The CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger 2008

Judges’ comments: A young woman from a wealthy Saudi family is found murdered in the desert. Her death is investigated by Nayir the Bedouin. He is a sympathetic hero with a genuine sense of modesty. The novel is tense and well paced.

Synopsis: Among the well-to-do families of Jeddah, Palestinian-born desert guide Nayir is an outsider. But when Nouf ash-Shrawi, the sixteen-year-old daughter of a wealthy Saudi dynasty, disappears just before her arranged marriage, Nayir is the man the Shrawis trust to bring her home. Days later Nouf's body is found in a desert wadi, but Nayir's task is not over; he feels compelled to uncover the disturbing circumstances surrounding her death. His search takes him far from his natural terrain, away from the endless dunes and empty skies of the desert and into the city of Jeddah, with its oppressive monuments, foreigners' compounds and shuttered apartments. Most troubling of all, his investigations force him to work closely with Katya Hijazi, a forensic scientist. He finds himself struggling with emotions he has fought all his life to repress and with loyalties he has never before questioned: to old friends, to his faith, and to a culture in which women take their secrets to their graves. Vivid and suspenseful, The Night of the Mi'raj is an extraordinary psychological drama and a mesmerising portrait of a society at once exquisitely cultured and profoundly claustrophobic.

Zoë Ferraris lived in Jeddah for a year as part of a strict Saudi community before returning to live in the United States. She has received an MFA from Columbia University and now lives in San Francisco with her daughter.

Judges’ comments: ‘Young girls are apparently killing themselves, but their deaths are the work of a serial killer who grooms them into a state of high romance and dependency on the internet. The serial killer is convincing and the story draws in the reader and is well paced and gripping.’

Synopsis: For fifteen year old Gemma it is already too late. Her body is found in the nave of a church in Ealing, west London. At first all the signs were that it was a suicide. But then the autopsy suggests it is not and Detective Inspector Mark Tartaglia and the Barnes murder squad are called in. For Tartaglia and his team it is just a matter of time before the tragedy repeats itself.

Elena Forbes has lived most of her life in London. After reading Modern Languages at Bristol University she worked as a portfolio manager for international investment banks. She now writes full time and lives in Notting Hill with her husband and two children. The first chapter and synopsis of Die With Me was shortlisted for the CWA Debut Dagger in 2005.

Judges’ comments: ‘An enthralling and gritty account of the hunting down of a cruel serial killer in Glasgow. The plot is fast moving and convincing, but beyond all that, a strength of the book is its strong characterisation: MacAlpine, the police officer who unravels as the murders he is dealing with turn out to be connected to a past case which haunts him; his beautiful wife, second to the ghosts in his life; Costello, his loyal sidekick, granted a great line in Glaswegian wisecracks and bitterness; the strange love affair between a murderer and a prospective victim. The characters live and breathe and are spared nothing.’

Synopsis: 1984. It looked like a simple job. That was why they gave it to him. Guarding a woman - nameless and almost faceless after a savage acid attack - at a Glasgow hospital, PC Alan McAlpine has no idea that this simple job will haunt his career and change his life forever. 2006: Two decades later, Alan steps into Partickhill police station and back in time. Now a celebrated Detective Chief Inspector, McAlpine has been drafted in to lead the hunt for a man the press are calling 'the Crucifixion Killer'. Two women are already dead, their mutilated bodies laid with arms outstretched. With his distinguished reputation, McAlpine's team are confident their new DCI will lead them to the killer. But the obsession that was born in a hospital room twenty-two years earlier has never quite left Alan. And now, it seems, it's come back for a reason ...

Caro Ramsay was raised on the south side of Glasgow, around the Govan area. Having turned down places at Veterinary and Medical school, she was the youngest person ever to graduate from the British School of Osteopathy in London, where she claims her job seemed to consist of translating the Taggart episode that has been on the night before. Upon graduation, she returned to Glasgow to establish her own practice, including the treatment of animals. It was while recovering from a very bad back injury that Ramsay decided to put pen to paper and started on what was to become Absolution.

Judges’ comments: ‘This is a gripping read set in the post Stalin Soviet Union. Leo Demidov falls foul of the Ministry over a child killing which is denied because of a policy that says it couldn’t have happened because the Union does not have such crimes. Demidov is exiled to the Urals where he chances upon a similar murder and soon finds that a serial killer is at work along the railway. There are some truly chilling scenes in the book but also some lively characters. A page turner.’

Note: This book won the 2008 Ian Fleming Steel Dagger.

Synopsis: MGB officer Leo Demidov is a man who never questions the Party Line. He arrests whomever he is told to arrest. He dismisses the horrific death of a young boy because he is told to, because he believes the Party stance that there can be no murder in Communist Russia. Leo is the perfect soldier of the regime. But suddenly his confidence that everything he does serves a great good is shaken. He is forced to watch a man he knows to be innocent be brutally tortured. And then he is told to arrest his own wife. Leo understands how the State works: Trust and check, but check particularly on those we trust. He faces a stark choice: his wife or his life. And still the killings of children continue ...

Tom Rob Smith was born in l979 to a Swedish mother and an English father and was brought up in London where he still lives. He graduated from Cambridge in 2001 and spent a year in Italy on a creative writing scholarship. Tom has worked as a screenwriter for the past five years, including a six-month stint in Phnom Penh storylining Cambodia's first ever soap.