2005 daggers
Overview
Dagger of Daggers
Diamond
Non-Fiction
Steel
John Creasey
Historical
Library
Short Story
Debut
Overview
Dagger of Daggers
Diamond
Non-Fiction
Steel
John Creasey
Historical
Library
Short Story
Debut
Guest speaker Terry Pratchett presented the Gold Dagger and £3000 prize money for the top crime novel of the year, to Arnaldur Indridason (right) for Silence of the Grave from The Harvill Press, translated by Bernard Scudder.
Barbara Nadel was the the runner-up, receiving £2000 and the Silver Dagger, for Deadly Web from Headline.
Arnaldur Indridason was born in 1961, the son of an Icelandic author. Having worked for many years as a journalist and critic for an Icelandic newspaper, he began writing novels. At one week in the summer of 2003, his crime novels occupied the top five spots in the Icelandic best-seller list.
His translator, Bernard Scudder, lives in Reykjavík as a full-time translator. His translations encompass sagas, ancient and modern poetry, and leading contemporary novels and plays.
'The story is of marital relations in pre-war Iceland. When a body is found in a shallow grave during building in a Reykjavík suburb, the detective must investigate the history of the area. Only recently it was wild hill country, and the relationships, often damaged, colour the whole story. It has a sympathetic detective playing off past and present. A marvellously atmospheric and haunting book.'
Downtrodden detective Erlendur and his team investigate the human nastiness in Iceland's hidden past. Alive with tension and atmosphere and disturbingly real, this is an outstanding continuation of the Reykjavík Murder Mysteries. Building work in an expanding Reykjavík uncovers a shallow grave. Years before, this part of the city was all open hills, and Erlendur and his team hopes this is a typical Icelandic missing person scenario; perhaps someone once lost in the snow, who has lain peacefully buried for decades. Things are never that simple.
Whilst Erlendur struggles to hold together the crumbling fragments of his own family, his case unearths other tales of pain. The hills have more than one tragic story to tell: tales of failed relationships and heartbreak; of anger, domestic violence and fear; of family loyalty and family shame. Few people are still alive who can tell the story, but secrets taken to the grave cannot remain hidden forever.
Trained as an actress, Barbara Nadel (right) has worked as a public relations officer for the National Schizophrenia Fellowship and as a mental health advocate in a psychiatric hospital. She has worked with sexually abused teenagers and taught psychology in schools and colleges.
Born in London's East End, she now lives in Essex and writes full time. She has been visiting Turkey for over twenty years and six of her previous novels are set there: Petrified, Harem, Deep Waters, Arabesk, A Chemical Prison and Belshazzar's Daughter. Headline recently published the first in new series set in the East End during the Blitz, Last Rights.
'When a teenage girl is found dead, the bizarre suicide is shocking. When another, similar body is found, all clues point to a dark underground of black magic and Satanism. Nadel has constructed a complex and realistic cast of characters including alluring policemen and their families. A splendid book with a gripping, exotic Turkish setting.'
A naked teenage girl is found dead near the beautiful Yoros Castle on the shores of the Bosphorus. She has stabbed herself through the heart but there is evidence of bizarre sexual practice. In another part of Istanbul, a young boy seems to have committed suicide in similar circumstances. What dark rituals could have compelled them to fatal self abuse?
Inspectors Cetin Ikmen and Mehmet Suleyman follow a trail that leads them to an underworld of Goth nightclubs and Satanic worship. But even these murky shadows hide more than they reveal and the answers to an ever-increasing number of suspicious deaths is more shocking and terrible than they could ever have imagined.
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