Annal:2005 Ellis Peters Historical Dagger Award for Historical Crime Novel
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Dagger Award in the year 2005. 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.
Dark Fire: A Matthew Shardlake Novel
- 2005 Historical Dagger winner
- Score: 10.55
It is 1540, and Matthew Shardlake, the lawyer renowned as “the sharpest hunchback in the courts of England,” is pressed to help a friend’s young niece who is charged with murder. Despite threats of torture and death by the rack, the girl is inexplicably silent. Shardlake is about to lose her case when he is suddenly granted a reprieve—one that will ensnare him in the dangerous schemes of Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s feared vicar-general.
In exchange for two more weeks to investigate the murder, Shardlake accepts Cromwell’s dangerous assignment to find a lost…
- 2005 Historical Dagger shortlist
- Score: 6.55
Cairo, June 1942: A city blistering under the lash of a relentless summer, and panicked by the implacable advance of Hitler’s most talented general, Erwin Rommel. It is the worst possible time and place for the body of a senior British officer to be found in a rubbish bin, bathed in blood.
His murder has been made to look like a political assassination by local extremists opposed to British rule, but former New York cop, Joe Quinn, isn’t buying that. He senses more fundamental human emotions at play. For Quinn, it’s like old times, a reminder of his past.…
The Palace Tiger: A Detective Joe Sandilands Mystery
- 2005 Historical Dagger shortlist
- Score: 6.55
India, 1922: Joe Sandilands, Scotland Yard detective, is staying with Governor Sir George Jardine in Simla when there is some unexpected news. Sir George sends Joe off to the Princely State of Ranipur in the company of Edgar Troop, an experienced hunter, at the request of the Maharajah, an old ally of the British. A man-eating tiger is terrorizing the northern villages, and the two men are invited to join a hunting party in the forest. But the quality of the weaponry with which Sir George supplies him raises Joe’s suspicions. The rifle will be perfect for the…
After the Armistice Ball: A Dandy Gilver Murder Mystery
- 2005 Historical Dagger shortlist
- Score: 6.55
Dandy Gilver, her husband back from the War, her children off at school and her uniform growing musty in the attic, is bored to a whimper in the spring of 1923 and a little light snooping seems like harmless fun. And what could be better than to seek out the Duffy diamonds, stolen from the Esselmont’s country house, Croys, after the Armistice Ball? Before long, though, the puzzle of what really happened to the Duffy diamonds has been swept aside by the sudden, unexpected death of lovely young Cara Duffy in a lonely seaside cottage in Galloway. Society and the law…
- 2005 Historical Dagger shortlist
- Score: 6.55
An influential art critic in the early years of the twentieth century journeys from London to the rustic, remote island of Houat, off France’s northwest coast, to sit for a portrait painted by an old friend, a gifted but tormented artist living in self-imposed exile. Over the course of the sitting, the painter recalls their years of friendship, the double-edged gift of the critic’s patronage, the power he wielded over aspiring artists, and his apparent callousness in anointing the careers of some and devastating the lives of others. The balance of power between…
Mortal Mischief: Book 1 of The Liebermann Papers
- 2005 Historical Dagger shortlist
- Score: 6.55
In 1900s Vienna, Psychoanalyst Dr Max Liebermann is called in to help with police investigations into the murder of a young medium.
In this first of a new series of psychoanalytical detective novels set in Vienna, Dr Max Liebermann is a young psychoanalyst—and disciple of Freud. The world of 1900s Vienna is one where philosophy, science and art flourish and are hotly debated in the coffee shops. Psychoanalysis is still developing and is viewed with a mixture of excitement and suspicion.
Liebermann’s good friend Oskar Rheinhardt is a Detective…
