CWA Gold Dagger Longlist 2025
CWA Gold Dagger Longlist 2025

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The CWA Gold Dagger Longlist 2025 is here, and there are some cracking books to add to your TBR!

It’s time to dust off your detective cape and shine that magnifying glass to a classy sheen. The CWA Gold Dagger award, celebrates the best crime novel by an author of any nationality, originally written in English and first published in the UK during the judging period. Eligible books include thrillers, mysteries, police procedurals, psychological suspense novels and spy fiction.

The CWA Gold Dagger Longlist 2025 is stacked with tension, atmosphere, and unforgettable characters.

Whether you’re here for brooding detectives, layered whodunits, or thrillers that keep you up past bedtime, this challenge is your invitation to find a new favourite fictional fave!

You don’t need to solve the case alone! Come sleuth with us and celebrate the clever, the chilling, and the criminally good.

IN THIS POST
Series or Standalone?:

This is Book 4 in the Cesare Aldo series.

'A Divine Fury' Book Blurb:

Florence. Autumn, 1539. Cesare Aldo was once an officer for the city’s most feared criminal court. Following a period of exile, he is back – but demoted to night patrol, when only the drunk and the dangerous roam the streets. Chasing a suspect in the rain, Aldo discovers a horrifying scene beneath Michelangelo’s statue of David. Lifeless eyes gaze from the face of a man whose body has been posed as if crucified. It’s clear the killer had religious motives. When more bodies appear, Aldo believes an unholy murderer is stalking the citizens of Florence. Watching. Hunting. Waiting for the perfect moment to strike again.

Grab a copy:

‘A Divine Fury’ by D.V. Bishop

Series or Standalone?:

This is a standalone novel.

'D is for Death' Book Blurb:

1935. Dora’s on the first train to London, having smuggled herself out of the house in the middle of the night to escape her impending marriage. But unluckily for her, Dora’s fiance is more persistent than most and follows. As Dora alights at Paddington station, she is immediately forced to run from the loathsome Charles Silk-Butters. She ducks into the London Library to hide and it is there, surrounded by books, where she should feel most safe, that Dora Wildwood stumbles across her first dead body. Having been thrown into the middle of a murder scene, it’s now impossible to walk away. Indeed, Dora’s certain she will prove an invaluable help to the gruff Detective Inspector Fox who swiftly arrives on the scene. For as everyone knows, it’s the woman in the room who always sees more than anyone else: and no one more so than Dora herself.

Grab a Copy?:

‘D is for Death’ by Harriet F. Townson

Series or Standalone?:

This is a standalone novel.

'Deadly Animals' Book Blurb:

Thirteen-year-old Ava Bonney is different. While her friends play, Ava searches for roadkill. She knows studying animal decomposition is an unusual hobby, but Ava doesn’t care what other people think. Then, one night, when Ava sneaks out to find a fox, she instead stumbles upon the body of Mickey Grant. Despite his many years in the police, Detective Seth Delahaye has never seen a murder case like this one – as though the victim was set upon by a wild animal. Nor has he met anyone quite like Ava: so determined, resourceful and . . . unusual. And when another boy goes missing, he has no idea that Ava will become his secret weapon in the hunt for a killer.

Grab a Copy:

‘Deadly Animals’ by Marie Tierney

Series or Standalone?:

This is Book 3 in the Highway 59 series.

'Guide Me Home' Book Blurb:

Texas Ranger Darren Mathews has handed in his badge. A choice made three years before, which served justice if not the law, means that he may now stand trial. And his mother – an intermittent and destructive force in his life – is the cause of his fall from grace. And yet it is his mother’s reappearance that may also be his salvation. A black girl at an all-white sorority at a nearby college is missing, her belongings tossed in a dumpster. Her sorority sisters, the college police, even the girl’s own family, deny that she has disappeared, but Sera Fuller is nowhere to be found. A bloodstained shirt discovered in a woodland clearing may be the last trace of her. And Darren’s mother wants her son to work the case. Disillusioned by an America forever changed by the presidency of Donald Trump, Darren reluctantly agrees. Yet as he sets out to find a girl whose family don’t want her found, it is his own family’s history that may be brought painfully into the light. And a reckoning with his past may finally show Darren the future he can build.

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‘Guide Me Home’ by Attica Locke

Series or Standalone?:

This is Book One in the Castle Knoll Files series.

'How to Solve Your Own Murder' Book Blurb:

In 1965, Frances Adams was told by a fortune teller that one day she’d be murdered. Frances spent the next sixty years trying to prevent the crime that would be her eventual demise. Of course, no one took her seriously – until she was dead. For Frances, being the village busybody was a form of insurance. She’d spent a lifetime compiling dirt on every person she met, just in case they might turn out to be her killer. In the heart of her sprawling country estate lies an eccentric library of detective work, where the right person could step in and use her findings to solve her murder. When her great-niece Annie arrives from London and discovers that Frances’ worst fear has come true, Annie is thrust into her great-aunt’s last act of revenge against her sceptical friends and family. Frances’ will stipulates that the person who solves her murder will inherit her millions.

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‘How to Solve Your Own Murder’ by Kristen Perrin

Series or Standalone?:

This is a standalone novel.

'I Died at Fallow Hall' Book Blurb:

Anna Deerin moves to a remote Cotswold cottage to become a gardener, trying to strip away everything she’s spent all her life as a woman striving for, craving the anonymity and privacy her new off-grid life provides. But when she clears the last vegetable bed and digs up not twigs but bones, the outside world is readmitted. With it comes Detective Inspector Hitesh Mistry, who has his own reasons for a new start in the village of Upper Magna. Drawn in spite of herself to this unknown woman from another time, Anna is determined to uncover her identity and gain recognition for her, if not justice. As threats to Anna and her new life grow closer, she and DI Mistry will find that this murder is inextricably bound up with issues of gender, family, community, race and British identity itself – all as relevant in decades past as they are to Anna today.

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‘I Died at Fallow Hall’ by Bonnie Burke-Patel

Series or Standalone?:

This is Book 3 in the Revol Rossel series.

'Man of Bones' Book Blurb:

Winter 1953. Beneath a pitch-black Leningrad sky, two bodies lie near the towering statue of Lenin outside the Finland Station. ‘Nothing sinister, here, just a simple hit and run,’ an officer in the MGB secret police assures militia detective Revol Rossel. Now he knows it’s murder. Only recently released from a brutal Siberian labour camp and determined to find his missing sister at last, Rossel wants nothing to do with this new case. But his alcoholic, broken superior officer, Captain Lipukhin, seizes upon it as his salvation – a last chance to be a true Soviet hero. Along with sharp-witted Senior Lieutenant Lidia Gerashvili, and Major Nikitin, the interrogator who once cut off Rossel’s fingers, Rossel sets off on the trail of a murderer whose crimes surpass those of even the deranged tsar Ivan the Terrible. A trail leading to a dark, hidden episode in Bolshevik history filled with unspeakable horrors. There is only one eyewitness – Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Lenin, whose giant right hand stretches out towards the frozen River Neva. Lenin, Rossel thinks, seems to be pointing at someone. But who?

Grab a Copy:

‘Man of Bones’ by Ben Creed

Series or Standalone?:

This is a standalone novel.

'Nightwatching' Book Blurb:

Home alone with her young children during a blizzard, a mother tucks her son back into bed in the middle of the night. Then she hears a noise – old houses are always making some kind of noise. But this sound is disturbingly familiar: it’s the tread of footsteps, unusually heavy and slow, coming up the stairs. In that split second, she has three choices. Should she hide? Should she run? Or should she fight?

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‘Nightwatching’ by Tracy Sierra

Series or Standalone?:

This is a standalone novel.

'The Bell Tower' Book Blurb:

Death Row duty comes with three simple rules: Do not make it personal. Do not question the system. Do not take justice into your own hands. Garrett Nelson will break every one of them. Injured during a drug bust, sheriff’s deputy Garrett Nelson finds himself working at a Florida Penitentiary, under the shadow of an old bell tower turned execution chamber. There, his belief in the justice system will be tested to its limit – as a manhunt through the Everglades sparks a conflict of duty versus conscience. Can he turn a blind eye to an innocent man’s execution or risk his own life in the pursuit of truth? For life on death row takes its toll: until you can’t take it anymore.

Grab a Copy:

‘The Bell Tower’ by R.J. Ellory

Series or Standalone?

This is a standalone novel.

'The Book of Secrets' Book Blurb:

Rome, 1659. Months after the plague has ravaged Rome, men are still dying in unnatural numbers, and rumour has it that their corpses do not decay as they should. The Papal authorities commission prosecutor Stefano Bracchi to investigate, telling him he will need considerable mettle to reach the truth. To the west of the Tiber, Girolama and her female friends are at work, helping other women with childbirths and foretelling their futures. Elsewhere in the city, a young wife, Anna, must find a way to escape her abusive husband. But in a city made by men for men, there are no easy paths out. Stefano’s investigation at the Tor di Nona prison will introduce him to horror, magic and an astonishing cast of characters. He will be left wondering if certain deeds should remain forever unpunished.

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‘The Book of Secrets’ by Anna Mazzola

Series or Standalone?

This is Book 2 in the Cal Hooper series.

'The Hunter' Book Blurb:

It’s a blazing summer when two men arrive in the village. They’re coming for gold. What they bring is trouble. Two years have passed since retired Police Detective Cal Hooper moved from Chicago to the West of Ireland looking for peace. He’s found it, more or less – in his relationship with local woman Lena, and the bond he’s formed with half-wild teenager Trey. So when two men turn up with a money-making scheme to find gold in the townland, Cal gets ready to do whatever it takes to protect Trey. Because one of the men is no stranger: he’s Trey’s father. But Trey doesn’t want protecting. What she wants is revenge.

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‘The Hunter’ by Tana French

Series or Standalone?:

This is Book 2 in the Variety Palace Mystery series.

'The Innocents' Book Blurb:

The Variety Palace Music Hall is in trouble, due in no small part to a gruesome spate of murders that unfolded around it a few months previously. Between writing, managing the music hall and trying to dissuade her boss from installing a water tank in the building, Minnie Ward has her hands full. Her complicated relationship with detective Albert Easterbrook doesn’t even bear thinking about. But when a new string of murders tears through London, Minnie and Albert are thrown together once more. Strangely, the crimes seem to link back to a tragedy that took place fourteen years ago, leaving 183 children dead. And given that the incident touched so many people’s lives, everyone is a suspect.

Grab a Copy:

‘The Innocents’ by Bridget Walsh

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