ALCS Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction
The highly dramatic and readable account of the defection of Oleg Gordievsky, a spy for the British and a traitor to the Soviets. This sometimes alarming story has the ring of absolute authenticity as it reveals a very significant operation in Cold War history.
This award is for any non-fiction work on a crime related theme by an author of any nationality as long as the book was first published in the UK in English during the Judging Period. This award encompasses, though is not limited to, non-fiction works relating to true crime, historical crime, crime-related biography, crime-fiction literature and critical studies.
To see the titles that have been nominated for the Dagger so far in 2019/2020, please scroll down.
Philip Gooden (Chair)Philip writes both fiction and non-fiction. His historical novels include the Nick Revill series, set in Elizabethan London, and a Victorian sequence, the most recent title for which is The Durham Deception. Philip Gooden also writes books on language, including Who’s Whose? and Faux Pas?, which won the English Speaking Union award for the best English Language book of 2006. He was Chair of the Crime Writers’ Association in 2007-8
Jasmine SimeoneJasmine as been first, Bulletin Editor, and then also Secretary of the Dorothy L Sayers Society, starting in 1995. I also answer as many as possible of the questions which come in to the info@sayers.org.uk address, which has taught me a pretty good knowledge of Sayers and her works. I am also a member of the Margery Allingham Society, and a devotee of Golden Age detective fiction, but with fairly wide-ranging literary tastes.
Duncan CampbellDuncan Campbell was the crime correspondent of the Guardian and the chairman of the Crime Reporters’ Association. He previously worked for LBC Radio, Time Out and City Limits. His books include The Underworld, We’ll All Be Murdered in Our Beds, a history of crime reporting; That Was Business, This Is Personal; and two novels, If It Bleeds and The Paradise Trail.
Kate GodsmarkAfter a false start in academic publishing, Kate moved to Piatkus, initially as a Subsidiary and International Rights Manager; she was then fortunate enough to enable to indulge her lifelong passion for crime writing on a daily basis when she became Commissioning Editor for crime. In recent years she has worked as a freelance editor.
| Author | Title | Publisher |
| Kathryn Harkup | Death by Shakespeare | Sigma |
| Joanna Jolly | Red River Girl | Virago |
| Lisa Taddeo | Three Women | Bloomsbury Circus |
| Caroline Goode | Honour: Achieving Justice for Banaz Mahmod | Oneworld Publications |
| James Polchin & Andrew Furlow | Indecent Advances | Icon Books |
| Peter Everett | Corrupt Bodies | Icon Books |
| Jodi Kantor & Megan Twohey | She Said | Bloomsbury Circus |
| Sanam Maher | A Woman Like Her: The Short Life of Qandeel Baloch | Bloomsbury |
| Julie Ebner | Going Dark: The Secret Social Lives of Extremists |
Bloomsbury |
| Ursula Buchanan | Beyond the Thirty-Nine Steps |
Bloomsbury |
| Emily G. Thompson | Cults Uncovered: True Stories of Mind Control and Murder |
DK |
| Andy MartinQC | With Child: Lee Child and the Readers of Jack Reacher |
Polity |
| Thomas Grant QC | Court Number One | John Murray |
| James Morton | Krays: The Final Word | Mirror Books |
| Stephen G. Michaud & Hugh Aynesworth | Ted Bundy: The Only Living Witness | Mirror Books |
| Andy Woodward | Position of Trust | Hodder & Stoughton |
| Karen Edwards | A Killer’s Confession | Headline |
| Brian Price | Crime Writing: How to write the Science | Studymates |
| Tom O’Neill with Dan Piepenbring | Chaos | William Heinemann |
| Casey Cep | Furious Hours | William Heinemann |
| Doris Payne | Diamond Doris | Headline |
| Susannah Stapleton | The Adventures of Maud West, Lady Detective | Picador |
| Fred Vermorel | Dead Fashion Girl: A Situationist Detective Story |
Strange Attractor Press |
| Graham Satchwell | The Great Train Robbery Confidential | The History Press |
| Jamie Green, Mike Dunn | We Are Not Cocaine Smugglers | The History Press |
| Neil Root | Crossing the Line of Duty | The History Press |
| Michael S. Jackson | Survival Math | Dialogue Books |
| Mark Williams-Thomas | Hunting Killers | Bantam Press |
| Sean O’Connor | The Fatal Passion of Alma Rattenbury | Simon & Schuster UK |
| Michael Gillard | Legacy: Gangsters, Corruption and the London Olympics | Caravel / Bloomsbury Publishing |
| Adam Sisman | The Professor and the Parson: A Story of Desire, Deceit and Defrocking | Profile Books |
| Barry Forshaw | Crime Fiction: A Reader’s Guide | Oldcastle Books |
| Catherine Czerkawska | A Proper Person to be Detained | Contraband |
| Jeff Sparrow | Fascists Amongst Us | Scribe UK |
| Tom Wright & Bradley Hope | Billion Dollar Whale | Scribe UK |
| Rchael Louise Snyder | No Visible Bruises | Scribe UK |
| Mark Bowden | The Last Stone | Grove Press- Atlantic Books |
| Michael Matthews | American Ruin | Silvertail Books |