Annal:2005 John Creasey Memorial New Blood Dagger for a Debuting Author
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Dagger Award in the year 2005. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
- John Creasey Memorial New Blood Dagger for a Debuting Author
- Mystery/Suspense books
- Mystery/Suspense authors.
- 2005 New Blood Dagger winner
- Score: 10.55
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…
- 2005 New Blood Dagger shortlist
- Score: 6.55
It is 1855, and engineer William May has returned home to his beloved wife from the battlefields of the Crimea. He secures a job transforming London’s sewer system and begins to lay his ghosts to rest. Above ground, his work is increasingly compromised by corruption, and cholera epidemics threaten the city. But it is only when the peace of the tunnels is shattered by murder that William loses his tenuous hold on sanity. Implicated in the crime, plagued by visions and nightmares, even he is not sure of his innocence. Long Arm Tom, who scavenges for valuables in the subterranean world of the sewers and cares for nothing and no one but his dog, Lady, is William’s only hope of salvation. Will he bring the truth to light?
With extraordinarily vivid characters and unflinching prose that recall Year of Wonders and The Dress Lodger, The Great Stink marks the debut of an outstandingly talented writer in the tradition of the best historical novelists.
- 2005 New Blood Dagger shortlist
- Score: 6.55
A trail of murder leads deep into a chilling underworld of poverty, superstition and the terror of witchcraft.
- 2005 New Blood Dagger shortlist
- Score: 6.55
James Carroll only meant to do one deal to get to film school. But it went wrong. Now he owes £30,000 to drug-dealer Roger Oates. Just a year of quiet business away from retiring with his beloved family to his dream home in Honolulu, Roger knows this is no time to let anyone get away with anything. So if James can’t pay, his parents must. But Francis Carroll has put everything he has into a project that will finally bring him the success he craves. He simply cannot afford to bail out his son. And his ambitious wife Rachel wants a baby—while his dangerously alluring first wife wants him back. It’s no good asking them. Everyone wants to keep a grip: on their money and their jobs. On their dreams. But something’s got to give.
Written with terrific verve and a sharp eye for the details of human behaviour, Grip is a roller-coaster ride of suspense and surprises.
