2003 daggers
Diamond
Gold and Silver
Non-Fiction
Steel
John Creasey
Historical
Library
Short Story
Debut
Diamond
Gold and Silver
Non-Fiction
Steel
John Creasey
Historical
Library
Short Story
Debut
The winners of The CWA Daggers were announced at the Crime Writers' Association 50th Jubilee Dagger Awards Lunch, held at the Brewery, Chiswell Street, London on Thursday 13 November 2003. Details of the winners are set out below, with links to further information including shortlists.
The Gold Dagger and £3000 goes to Minette Walters for Fox Evil (Macmillan).
The runner-up, winning the Silver Dagger and £2000, is Morag Joss for Half-Broken Things (Hodder & Stoughton).
The Gold Dagger and £2000 goes to Samantha Weinberg for Pointing from the Grave (Hamish Hamilton).
is the UK's leading literary award for first time novelists writing crime fiction. This award is sponsored by BBC Audio. The 2003 winner, who receives the Dagger and £1000, is William Landay for Mission Flats (Bantam).
This year's winner of the Short Story Dagger and £1500 is Closer to the Flame by Jerry Sykes.
This award, sponsored by the Random House Group, goes to the author whose body of work has given most pleasure to readers. It is judged by librarians. The winner, who takes the dagger and £1500, is Stephen Booth. Christopher Brookmyre was highly commended as a runner-up.
This is the second year that this dagger, which celebrates the best of contemporary thriller writing, has been awarded. This year the prize of a Steel Dagger plus £2000 goes to Dan Fesperman for The Small Boat of Great Sorrows (publisher).Transworld Bantam. This award was suggested and is sponsored by Ian Fleming (Glidrose) Publications Ltd.
This year's CWA Ellis Peters Dagger for the best historical crime novel has been won by Andrew Taylor for his book The American Boy, published by Flamingo (an imprint of HarperCollins). The award of £3000 is sponsored by the estate of the late Ellis Peters, and her publishers Headline and Time Warner.
It is the second time Andrew has won the award. The announcement was made on 22 October 2003 by the chair of the judges' panel, Susanna Yager, at a reception at the Savoy in London.
This award, for unpublished books, was set up to encourage new writers. It is sponsored by Orion and awarded on the basis of one chapter and a synopsis. The winner also receives a cash prize of £250. The Debut Dagger, and a cheque for £250, for a so-far unpublished crime writer, was awarded to Kirsty Evans for The Cuckoo. Margaret Dumas was the highly commended runner-up for Speak Now.
The standard of entries in this year's competiton has again been extremely high, and we commend all our competitors for their hard work and originality. Fourteen of the entries made it through to the final judging round.
An additional award this year was made to Roger Forsdyke for best contribution to Red Herrings.
Adrian Muller with the Red Herring
The Crime Writers' Association is delighted to announce that ROBERT BARNARD is the winner of the 2003 Cartier Diamond Dagger Award, presented for a lifetime of achievement, marking a career of nearly 30 years in crime writing, in which he has written around 40 books and won several awards on both sides of the Atlantic.
The award is sponsored by Cartier. The Diamond Dagger was presented to Robert Barnard at the British Museum on 7 May, 2003. Click to read the report ...
At the Cartier awards ceremony, Adrian Muller was presented with a Red Herring, a "Special Merit Award for services to the Crime Writers' Association and for which no other token of appreciation would be appropriate".