The CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger 2008

Judges’ comments: ‘As we would expect from this writer, a tautly plotted, brilliantly controlled thriller. Ghastly and compelling.’

Synopsis: Just after lunch on a Tuesday in April, nine feet under water, police diver Flea Marley closes her gloved fingers around a human hand. The fact that there's no body attached is disturbing enough. Yet more disturbing is the discovery, a day later, of the matching hand. Both have been recently amputated, and the indications are that the victim was still alive when they were removed. DI Jack Caffery has been newly seconded to the Major Crime Investigation Unit in Bristol. He and Flea soon establish that the hands belong to a boy who has recently disappeared. Their search for him - and for his abductor - lead them into the darkest recesses of Bristol's underworld, where drug addiction is rife, where street-kids sell themselves for a hit, and where an ancient evil lurks; an evil that feeds off the blood - and flesh - of others

After leaving school at fifteen, Mo Hayder worked as a barmaid, security guard, film-maker, hostess in a Tokyo club, educational administrator and teacher of English as a foreign language in Asia. She has an MA in creative writing from Bath Spa University, where she now teaches.

She is the author of Birdman and The Treatment, which won the 2001 WH Smith Thumping Good Read Award, and Tokyo, which was shortlisted for the CWA Gold and Steel Dagger Awards for Novels of the Year, 2004. Pig Island, her fourth novel, was a Sunday Times bestseller.

Web site: www.mohayder.net

Judges’ comments: ‘Great pace, good dialogue and excellent characterisation combine in a playful take on the LA murder story.’

Synopsis: When bestselling thriller writer Andrew Danner wakes up in a hospital bed with no idea how he got there, he is horrified to be told that he is responsible for the murder of his ex-fiancee. In the resulting celebrity trial, Drew is exonerated on the grounds of temporary insanity caused by a recent brain tumour. But he still has no idea if he did kill Genevieve, and is desperate to find out. Haunted by what appear to be his bizarre night-time actions - did he really cut his own foot with a knife? - Drew is shocked when another woman is discovered dead, murdered in the same way as Genevieve. Trying to clear his name and understand what's happening to him, Drew enlists the help of a tame forensic scientist, a sympathetic detective, his staunch friend Chic who has helpful underworld connections, and an over-confident teenager. Can Drew discover what really happened that night and unmask the real killer?

Published in the US as The Crime Writer

Gregg Hurwitz is the critically acclaimed, internationally bestselling author of The Tower, Minutes to Burn, Do No Harm, The Kill Clause, The Program, Troubleshooter, Last Shot, and most recently, The Crime Writer, an instant international bestseller that has been nominated for best novel of the year by ITW, International Thriller Writers. His novels have been feature selections for all four major literary book clubs, chosen as Book Sense Picks, and translated into fifteen languages. He has written screenplays for Jerry Bruckheimer Films, Paramount Studios, MGM, and ESPN, developed TV series for Warner Studios, written comics for Marvel, and published numerous academic articles on Shakespeare. He has taught fiction writing in the USC English Department, and guest lectured for UCLA, and for Harvard in the United States and Europe. In the course of researching his thrillers, he has sneaked onto demolition ranges with Navy SEALs, swam with sharks in the Galápagos, and gone undercover into mind-control cults.

Hurwitz grew up in the Bay Area. While completing a BA from Harvard (’95) and a master's from Trinity College, Oxford in Shakespearean tragedy (’96), he wrote his first novel. He was the undergraduate scholar-athlete of the year at Harvard for his pole-vaulting exploits, and played college soccer in England, where he was a Knox fellow. He now lives in L.A. where he continues to play soccer, frequently injuring himself.

Web site: www.gregghurwitz.net

Judges’ comments: ‘Dark, deep and brooding; everything a psychological thriller should be. A frightening situation brings crime uncomfortably close to home.’

Synopsis: A naked woman in red high-heeled shoes is perched on the edge of Clifton Suspension Bridge with her back pressed to the safety fence, weeping into a mobile phone. Clinical psychologist Joseph O'Loughlin is only feet away, desperately trying to talk her down. She whispers, 'you don't understand,' and jumps. Later, Joe has a visitor - the woman's teenage daughter, a runaway from boarding school. She refuses to believe that her mother would have jumped off the bridge - not only would she not commit suicide, she is terrified of heights. Joe wants to believe her, but what would drive a woman to such a desperate act? Whose voice? What evil?

Michael Robotham was born in Australia in 1960, and grew up in small country towns before starting a career as a journalist in 1979 on a newspaper in Sydney. For the next fourteen years he worked for newspapers in Australia, Europe, Africa and America. In 1993 he quit journalism to become a ghostwriter, collaborating with politicians, pop stars, psychologists, adventurers and showbusiness personalities to write their autobiographies.

His first novel The Suspect, acieved international success and his second The Drowning Man, won the Ned Kelly Award in 2005, while his third, The Night Ferry, was shortlisted for the 2007 CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for best thriller and for the 2007 Ned Kelly Award in Australia.

Michael can most often be found working in his 'pit of despair' (basement office) on Sydney's northern beaches where he funds the extravagent lifestyles of a wife and three daughters.

Web site: www.michaelrobotham.com

Judges’ comments: ‘The formulaic title doesn’t do justice to a truly exciting international thriller. Classy and sophisticated, this strange and unsettling novel takes us into some of the darker reaches of the genre.’

Synopsis: This is a highly original and chillingly suspenseful journey through the darkest alleys of international espionage. Micah Dalton isn't paid to ask questions. He's a “cleaner,” a CIA fixer sent in to mop up the mess when an agent or situation goes bad. But when his close friend and colleague Porter Naumann turns up dead in an idyllic hill town in Tuscany, victim of an apparent suicide, Dalton's curiosity gets the best of him. Other hard-nosed ex-CIA field men are found butchered across the globe and Dalton soon finds himself on the trail of a sadistic killer, who has a penchant for intricate knifework and Native American mysticism. The murders appear to be acts of retribution, but for what? The only link between the victims seems to be a global surveillance operation called Echelon.Dalton's search for answers takes him from the fog-shrouded mazes of Venice to the beautiful big-sky country of the American West. At every turn he comes one step closer to discovering the truth behind the truth, a conspiracy so closely guarded that even suspecting it exists could prove fatal.

David Stone is a cover name for a man born into a military family with a history of combat service going back to Waterloo. Stone, a military officer himself, has worked with federal intelligence agencies and state-level law enforcement units in North America, Central America, and South East Asia. Retired now, Stone lives in an undisclosed location with his wife, photographer and researcher Catherine Stone.

Web site: www.davidstonebooks.com