The Crime Writer's Association UK has announced the winners of the 2025 CWA Daggers! Here are the recipients for each of the main categories.
🗡️ KAA Gold Dagger
Awarded to the overall best crime novel of the year
The Book of Secrets
Anna Mazzola
Girolama Spana lives west of the river Tiber in a house marked by a lily and a garden full of herbs. Many women in Rome seek her help - although they would never admit it – eager for her mysterious balms, her love potions, and her ability to predict their futures. Even against the splendour of the Eternal City, Giroloma's secret recipes are the women's most precious possessions – and their husbands' most feared. So when men are reported dying in unnatural numbers, the gaze of Stefano Bracchi, prosecutor for the papal authorities, falls quickly on Girolama and her suspected sorcery.
Soon she will face the greatest danger she has ever known – but Girolama has always vowed that in life there are secrets we write down, secrets we pass on, and some that we carry to our deaths …
Judges notes: 'An engrossing cat-and-mouse thriller from start to finish. Set in seventeenth-century Rome, the story follows a detective questioning his role as he chases a conspiracy of poisoners, interrogating the idea of criminal acts and victimhood along the way. The author guides it all with an expert hand, right through to the shocking ending.'
🗡️ Ian Fleming Steel Dagger
Awarded to the best espionage, psychological, or adventure thriller novel
Dark Ride
Lou Berney
Twenty-one-year-old Hardy “Hardly” Reed is drifting through life. A minimum-wage scare actor at an amusement park, he avoids unnecessary effort and unrealistic ambitions. Then one day he notices two children, around six or seven, sitting all alone on a bench. Hardly checks if they’re okay and sees injuries on both children. Someone is hurting these kids. He reports the incident to Child Protective Service.
That should be the end of it. After all, Hardly's not even good at looking out for himself so the last thing he wants to do is look out for anyone else. But he's haunted by the two kids, his heart breaking for them. And the more research he does the less he trusts that Child Protective Services will do anything about it. That leaves … Hardly. He is probably the last person you’d ever want to count on. But those two kids have nobody else but him. Hardly has to do what's right and help them.
Gradually, with assistance from unexpected allies, he develops investigative skills and discovers he’s smarter and more capable than he ever imagined. But Hardly also discovers that the situation is more dangerous than he ever expected. The abusive father who has been hurting these children isn’t just a lawyer – he also runs a violent drug-dealing operation. The mother claims she wants to escape with the kids – but Hardly isn't sure he can trust her.
Faced with a different version of himself than he has ever known, Hardly refuses to give up. But his commitment to saving these kids from further harm might end up getting the kids, and Hardly himself, killed.
Judges notes: 'There are plenty of books that ask how far one would go to help a loved one but this asks how far one would go to help a stranger. Dark Ride is a moving yet nail-biting novel so different in scale and characters to Berney’s prior book, November Road. A sublime thriller full of heartache and humanity, an unusual protagonist and unforgettable characters, filled with realistic yet atypical events, and a tough-but-fitting finale; slimline but powerful.'
🗡️ ALCS Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction
Awarded to any non-fiction work on a crime-related theme, including biography, historical crime and true crime
The Peepshow
Kate Summerscale
London, 1953. Police discover the bodies of three young women hidden in a wall at 10 Rillington Place, a dingy terrace house in Notting Hill. On searching the building, they find another body beneath the floorboards, then an array of human bones in the garden. But they have already investigated a double murder at 10 Rillington Place, three years ago, and the killer was hanged. Did they get the wrong man?
A nationwide manhunt is launched for the tenant of the ground-floor flat, a softly spoken former policeman named Reg Christie. Star reporter Harry Procter chases after the scoop. Celebrated crime writer Fryn Tennyson Jesse begs to be assigned to the case. The story becomes an instant sensation, and with the relentless rise of the tabloid press the public watches on like never before. Who is Christie? Why did he choose to kill women, and to keep their bodies near him? As Harry and Fryn start to learn the full horror of what went on at Rillington Place, they realise that Christie might also have engineered a terrible miscarriage of justice in plain sight.
Judges notes: 'A remarkable read, riveting without ever being salacious, this offers a fresh perspective on one of Britain’s most notorious cases. Rillington Place has often been covered but Summerscale recreates the grime, greyness and repression of an utterly different era with a novelist’s eye and an appreciation of the difficult, rootless lives of the victims.'
🗡️ Dagger for Fiction in Translation
Awarded to a crime novel not originally written in English, which has been translated and published in the UK
The Night of Baba Yaga
Akira Otani, translated by Sam Bett
Fierce, mixed-race fighter Shindo has been kidnapped by the yakuza. After brutally beating most of them in an attempt to escape, she is forced to work as a bodyguard to protect the gang boss's sheltered daughter Shoko, a strange, friendless eighteen-year-old who could order Shindo's death in a moment.
At first Shindo derides Shoko's naivete, but as the men around them grow ever more bloodthirsty and controlling, she becomes ferociously devoted to her charge. However, she knows that if things continue as they are, neither woman can expect to survive much longer. But could there ever be a different life for two people like them?
Judges notes: '… this savage depiction of Japanese yakuza life is relentlessly violent if only to highlight the deep humanity of its fish out of water characters. Mean and lean, this saga sparkles with originality and delivers a splendid if bizarre love story.'
Other prizes awarded were:
Mick Herron, the author of the Slough House series, was awarded the prestigious Diamond Dagger, recognising his lifetime contribution to crime writing in the English language.
The ILP John Creasey First Novel Dagger, which is awarded to the best crime novel by a first-time author, went to All of Us Sinners by Katy Massey.
The Dagger in the Library, which is awarded to a writer whose body of work is popular with library users, and who in turn supports libraries and borrowers, went to Richard Osman.
There were also two new categories, awarded for the first time this year – The Whodunnit Dagger for cosy crime, traditional crime, and Golden Age-inspired mysteries; and The Twisted Dagger, which celebrates psychological thrillers, dark and twisty tales that often feature unreliable narrators, a healthy dose of moral ambiguity and a sting in the tail.
More information on the winners and Crime Writers Association UK can be found here.
