The Crime Writers' Association

ALCS Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction

This Year's Winner

Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud and the Last Trial of Harper Lee
Casey Cep
William Heinemann

Two intertwined tales: of a strange preacher in Alabama who apparently killed no fewer than five relatives for the insurance money, and of Mockingbird author Harper Lee’s attempts to make a Cold Blood-style non-fiction book out of it. Poignant, beautifully written and impeccably researched.

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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.

Shortlist

The Judges 2021

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 Simeone

Jasmine 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 Campbell

Duncan 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 Godsmark

After 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.

2020 Shortlist

Title Author Publisher
Furious Hours  Casey Cep William Heinemann
Corrupt Bodies  Peter Everett Icon Books
Honour: Achieving Justice for Banaz Mahmod Caroline Goode Oneworld Publications
The Fatal Passion of Alma Rattenbury Sean O’Connor Simon & Schuster
The Professor and the Parson: A Story of Desire, Deceit and Defrocking Adam Sisman Profile Books
The Adventures of Maud West, Lady Detective
 Susannah Stapleton Picador

2020 Longlist

Title Author Publisher
Furious Hours  Casey Cep William Heinemann
Going Dark: The Secret Social Lives of Extremists Julia Ebner Bloomsbury Publishing
Corrupt Bodies  Peter Everett Icon Books
Honour: Achieving Justice for Banaz Mahmod Caroline Goode Oneworld Publications
Red River Girl   Joanna Jolly Virago
She Said   Jodi Kantor & Megan Twohey Bloomsbury Circus
The Fatal Passion of Alma Rattenbury Sean O’Connor Simon & Schuster
The Professor and the Parson: A Story of Desire, Deceit and Defrocking Adam Sisman Profile Books
The Adventures of Maud West, Lady Detective
 Susannah Stapleton Picador
Dead Fashion Girl: A Situationist Detective Story Fred Vermorel Strange Attractor Press