Annal:2004 Gold Dagger Award for Nonfiction
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Dagger Award in the year 2004. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
- Gold Dagger Award for Nonfiction
- Nonfiction books
- Nonfiction authors
- Mystery/Suspense books
- Mystery/Suspense authors.
Cosa Nostra: A History of the Sicilian Mafia
- 2004 Dagger-Nonfiction winner
- Score: 10.54
The Italian-American mafia has its roots in a mysterious and powerful criminal network in Sicily. While the mythology of the mafia has been widely celebrated in American culture, the true origins of its rituals, laws, and methods have never actually been revealed. John Dickie uses startling new research to expose the secrets of the Sicilian mafia, providing a fascinating account that is more violent, frightening, and darkly comic than anything conceived in popular movies and novels. How did the Sicilian mafia begin? How did it achieve its powerful grip in Italy…
The Italian Boy: A Tale of Murder and Body Snatching in 1830s London
- 2004 Dagger-Nonfiction winner
- Score: 10.54
Before his murder in 1831, the Italian Boy was one of thousands of orphans on the streets of London, moving among the livestock, hawkers, and con men, begging for pennies. Once dead, his value increased: As a highly prized “Fresh Subject” bound for the anatomist’s or surgeon’s table, he was sold to a medical college by the men who killed him. Their high-profile arrest and trial would unveil London’s furtive trade in human corpses, carried out by body-snatchers—or “resurrection men”—who robbed graves and even murdered to supply the lucrative market for cadavers.…
The Swamp of Death: A True Tale of Victorian Lies and Murder
- 2004 Dagger-Nonfiction shortlist
- Score: 6.54
In 1889, Reginald Birchall, a well-bred young Englishman, advertises in the London papers for a partner to buy a share in his Canadian horse farm. Two young men of good family—Douglas Pelly and Frederick Benwell—sign on. But when their troubled journey to Canada stalls inexplicably in Niagara Falls and Benwell mysteriously disappears, Pelly thinks Birchall might be trying to kill him. Then Benwell’s frozen body turns up near Woodstock, Ontario, with two bullets in the back of his head.
So begins The Swamp of Death, British journalist Rebecca Gowers’s…
- 2004 Dagger-Nonfiction shortlist
- Score: 6.54
In January 1954 twelve jurors sat at the Old Bailey to hear charges of obscenity against seven crime novels written by the immensely popular Hank Janson, whose sexy thrillers had sold five million copies in only six years. Hank’s publisher and distributor were found guilty and imprisoned and an arrest warrant put out for the author.
The Trials of Hank Janson presents a full biography of that author—in reality, a man named Stephen D. Frances—from his early life, through the highs and lows he experienced with the Janson novels, to his eventual decline…
Slave: A True Account of Modern Slavery
- 2004 Dagger-Nonfiction shortlist
- Score: 6.54
A shocking true story of contemporary slavery: a young girl, snatched from her tribal village in Africa, survives enslavement in Sudan and London before making a courageous escape to freedom.
Mende Nazer lost her childhood at age twelve, when she was sold into slavery. It all began one horrific night in 1993, when Arab raiders swept through her Nuba village, murdering the adults and rounding up thirty-one children, including Mende. .
Mende was sold to a wealthy Arab family who lived in Sudan’s capital city, Khartoum. So began her dark years of…
