Daggers Drawn

Introduction Maxim Jakubowski

The Crime Writers’ Association was founded in 1953 by prolific author John Creasey and very rapidly attracted to its midst the majority of the British crime, thriller and mystery writers of the day. Three years later, the organisation created its annual awards, the Daggers, which have been given yearly ever since in a variety of categories, and are recognised as one of the more prestigious literary awards in the calendar.

Current categories include the Diamond Dagger for life achievement, the Gold Dagger for best novel of the year, the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for best thriller of the year, the John Creasey New Blood Dagger for best first novel, the ALCS Non-Fiction Dagger awarded for best true crime or critical book of the year, the Sapere Books Historical Dagger for best historical mystery title, the Crime Fiction in Translation Dagger, the Dagger in the Library awarded by librarians for a body of work, the Short Story Dagger, the Debut Dagger for a previously unpublished first novel, and a recently-created Publisher’s Dagger rewarding the publishing house who has best contributed to the genre in a given year. Alongside these is the Red Herrings Award for contribution to the CWA’s efforts and activities, which I was honoured to win in 2019.

The Daggers’ past roll of honour includes some of the biggest names in the genre, both from the UK, the United States and also from non-English language countries as a result of the International Dagger (now Crime Fiction in Translation Dagger) being inaugurated in 2006.

I have been a member for 35 years, was elected to the board two decades later and have since been Vice Chair, Honorary Vice Chair and, as of April 2021, am the current Chair.

The Short Story Dagger was launched in 1982. In its early incarnation, it was not strictly speaking a best of the year story selected by a panel of independent judges (as all current Dagger decisions and choices are reached today) but was launched as a CWA short story competition sponsored by the Telegraph Sunday Magazine and Veuve Clicquot Champagne. The winner received a cheque for £350, which was then a not-to-be-sniffed-at amount, and a dozen bottles of ‘La Grande Dame’, Veuve Clicquot’s finest champagne. The distinguished and much-missed author and critic H.R.F. Keating was the chief judge. Every year the stories submitted to the competition had to include certain ingredients. The first winner of the competition was Madeleine Duke, to be followed by Stanley Cohen, Reginald Hill and in 1985, gothic romance author Madeleine Brent, who was of course a pen name for Modesty Blaise creator Peter O’Donnell. Peter’s obligatory ingredients that year were a bottle of champagne, a cryptic message on a micro computer screen (ah, those were the days!), a beautiful blonde Hungarian pianist and Victoria Station! All of which of course cleverly appear in his story ‘Swift 98’ which opens this volume. Shortly after Peter’s triumph, the rules changed and the award was given to what was judged to be just the best crime short story of the year.

The Short Story Dagger is now 38 years old and the present collection gathers some of the best winners to have emerged during that period. Several writers have won it twice: Reginald Hill, Jerry Sykes, Peter Lovesey, Danuta Reah, Stella Duffy, Denise Mina and Ian Rankin. They all appear here with their own choice of winning story, apart from Reginald Hill, where the rights to reissue the stories proved unavailable.

Some of the great names in crime writing have featured on the CWA Short Story Dagger shortlists over the decades. Aside from the winners, the list includes Celia Dale, Betty Rowlands, Marion Arnott, Simon Avery, Susanna Gregory, Sean Doolittle, Ann Cleeves, Kate Ellis, Judith Cutler, Don Winslow, Val McDermid, Mat Coward, Mark Billingham, Peter Robinson, Martyn Waites, Stuart Pawson, PD James, Ken Bruen, Robert Barnard (whose winning story was also not available to collect here), Kevin Wignall, James Siegel, J.A. Konrath, Laura Lippmann, Michael Connelly, Chris Simms, Lawrence Block, Sean Chercover, Simon Wood, Zoe Sharp, Ridley Pearson, Robert Ferrigno, Michael Palmer, John Lawton, Mickey Spillane & Max Allan Collins, William Kent Krueger, Claire Seeber, Bernie Crosthwaite, Carlo Lucarelli, Neil Gaiman, Simon Brett, Andrea Camilleri, George Pelecanos, Stuart Neville, Dashiell Hammett (for a lost story rediscovered in 2015), Dennis Lehane, Conrad Williams, Christopher Fowler, Ovidia Yu, James Sallis, Michael Ridpath, Leye Adenle, Christine Poulson, Lee Child, Erin Kelly, Christopher Brookmyre, Teresa Solana, Lavie Tidhar, Syd Moore and many more. Several anthologies could be collected from shortlisted stories alone!

But my enviable task here was to assemble some of the outstanding winning stories to demonstrate to the reader the art of mystery short story writing at its best. Every story a winner!

Savour in the dark...