Annal:1979 Dagger Award for Crime Novel

Whip Hand

Dick Francis

• 1981 Edgar–Novel winner
• 1979 Gold Dagger
• Score: 20.31

This “convincing and memorable” mystery is “among Dick Francis’s best,” says the Cincinnati Post. And we’re sure readers will agree.

Ex-jockey and private investigator Sid Halley is approached by the wife of an elite racehorse trainer, begging his help in figuring out why her husband’s most promising horses have been performing so poorly. At first Halley thinks she’s overreacting and the losing streak is just dumb luck. But now he’s beginning to think it’s something far more dangerous…

Service of All the Dead: An Inspector Morse Mystery

Colin Dexter

• 1979 Silver Dagger
• Score: 8.29

This time Inspector Morse brings the imposition on himself. He could have been vacationing in Greece instead of investigating a murder that the police have long since written off. But he finds the crime—the brutal killing of a suburban churchwarden—fascinating. In fact, he uncovers not one murder but two, for the fatal fall of St. Frideswides vicar from the church tower Morse reckons to be murder as well. And as he digs into the lives and unsanctified lusts of the late vicar’s erring flock, the list of the dead grows longer. Not even the oddly appealing woman he finds scrubbing the church floor can compensate Morse for the trouble he’s let himself in for. So he has another pint, follows his hunches, and sets out to untangle the deadly business of homicide….