannah’s instinct that Lily-Anne’s husband is keeping secrets, she determines to get to the bottom of it. She can’t do it alone though. To crack this case, Hannah will need the enlist the help of her outrageous, opinionated, only-occasionally-objectionable Aunt Violet. They think they’re making progress until one of their chief suspects is found dead. And Hannah realises that she is herself now in the murderer’s sights. Will the final chapter be the ending of a killer… or just a killer ending?
This is Book One in the ‘Miss Merrill and Aunt Violet Mystery‘ series.
Harlem, 1936: Lena Aldridge grew up in a cramped corner of London, hearing stories of the bright lights of Broadway. She always imagined that when she finally went to New York City, she’d be there with her father. But now he’s dead, and she’s newly arrived and alone, chasing a dream that has quickly dried up. When Will Goodman-the handsome musician she met on the crossing from England-offers for her to stay with his friends in Harlem, she agrees. She has nowhere else to go, and this will give her a chance to get to know Will better and see if she can find any trace of the family she might have remaining. Will’s friends welcome her with open arms, but just as Lena discovers the stories her father once told her were missing giant pieces of information, she also starts to realise the man she’s falling too fast and too hard for has secrets of his own. And they might just place a target on her back. Especially when she is drawn to the brightest stage in town.
This is Book 2 in the ‘Canary Club Mystery’ series. Check out Book One – ‘Miss Aldridge Regrets‘.
Jesus College, Oxford, 1881. An undergraduate is found dead at his lodgings and the medical examination reveals some shocking findings. When the young man’s guardian blames the college for his death and threatens a scandal, Basil Rice, a Jesus College fellow with a secret to hide, is forced to act and finds himself drawn into Sidney Parker’s sad life. The mystery soon attracts the attention of Rhiannon ‘Non’ Vaughan, a young Welsh polymath and one of the young women newly admitted to university lectures. But when neither the college principal nor the powerful ladies behind Oxford’s new female halls will allow her to become involved, Non’s fierce intelligence and determination to prove herself drive her on. Both misfits at the university, Non and Basil form an unlikely partnership, and it soon falls to them to investigate the mysterious circumstances of Parker’s death. But between corporate malfeasance and snake-oil salesmen, they soon find the dreaming spires of Oxford are not quite what they seem.
This is Book One in the ‘Oxford Mysteries‘.
At the centre of Viper’s Dream is a turbulent love story. And the climax bears an element of Greek tragedy. For the better part of 20 years, Clyde ‘The Viper’ Morton has been in love with Yolanda ‘Yo-Yo’ DeVray, a singer of immense talent but a woman consumed by demons. By turns ambitious and self-destructive, conniving and naive, Yo-Yo is a classic femme fatale. She is a bright star in a constellation of compelling characters including the chauffeur-turned-gangster Peewee Robinson, the Jewish kingpin Abraham ‘Mr. O’ Orlinsky, the heroin dealer West Indian Charlie, the corrupt cop Red Carney, the wife-beating singer Pretty Paul Baxter, the pimp Buttercup Jones and the brutal enforcer Randall Country Johnson.
This is a stand-alone novel.
By the summer of 1660 the last remnants of the Republic have been swept away and the Stuarts have been restored under their king, Charles II. A list of regicides believed to be involved in the death of Charles I is drawn up. Gruesome executions begin to take place and the hunt intensifies for those who have gone into hiding at home or abroad. Although not a regicide, staunch Republican Damian Seeker is on a list of traitors to the king. Royalist spy, Lady Anne Winter, is employed to find evidence of guilt or innocence among the names on this Winter List. Seeker has fled England but his beloved daughter Manon remains, married to Seeker’s friend, the lawyer Lawrence Ingolby, and living in York. As the conduit to her father and to others on the Winter List and surrounded by spies and watchers, Manon lives in constant danger and fear of discovery. One of those spies is closer than even she could have imagined.
This is Book 6 in the ‘Damian Seeker’ series. Check out Book One – ‘The Seeker’.
1938, London. Ambitious lawyer Edmund Ibbs has got his teeth into the case of a lifetime – defending the young woman accused of shooting her husband in the infamous ‘Ferris Wheel Murder’ case. Despite a plethora of evidence against his client, Ibbs is certain he can secure her acquittal. But after a night of magic and illusion at London’s Pomegranate Theatre, Ibbs finds himself behind bars, accused of a double murder. The renowned prestidigitator Professor Paolini and the operator of said notorious Ferris wheel are dead, and as far as Scotland Yard’s Inspector Flint is concerned, all signs point to the lawyer’s guilt. Luckily for Ibbs, illusionist turned sleuth Joseph Spector also attended the theatre that night. Can Spector’s eye for detail pierce the veil of deceit in a world of illusion and misdirection, where seeing is not always believing?
This is Book 2 in the ‘Spector Locked-Room Mystery’ series. Check out Book One – ‘Death and the Conjuror’.
May 1796, and former Foreign Office clerk Laurence Jago and his larger-than-life employer, the journalist William Philpott, have escaped America – and Philpott’s near imprisonment for libel – by the skin of their teeth. They return to Laurence’s hometown of Helston, Cornwall, in the hope of rest and recuperation, but instead find themselves in the middle of a tumultuous election that has the inhabitants of the town at one another’s throats. Only two men may vote in this rotten borough, and when one of them dies in suspicious circumstances, Laurence is ordered to investigate on behalf of the town’s political patron, his old master the Duke of Leeds. Then the second elector is poisoned and suspicion turns on the town doctor, the gentle Pythagoras Jago, Laurence’s own cousin. Suddenly Laurence finds himself ensnared in generations of bad blood and petty rivalries, with his cousin’s fate in his hands.
This is Book 3 in the ‘Laurence Jago’ series. Check out Book One – ‘Black Drop’.
1853. In a city of science, discovery can be deadly. Body parts have been found at Surgeons’ Hall, and they’re not anatomy specimens. Dr Will Raven is able to identify a prime suspect, but the individual he seeks happens to be an accomplished actor, a man of a thousand faces and a renowned master of disguise. Meanwhile, mesmerism, spiritualism and other unexplained phenomena are taking hold of hearts and minds. Frustrated in her own medical ambitions, Sarah Fisher sees opportunity in a new therapeutic field not already closed off to women. With the lines between science and spectacle dangerously blurred, the stage is set for a grand and deadly illusion.
This is Book 4 in the ‘Raven, Fisher, and Simpson’ series. Check out Book One – ‘The Way of All Flesh‘.
As a child, Gruoch’s grandmother prophesies that she will one day be Queen of Alba and reclaim the lands of her Pictish kin. When, many years later, she is betrothed to Duncan, the heir-elect, the prophecy appears to come true. Determined to never to be as powerless as her parents, Gruoch leaves behind her home, her family and her friend MacBethad, and travels to the royal seat at Scone to seal her fate. But when a deadly turn of events forces Gruoch to flee Duncan and the capital, Gruoch finds herself at the mercy of an old enemy. Her hope of becoming Queen all but lost, Gruoch does what she must to survive, until she is given a choice: live a long, peaceful life but fall into obscurity, or seize her chance for vengeance and a path back to the throne.
This is a stand-alone novel.
This award is for crime novels (defined by the broadest definition to include thrillers, suspense novels and spy fiction) as long as the book was not originally written in English and has been translated into English for UK publication during 2023.
Where is Kiera Templeton? Aaron and Grace Templeton will never forget the 1998 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. The day their daughter Kiera got lost in the crowd. Investigative journalist Miren Triggs has spent years trying to help the Templetons find her. But with no leads, Miren fears there’s nothing more she can do. Until Kiera’s 8th birthday, when a video arrives showing Kiera alive and well, playing in a bedroom. Miren can’t believe it – finally, a lead she can follow. Until another video arrives. It’s the same bedroom. But Kiera is gone. After years of searching, Miren refuses to let Kiera disappear again. But she has no idea how far someone will go to stop her.
This is Book One in the ‘Miren Triggs’ series.
You’ve never met anyone like her. Antonia Scott is special. Very special. She is not a policewoman or a lawyer. She has never wielded a weapon or carried a badge, and yet, she has solved dozens of crimes. But it’s been awhile since Antonia left her attic in Madrid. The things she has lost are much more important to her than the things awaiting her outside. She also doesn’t receive visitors. That’s why she really, really doesn’t like it when she hears unknown footsteps coming up the stairs. Whoever it is, Antonia is sure that they are coming to look for her. And she likes that even less.
This is Book One in the ‘Antonia Scott’ series.
When a young woman known for drug smuggling goes missing, her elderly grandparents have no choice but to call the retired Detective Konrad. Still looking for his own father’s murderer, Konrad agrees to investigate the case. But digging into the past reveals more than he set out to discover, and a strange connection to a little girl who drowned in the Reykjavik city pond decades ago recaptures everyone’s attention. A brilliant, chilling tale of broken dreams and children who have nowhere to turn.
This is Book 2 in the ‘Konrad’ series. Check out Book One – ‘The Darkness Knows’.
Kabuto is an ordinary guy; stressed with work, hassled by his wife and disrespected by his son. No wonder he visits his doctor so often. Except ‘the Doctor’ is actually his handler, and Kabuto is a hired assassin. The ‘prescriptions’ the Doctor hands over are his unlucky targets. Because although Kabuto may seem like a small man at home, he’s really good at killing people. Kabuto is worn out with the business of murder. He’s trying to pay his way out of the Doctor’s employment with a few last jobs. But the most lucrative contracts involve taking out other professional assassins and his final assignment puts both him and his family in danger.
This is Book 3 in the ‘Assassins’ series. Check out Book One – ‘Three Assassins‘.
Forensic pathologist Lars Pohjanen has only a few weeks to live when he asks Rebecka Martinsson to investigate a murder that has long since passed the statute of limitations. A body found in a freezer at the home of the deceased alcoholic, Henry Pekkari, has been identified as a man who disappeared without a trace in 1962: the father of Swedish Olympic boxing champion Borje Strom. Rebecka wants nothing to do with a fifty-year-old case – she has enough to worry about. But how can she ignore a dying man’s wish? When the post-mortem confirms that Pekkari, too, was murdered, Rebecka has a red-hot investigation on her hands. But what does it have to do with the body kept in his freezer for decades? Meanwhile, the city of Kiruna is being torn down and moved a few kilometres east, to make way for the mine that has been devouring the city from below. With the city in flux, the tentacles of organised crime are slowly taking over.
This is Book 6 in the ‘Rebecka Martinsson’ series. Check out Book One – ‘The Savage Altar’.
Copenhagen author Hannah is the darling of the literary community and her novels have achieved massive critical acclaim. But nobody actually reads them, and frustrated by writer’s block, Hannah has the feeling that she’s doing something wrong. When she expresses her contempt for genre fiction, Hanna is publicly challenged to write a crime novel in thirty days. Scared that she will lose face, she accepts, and her editor sends her to a quiet, tight-knit village in Iceland, filled with colourful local characters – for inspiration. But two days after her arrival, the body of a fisherman’s young son is pulled from the water … and what begins as a search for plot material quickly turns into a messy and dangerous investigation that threatens to uncover secrets that put everything at risk … including Hannah.
This is a stand-alone novel.
In a small town just like any other, a police identity check goes wrong. The victim, Said, was fifteen years old. And now he is dead. Mattia is just eleven years old, and witnesses the hatred and sadness felt by those around him. While he didn’t know Said, his face can be seen all over the neighbourhood, graffitied on walls in red paint, demanding Justice. Mattia decides to pull together the pieces of the puzzle, to try to understand what happened. Because even the dead don’t stay buried forever, and nothing is lost, ever.
This is a stand-alone novel.
For Inspector Hunkeler the New Year begins with a most unwelcome phone call. He is summoned back to Basel from his holiday to unravel a gruesome killing in a gardening allotment on the city’s outskirts. An old man known as Anton Fluckiger has been shot in the head and found hanging from a butcher’s hook from the roof of his garden shed – like butchers hang the carcasses of dead animals. Hunkeler must deal not only with the quarrelsome tenants of the allotment but with the challenges of investigating a murder that has taken place outside his jurisdiction, across the French border in Alsace. The clues lead to the Emmental in Berne, and then events from the last weeks of the Second World War in Alsace come to light, the wounds of which have never healed in the region.
This is Book 6 in the ‘Hunkeler’ series. Check out Book One – ‘Silver Pebbles’.
The Consultant is very good at his job. He creates simple, elegant, effective solutions for – restructuring. Nothing obvious or messy. Certainly nothing anyone would ever suspect as murder. The ‘natural deaths’ he plans have always gone well- a medicine replaced here, a mechanism jammed there. His performance reviews are excellent. And it’s not as though he knows these people. Until his next ‘customer’ turns out to be someone he not only knows but cares about, and for the first time, he begins to question the role he plays in the vast, anonymous Company. And as he slowly begins to understand the real scope of their work, he realises just how easy it would be for the Company to arrange one more perfect murder. But how far will he go to escape The Company? And how far will they go to stop him?
This is Book One in the ‘Company’ series.
One evening in 2015, journalist Pavel Vladimirovich and his wife Tatyana are at home when the news breaks that there has been a terrorist attack. Over a hundred people have been taken hostage in the Church of the Epiphany in the village of Nikolskoye near Moscow. As they watch, on the TV screen appears the face of one of the terrorists: Vadim Petrovich Seryegin, an old friend of Pavel’s. The friendship between the two men evolved through periods of conflict, war, peace, emigration, and isolation. Pavel may be one of Vadim’s only friends, and when others realise this, he is asked to negotiate with Vadim. The Church is horrifyingly silent when Pavel enters. Vadim welcomes Pavel but refuses to capitulate. As the stakes get higher and higher, Vadim’s story including his connection to the wars in Chechnya and the Ukraine is revealed and it becomes clear that the first meeting between the two men was not all it first seemed to be to Pavel. Back in the church, Pavel learns that the terrorists have one and only one demand, and that it concerns the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin.
This is a stand-alone novel.
A box of photo albums is found in the attic of a house in Hofn, a small fishing village on the south coast of Iceland. The new owners return it to the man who sold them the house, along with a muddied child’s shoe with a name written on the sole: Salvor. The man is baffled; they never knew anyone called that. Shortly after the phone rings – it’s the nursing home where his mother, an Alzheimer’s patient, lives. She’s suffered a heart attack and the doctors don’t expect her to live much longer. The nurse asks him to let his sister, Salvor, know as well. Their mother has been asking for her. Johanna is a member of a search and rescue team in Hofn and she’s searching for two couples from Reykjavik. Their phones’ last location has been pinpointed as the road leading up into the highlands. It’s far from clear why these people would have made such a risky trip in the middle of the harsh winter, and they soon find the first dead body. More troubling, Johanna senses her team is being tracked out in the snow. Hjorvar works at the Stokksnes Radar Station in the highlands. He is alone when the phone connected to the gate rings. It’s the first time it’s done so since he began working there five months ago. He picks up the phone but can hear only interference and what sounds like a child’s voice asking for her mother. How are these events connected? And what may be searching for its prey out on the ice?
This is a stand-alone novel.
From the outside, she has an enviable life – a successful career, stunning looks, a beautiful house in the suburbs, two healthy children, and most importantly, an ideal husband. After fifteen years together, she is still besotted with him. But she’s never quite sure that her passion is reciprocated. Determined to keep their relationship perfect, she meticulously prepares for every encounter they have, always taking care to make her actions seem effortless. She watches him attentively, charting every mistake and punishing him accordingly to help him improve. And she tests him – setting traps to make sure that he still loves her just as much as he did when they first met. Until one day she realises she may have gone too far.
This is a stand-alone novel.
The Dagger in the Library is a prize for a body of work by an established writer of crime fiction or non-fiction who has long been popular with borrowers from libraries. It also rewards authors who have supported libraries and their users through taking part in library events. The Dagger in the Library is awarded to an author writing in Britain who is nominated by libraries and borrowers in the UK and the Republic of Ireland and voted on by libraries.
Alex lives a comfortable life with his wife Beth in the leafy suburb of Silver Vale. Fine, so he’s not the most sociable guy on the street, he prefers to keep himself to himself, but he’s a good husband and an easy-going neighbour. That’s until Beth announces the creation of a nature trail on a local site that’s been disused for decades and suddenly Alex is a changed man. Now he’s always watching. Questioning. Struggling to hide his dread. As the landscapers get to work, a secret threatens to surface from years ago, back in Alex’s twenties when he got entangled with a seductive young woman called Marina, who threw both their lives into turmoil. And who sparked a police hunt for a murder suspect that was never quite what it seemed. It still isn’t. No one else could have done it. Could they?
This is a stand-alone novel.
Ben Koenig used to head the US Marshal’s elite Special Operations Group. His team hunted the bad guys–the really bad guys, and he could find anyone. Then one day Koenig himself disappeared. Koenig has been on the run for six years. Now suddenly his face is on every television screen in the country and his cover is blown. A woman has gone missing, and her father will do anything to find her. He wants Koenig to discover what happened, no matter the cost. The trail leads Koenig to a small town in the burning heat of the Chihuahuan Desert, where some people have a secret they’ll do anything to protect. But Koenig has a secret of his own: a unique condition that makes him unable to feel fear. Now Koenig is coming for them. And they should be afraid.
This is Book One in the ‘Ben Koenig’ series.
It’s the opening night of The Manor, and no expense, small or large, has been spared. The infinity pool sparkles; crystal pouches for guests’ healing have been placed in the Seaside Cottages and Woodland Hutches; the “Manor Mule” cocktail (grapefruit, ginger, vodka, and a dash of CBD oil) is being poured with a heavy hand. Everyone is wearing linen. And yet, just outside the Manor’s immaculately kept grounds, an ancient forest bristles with secrets. The local community resents what they see as the Manor’s intrusion into the local woods and attempts to privatize the beach, and small skirmishes have erupted on the edges of the property between locals and the staff. And the whispers keep coming, about an old piece of pagan folklore – it must be folklore — the Night Birds, an avenging force that can be called upon to make right wrongs that elude the law. Though surely everything at the Manor has been done above board. On the Sunday morning of opening weekend, the local police are called. There’s been a fire. A body’s been discovered. Something’s not right with the guests. What happened on the grounds of the Manor the past 36 hours? And who – or what – is the cause?
This is a stand-alone novel.
In October 2003, Luke Ryder was found dead in the garden of the family home in London, leaving behind a wealthy older widow and three stepchildren. Nobody saw anything. Now, secrets will be revealed – live on camera. Years later a group of experts re-examine the evidence on Infamous, a true-crime show – with shocking results. Does the team know more than they’ve been letting on? Or does the truth lie closer to home? Can you solve the case before they do?
This is a stand-alone novel.
The quiet, gated community of Riverview Close offers its inhabitants the perfect life within one of the most desirable areas of London. That is, until Giles Kenworthy moves in with his wife and noisy children, his gas-guzzling cars, loud parties and outrageous plans for a new swimming pool. His neighbours all have a reason to hate him. So when Kenworthy is shot dead with a crossbow bolt through his neck, they all come under suspicion. Only former Detective Daniel Hawthorne has a chance at solving the case, but he’s stuck on one part of the puzzle. How do you solve a murder when everyone has the same motive?
This is Book 5 in the ‘Hawthorne & Horowitz’ series. Check out Book One – ‘The Word is Murder’.
Bombay, 1950. James Whitby, sentenced to death for the murder of prominent lawyer and former Quit India activist Fareed Mazumdar, is less than two weeks from a date with the gallows. In a last-ditch attempt to save his son, Whitby’s father, arch-colonialist, Charles Whitby, forces a new investigation into the killing. The investigation leads Inspector Persis Wadia of the Bombay Police to the old colonial capital of Calcutta, where, with the help of Scotland Yard criminalist Archie Blackfinch, she uncovers a possible link to a second case, the brutal murder of an African-American G.I. during the Calcutta Killings of 1946. How are the cases connected? If Whitby didn’t murder Mazumdar, then who did? And why?
This is Book 4 in the ‘Malabar House’ series. Check out Book One – ‘Midnight at Malabar House‘.
The victim is lying under the trees, arms lifted above his head, unnaturally still. His muscles are slack. His eyes are empty. There are no signs of life. But he is not quite dead. When Detective Kim Stone races to the crime scene, there is no body waiting for her: the paramedics are desperately trying to save the victim’s life. But there was something very strange about the way the man was found, his arms raised above his head, his legs spread apart. When he dies on the way to the hospital, Kim is certain she’s on the hunt for a killer… but all evidence at the scene has been destroyed. The dead man, Eric Gould, seems ordinary, until the team dig into his past. As a teenager, he was locked away for attacking his girlfriend, and Kim suspects he was hurting his fianc? now. Was someone trying to stop history repeating? Then another man is found on the verge of death, his bones broken to force him into an unnatural shape. The team realise the killer is sending a message – the victims’ bodies are spelling out their sins. As boys, they were both part of a group of six who bragged about their terrible crimes. But they were children then, and when she sees the grief on the faces of their loved ones now, Kim swears to find answers. Is someone finally getting revenge… or do they think these men are still dangerous? The killer is threatening to strike again, and the only way Kim can crack the case is by tracking down the rest of the six first.
This is Book 19 in the ‘DI Kim Stone’ series. Check out Book One – ‘Silent Scream’.
When Jez Cardew’s boat is found drifting empty on the Atlantic Ocean, DI Ben Kitto and his fellow lifeboat crew members immediately fear the worst. After an extensive search yields no results, the team are forced to retreat to dry land as darkness sets in. But Kitto can’t let it go. Why would Jez – an experienced sailor – get into difficulty when the sea has been calm for weeks? Unless his disappearance was no accident. The gruesome discovery of a hand washed ashore on the beach confirms his hunch. Because a medal is attached to the index finger, and it can only have been placed there by the killer. This strange clue is the only lead to an agenda as cold as the ocean itself. Kitto must work fast, before the small, isolated community closes ranks. And it’s only a matter of time before the murderer among them strikes again.
This is Book 7 in the ‘DI Ben Kitto’ series. Check out Book One – ‘Hell Bay’.
When the body of a talented photographer is found on the rocks beneath the ruins of Dunstanburgh Castle, DCI Ryan and his team of detectives immediately suspect the worst. But, since none of their potential suspects seems to have a motive, the case runs cold. Then, when another body is found dead on a lonely stretch of road near Hadrian’s Wall and their only suspect has an airtight alibi, the team are faced with another crime without a perpetrator. With the number of unexplained deaths in the area increasing rapidly and only a series of coincidences to work from, Ryan and his team must find the invisible link between them to crack the case—before it’s too late.
This is Book 21 in the ‘DCI Ryan Mysteries’. Check out Book One – ‘Holy Island’.
As identical twins, we’d normally stick together like glue, but anger and grief gets the better of us and we push and pull in different directions. Skye wants us to desert our broken family for university. Whilst I want us to postpone our university entry and huddle together at home with our grief-stricken dad and our younger sister, Jade and try to heal our broken hearts and learn to live without our mother. At an impasse, each of us stubbornly gets our wish. Finding myself alone and without the other half of me, I’m desperately lonely. I need a friend. Someone to talk to. Someone who understands. But, when I find that special someone, I know I’ve made a terrible mistake and trusted the wrong person.
This is a stand-alone novel.
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