Debut Dagger

This year's winner

Strange Fire
Sherry Rankin

Sherry Rankin lives in Abilene, Texas, where she has taught writing and literature at a local university for twenty years. She has written scholarly articles and worked as an editing consultant and ghostwriter, but her novel Strange Fire is her first venture into novel-length fiction.

STRANGE FIRE

In the turbulent borderlands of South Texas, campus security guard Abel Morales grows suspicious when a university student mysteriously dies. He finds a slip of paper in the dead boy’s room bearing the handwritten words “Strange Fire,” a clue that starts him on a dangerous path to uncover a complex and unspeakably monstrous crime.

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For 20 years the CWA has been encouraging new writing with its Debut Dagger competition for unpublished writers. The submissions are judged by a panel of top crime editors and agents, and the short listed entries are sent to publishers and agents.

The Debut Dagger is open to anyone who has not yet had a novel published commercially. All shortlisted entrants will receive a professional assessment of their entries. Winning the Debut Dagger doesn’t guarantee you’ll get published. But it does mean your work will be seen leading agents and top editors, who have signed up over two dozen winners and shortlisted Debut Dagger competitors.

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