Deadly Web – Headline
'When a teenage girl is found dead, the bizarre suicide is shocking. When another, similar body is found, all clues point to a dark underground of black magic and Satanism. Nadel has constructed a complex and realistic cast of characters including alluring policemen and their families. A splendid book with a ripping, exotic Turkish setting.'
A naked teenage girl is found dead near the beautiful Yoros Castle on the shores of the Bosphorus. She has stabbed herself through the heart but there is evidence of bizarre sexual practice. In another part of Istanbul, a young boy seems to have committed suicide in similar circumstances. What dark rituals could have compelled them to fatal self abuse?
Inspectors Cetin Ikmen and Mehmet Suleyman follow a trail that leads them to an underworld of Goth nightclubs and Satanic worship. But even these murky shadows hide more than they reveal and the answers to an ever-increasing number of suspicious deaths is more shocking and terrible than they could ever have imagined.
CWA IAN FLEMING STEEL DAGGER
For the best adventure/thriller novel in the vein of James Bond. £2000 prize money, sponsored by Ian Fleming Publications Ltd. Cheque and Dagger presented by Corinne Turner, Managing Director of Ian Fleming Publications Ltd to Henry Porter for Brandenburg from Orion.

CWA JOHN CREASEY MEMORIAL DAGGER
For first books by unpublished writers. £1000 prize money, sponsored by BBC Audiobooks. Cheque and Dagger presented by Sara Keane of BBC Audiobooks, to Dreda Say Mitchell for Running Hot, published by Maia Press.

What's the best thing about Hackney? The bus outta here!
And that's exactly where Elijah 'Schoolboy' Campbell needs to be in a week's time, heading out of London's underworld. He's taking a great offer to leave it all behind and start a new life, but the problem is he's got no spare cash. The possibility of lining his pockets becomes real when he stumbles across a mobile phone. But it's marked property, and the Street won't care that he found it by accident. The Street won't care that the phone's his last chance to change his life. And he can't give it back because the door to redemption is only open for 7 days.
7 days to exchange the mobile for cash.
7 days to cut the mobile's line rental to the Faces tracking his every move.
7 days to get out of a world where bling, ringtones and petty deaths are accessories of life.
Schoolboy knows that when you're running hot all it takes is one call, one voicemail, one text to disconnect you from this life - permanently. And getting deeper into his old lifestyle may mean that he never catches that bus ...
CWA ELLIS PETERS HISTORICAL DAGGER
£3000 prize money, sponsored by the Estate of Ellis Peters and her publishers, Headline, and the Time Warner Book Group. The winner of this award was CJ Sansom's Dark Fire (Macmillan), with special mention to Iain Pears's The Portrait (Harper Perennial Original). CJ Sansom was presented with his cheque and Dagger at the lunch by Jane Morpeth, Head of Fiction at Headline.

It is 1540 and the hottest summer of the sixteenth century. Matthew Shardlake, believing himself out of favour with Thomas Cromwell, is busy trying to maintain his legal practice and keep a low profile. But his involvement with a murder case, defending a girl accused of brutally murdering her young cousin, brings him once again into contact with the king's chief minister – and a new assignment ...
The secret of Greek Fire, the legendary substance with which the Byzantines destroyed the Arab navies, has been lost for centuries. Now an official of the Court of Augmentations has discovered the formula in the library of a dissolved London monastery. When Shardlake is sent to recover it, he finds the official and his alchemist brother brutally murdered - the formula has disappeared.
Now Shardlake must follow the trail of Greek Fire across Tudor London, while trying at the same time to prove his young client's innocence. But very soon he discovers nothing is as it seems ...
CWA GOLD DAGGER FOR NON-FICTION
£2000 prize money. Cheque and Dagger presented by CWA Chair Danuta Reah to Gregg and Gina Hill for On The Run from Hutchinson.

'The hidden victims of Mafia crime by the children of Henry Hill of 'Goodfellas' infamy. A moving antidote to standard gangster literature.'
By the son and daughter of Henry Hill — immortalised in the book Wiseguy and the Martin Scorsese film Goodfellas - On The Run is the harrowing account of a childhood spent coping with an explosive father whilst dodging Mafia payback. Henry Hill's business partner, Jimmy Burke has whacked every person who could possibly implicate him in the infamous Lufthansa robbery at JFK airport. On his way to prison, lifelong gangster Henry is given two options: sleep with the fishes, or enter the FBI's Witness Protection Program. Gregg and Gina are dragged along for the ride. Like nomads, they're forced to wander from state to state, constantly inventing new names and finding new friends, only to abandon them at a moment's notice and living under constant fear of being found and killed.
But Henry, the rock Gregg and Gina so desperately need, is a heavy cocaine user and knows only the criminal life. He is soon up to his old tricks and consistently putting their identities in jeopardy. And so it continues until the kids, now almost grown, can no longer ignore that the Mob might be less of a threat to them than remaining under the roof of their increasingly unbalanced father.
Gregg and Gina Hill were swept away from their lives at a very young age to enter the Witness Protection Program with their father and mother. This is the first time they've spoken about their experiences. They currently live in different parts of the US under aliases.
CWA SHORT STORY DAGGER
£1500 prize money. Cheque and Dagger presented by former CWA Chair Mike Jecks to to Danuta Reah for No Flies on Frank first published in Sherlock magazine, issue 64, Atlas Publishing Co.

'A very original and imaginative story, subtly and deftly told. With a menacingly gothic atmosphere, it contains many unforgettable images.'
http://thecwa.co.uk/daggers/2005/index.html