The Duncan Lawrie Dagger

A terrifying psychological thriller in which a spate of suicides could just be the work of a serial killer. Photographer Catherine Cardinal's fatal fall from a high building one moonlit night is ruled an act of suicide. She has a history of depression, a note is found and her psychiatrist is not surprised. But her husband, John Cardinal, won't accept this conclusion and he launches his own investigation. And when vicious notes appear, taunting him for his loss, his theory that she was murdered suddenly seems to be credible. The mystery deepens when he uncovers a spate of tragic suicides, leading him to investigate a startling new possibility - one so shocking, it has never been suspected...

Judges’ comments:
This is a novel with a great sense of place that intertwines what are apparently disparate plot lines into an unexpected resolution.

A Canadian, Giles Blunt moved to New York in 1980, a transition that would enable him to write about Northern Ontario with the objectivity he needed. His writing career began with poetry before he moved into screenplays and quickly found success. His first novel, Cold Eye, a bleak Faustian tale set in the New York art world, was optioned by a well-known Hollywood figure. Eventually the film was made by the French. He returned to his Canadian crime novel project and Forty Words of Sorrow was published in the US and UK, picking up some of the most stunning reviews for a debut crime novel ever. The Fields of Grief (original title: By the Time You Read This) is the fourth in the series featuring detectives Cardinal and Delorme.

Author's website: www.gilesblunt.com

Dave Robicheaux left his drinking days behind him many years ago, but he still feels guilt over a tragic event he wasn't sober enough to prevent. Dallas Klein, a gambling addict and bar buddy of Dave's, was killed in an armed robbery he'd been forced to engineer. Two decades later, he meets Dallas' daughter, Trish, who keeps odd company and is blackballed by the local casinos. Then the supposed suicide of a young girl appears to be connected to the man Dallas owed money to back in the Miami days. When a young black drug dealer gets on the wrong side of the sons of two very powerful criminals, tensions run high and there are more needless deaths - causing Dave to come to blows with the FBI, the DA's office and a thug who has little regard for any life but his own.

Judges’ comments:
Burke is a master of crackling dialogue and exploration into New Orleans low life and corrupt politics, and in the Police Department he creates a steamy world of violence and intrigue. His is unforgiving territory that he knows so well. Dave Robicheaux, as an alcoholic ex-cop, is drawn inexorably into another tangled story of broken families and revenge.

James Lee Burke is the author of many previous novels, many featuring Detective Dave Robicheaux. He won the Edgar Award in 1997 for Cimarron Rose, while Black Cherry Blues won the Edgar in 1989 and Sunset Limited was awarded the CWA Gold Dagger in 1998. He lives with his wife, Pearl, in Missoula, Montana and New Iberia, Louisiana.

Author's website: jamesleeburke.com

When two girls, aged nine and ten are abducted and killed in Wind Gap, Missouri, Camille Preaker is sent back to her home town to investigate and report on the crimes. Camille is the daughter of one of the richest families in town. Haunted by a childhood tragedy and long estranged from her mother, Camille suddenly finds herself installed once again in her family's Victorian mansion, reacquainting herself with her mother and the half-sister she barely knows, a precocious 13-year-old who holds a disquieting grip on the town and surrounds herself with a group of vampish teenage girls.

As Camille struggles to remain detached from the evidence, her relationship with her neurotic, hypochondriac mother threatens to topple her hard-won mental stability. Working alongside the police chief and a special agent from out of town, Camille tries to uncover the mystery of who killed these little girls and why. But there are deeper psychological puzzles: Why does Camille identify so strongly with the dead girls? And how is this connected to the death of another sister years earlier?

Judges’ comments:
Flynn's novel is a study of evil at the heart of the family set against a background of Southern Gothic American life. The reader is drawn into the macabre relationship of mother and daughter resulting in physical self-harming.

Gillian Flynn comes from Kansas City, the daughter of a Film Professor and a reading teacher. Given this background, it’s perhaps not surprising that she has ended up as chief TV critic for Entertainment Weekly, and that she covered films for the same magazine prior to that. This has led to her meeting a variety of stars, and visiting film sets. However, she has also had some less glamorous journalistic jobs, such as working for the trade journal Workforce.

She’s a graduate of the University of Kansas, and has a Master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University. She first acquired a love of mystery novels by reading Agatha Christie. Gillian Flynn lives in Chicago, where she is writing her second novel.

Jan Fabel, of the Hamburg murder squad, struggles to interpret the twisted imagery of a dark and brutal mind. Four days later, a man and a woman are found deep in woodland, their throats slashed deep and wide, the names 'Hansel' and 'Gretel', in the same, tiny, obsessively neat writing, rolled tight and pressed into their hands. It becomes clear that each new crime is a grisly reference to folk stories collected almost two hundred years ago by the Brothers Grimm.

Judges’ comments:
A compelling police procedural set in Hamburg, Russell's novel is a horrific modern twist on the Brothers Grimm fairy tales. A vividly drawn and believable set of characters.

Craig Russell was born in 1956, in Fife, Scotland. He served as a police officer and worked in the advertising industry as a copywriter and creative director. Russell has a long-standing interest in the German language and in post-war German history. He has been a freelance writer for fifteen years. In 2007, Russell was presented with a Polizeistern (Police Star) award by the Polizei Hamburg for raising public awareness of the work of the Hamburg police.

Author website: www.craigrussell.com

Autumn, 1541. Following the uncovering of a plot against his throne in Yorkshire, King Henry VIII has set out on a spectacular Progress to the North to overawe his rebellious subjects there. Accompanied by a thousand soldiers, the cream of the nobility, and his fifth wife Catherine Howard, the King is to attend an extravagant submission of the local gentry at York. Already in the city are lawyer Matthew Shardlake and his assistant Jack Barak. As well as assisting with legal work processing petitions to the King, Shardlake has reluctantly undertaken a special mission – to ensure the welfare of an important but dangerous conspirator being returned to London for interrogation.

But the murder of a local glazier involves Shardlake in deeper mysteries, connected not only to the prisoner in York Castle but to the royal family itself. As the Great Progress arrives in the city, Shardlake and Barak stumble upon a cache of secret papers that holds danger for the King's throne, and a chain of events unfolds that will lead Shardlake facing the most terrifying fate of the age.

Judges’ comments:
An historical thriller that brings together an original and multi-layered plot with a rich story set against a royal progress by Henry VIII to York, and his dissolution of his marriage to Catherine Howard. Sansom is a masterly story teller and natural plotter.

C. J. Sansom was educated at Birmingham University, where he took a BA and then a Ph.D. in history. After working in a variety of jobs, he retrained as a solicitor and practised in Sussex, until becoming a full-time writer. He lives in Sussex.