Annal:2001 Ellis Peters Historical Dagger Award for Historical Crime Novel
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Dagger Award in the year 2001. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
- Ellis Peters Historical Dagger Award for Historical Crime Novel
- Mystery/Suspense books
- Mystery/Suspense authors.
The Office of the Dead: Book 3 of Roth Trilogy
- 2001 Historical Dagger winner
- Score: 10.51
Living in the British city of Rosington of the 1950’s, Wendy finds herself penniless, jobless and on the brink of divorce. Desperate for advice, she seeks solace in her oldest friend, Janet Byfield. The wife of an ambitious young clergyman, her friend seems to have everything Wendy lacks: a loving, new family and a gorgeous manor.
But perfection has always loomed too close to tragedy. Gradually the Byfields’ idyll sours-old sins come to haunt the present and breed new ones in their place. A shadow of death seeps through the manor, and with it comes a mystery…
Ode to a Banker: A Marcus Didius Falco Mystery
- 2001 Historical Dagger shortlist
- Score: 6.51
Can a tough detective have the sensibilities of a poet? When street-smart Marcus Didius Falco is coerced into a public reading of his satires, he couldn’t feel worse. Yet his scribbling is met with rousing applause…and an offer by Chrysippus, esteemed banker, patron of the arts, and scroll merchant, to publish his work.
Et tu, Brute! A euphoric Falco then discovers that Chrysippus expects to be paid for putting the budding author’s work on papyrus. Falco is no Horace, but he has his pride. His ensuing altercation with the publisher makes him a suspect…
A Distinction of Blood: A Mystery of Georgian England
- 2001 Historical Dagger shortlist
- Score: 6.51
Asked to investigate the marriage of his employer’s beautiful daughter, Charlotte Mortlock, Robert Fairfax discovers evidence of gambling debts, love affairs, and secrets. But suspicion turns to shock when Charlotte’s husband is found murdered in his bed with Charlotte holding court in the next room. Now Fairfax must get to the heart of this elegant facade of lies-in order to unmask a killer….
A Cold Touch of Ice: A Mamur Zapt Mystery
- 2001 Historical Dagger shortlist
- Score: 6.51
The world is changing aroung the Mamur Zapt, British Chief of Cairo’s Secret Police. It’s 1912 and there’s a war on that no one’s heard of. When an Italian man is murdered in the city’s back streets, there is concern that this could be some kind of ethnic cleansing. “One of us” Morelli may have been, but was he “one of us” enough? And were the guns in his warehouse anything to do with it? Gareth Owen—the Mamur Zapt—has to find out fast. And then, as external pressures crowd in, there are other difficult questions. What is Trudi von Ramsberg really doing in Cairo?…
Last Seen in Massilia: A Novel in Ancient Rome
- 2001 Historical Dagger shortlist
- Score: 6.51
In the city of Massilia (modern-day Mareille), on the coast of Southern Gaul, Gordianus the Finder’s beloved son Meto has disappeared—branded as a traitor to Caesar and apparently dead. Consumed with grief, Gordianus arrives in the city in the midst of a raging civil war, hoping to discover what happened to his son. But when he witnesses the fall of a young woman from a precipice called Sacrifice Rock, he becomes entangled in discovering the truth—did she fall or was she pushed? And where, in all of this, could it be connected to his missing son? Drawn into the…
- 2001 Historical Dagger shortlist
- Score: 6.51
The year is 1927, a time for bootleg gin, hot jazz, and sudden death. The place is a city that inters its dead above ground but keeps its secrets darkly buried. Here native son and seasoned homicide cop Daman Rourke, a haunted widower also mourning the death of a fellow cop and close friend, walks into a scene of appalling bloodshed.
On a hot summer night, inside a slave shack on the St. Claire estate, reckless, womanizing attorney Charles St. Claire has been brutally stabbed to death. A glass of absinthe laced with cocaine is also found on the scene. And in…
