LibGuides: Dagger Awards: Gold Dagger for Nonfiction

Title Box

Dagger Awards
Gold Dagger for Nonfiction

2020-2029

WINNER: Furious Hours : Murder, Fraud and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep

Furious Hours : murder, fraud, and the last trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep
Call Number: 364.152 L478c (Adult Nonfiction)
ISBN: 9781101947869
Publication Date: 2019-05-07
Reverend Willie Maxwell was a rural preacher accused of murdering five of his family members for insurance money in the 1970s. With the help of a savvy lawyer, he escaped justice for years until a relative shot him dead at the funeral of his last victim. Despite hundreds of witnesses, Maxwell's murderer was acquitted -- thanks to the same attorney who had previously defended the Reverend. Sitting in the audience during the vigilante's trial was Harper Lee, who had traveled from New York City to her native Alabama with the idea of writing her own In Cold Blood, the true-crime classic she had helped her friend Truman Capote research seventeen years earlier. Lee spent a year in town reporting, and many more working on her own version of the case.
Furious Hours [E-Book] : murder, fraud and the last trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep
Call Number: 364.152 L478c Ebook (OverDrive)
ISBN: 9781101947876
Publication Date: 2019

WINNER

Written in Bone by Sue Black

Written in Bone : hidden stories in what we leave behind by Sue Black
Call Number: 614.17 B627w (Adult nonfiction)
ISBN: 9781951627805
Publication Date: 2021-06-01
In her new book, Sue Black builds on the first [All That Remains], taking us on a guided tour of the human skeleton and explaining how each person's life history is revealed in their bones, which she calls "the last sentinels of our mortal life to bear witness to the way we lived it." Her narrative follows the skeleton from the top of the skull to the small bones in the foot. Each step of the journey includes an explanation of the biology--how the bone is formed in a person's development, how it changes as we age, the secrets it may hold--and is illustrated with anecdotes from the author's career helping solve crimes and identifying human remains, whether recent or historical. Written in Bone is full of entertaining stories that read like scenes from a true-life CSI drama, infused with humor and no-nonsense practicality about the realities of corpses and death.

SHORTLIST

We Keep the Dead Close : a Murder at Harvard and a Half Century of Silence by Becky Cooper
These Are Not Gentle People by Andrew Harding
Dancing with the Octopus by Debora Harding
The Book of Trespass by Nick Hayes
Agent Sonya by Ben MacIntyre

We Keep the Dead Close : a murder at Harvard and a half century of silence by Becky Cooper
Call Number: 364.152 C776w (Adult Nonfiction)
ISBN: 9781538746837
Publication Date: 2020-11-10
1969: the height of counterculture and the year universities would seek to curb the unruly spectacle of student protest; the winter that Harvard University would begin the tumultuous process of merging with Radcliffe, its all-female sister school; and the year that Jane Britton, an ambitious twenty-three-year-old graduate student in Harvard's Anthropology Department and daughter of Radcliffe Vice President J. Boyd Britton, would be found bludgeoned to death in her Cambridge, Massachusetts apartment. Forty years later, Becky Cooper a curious undergrad, will hear the first whispers of the story. In the first telling the body was nameless. The story was this: a Harvard student had had an affair with her professor, and the professor had murdered her in the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology because she'd threatened to talk about the affair. Though the rumor proves false, the story that unfolds, one that Cooper will follow for ten years, is even more complex: a tale of gender inequality in academia, a 'cowboy culture' among empowered male elites, the silencing effect of institutions, and our compulsion to rewrite the stories of female victims. We Keep the Dead Close is a memoir of mirrors, misogyny, and murder. It is at once a rumination on the violence and oppression that rules our revered institutions, a ghost story reflecting one young woman's past onto another's present, and a love story for a girl who was lost to history.

These Are Not Gentle People by Andrew Harding
Call Number: 364.1523 H263t (Adult nonfiction)
ISBN: 9781529405606
Publication Date: 2022-02-08

Dancing with the Octopus : a memoir of a crime by Debora Harding
Call Number: 362.88 H263d (Adult nonfiction)
ISBN: 9781635576122
Publication Date: 2020-09-22
One Omaha winter day in November 1978, when Debora Harding was just fourteen, she was abducted at knifepoint from a church parking lot. She was thrown into a van, assaulted, held for ransom, and then left to die as an ice storm descended over the city. Debora survived. She identified her attacker to the police and then returned to her teenage life in a dysfunctional home where she was expected to simply move on. Denial became the family coping strategy offered by her fun-loving, conflicted father and her cruelly resentful mother. It wasn't until decades later - when beset by the symptoms of PTSD- that Debora undertook a radical project: she met her childhood attacker face-to-face in prison and began to reconsider and reimagine his complex story. This was a quest for the truth that would threaten the lie at the heart of her family and with it the sacred bond that once saved her. Dexterously shifting between the past and present, Debora Harding untangles the incident of her kidnapping and escape from unexpected angles, offering a vivid, intimate portrait of one family's disintegration in the 1970s Midwest, a rusted landscape where the loss of white male power can flare into unspeakable violence.

Agent Sonya : Moscow's most daring wartime spy by Ben Macintyre
Call Number: 327.1247 M158a (Adult nonfiction)
ISBN: 9780593136300
Publication Date: 2020-09-15
In 1942, in a quiet village in the English Cotswolds, Ursula Burton was friendly but reserved, and spoke English with a slight foreign accent. Her unassuming life hid the fact that she was a high-ranking Soviet intelligence officer. Her husband was also a spy, and she was running powerful agents across Europe gathering the scientific secrets that would enable the Soviet Union to build the bomb. Macintyre tells the story of "Sonya," a woman who influenced the course of the Cold War and helped plunge the world into a decades-long standoff between nuclear superpowers.

WINNER

The Disappearance of Lydia Harvey: a true story of sex, crime and the meaning of justice by Julia Laite

FINALISTS:

The Devil You Know: stories of human cruelty and compassion by Gwen Adshead & Eileen Horne
The Irish Assassins: conspiracy, revenge and the murders that stunned an empire by Julie Kavanagh
Empire of Pain: the secret history of the Sackler dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe
The Unusual Suspect by Ben Machell
The Dublin Railway Murder by Thomas Morris

WINNER

Unlawful Killings : Life, Love and Murder : Trials at the Old Bailey by Wendy Joseph

Unlawful Killings : stories of life and death from the Old Bailey by Anonymous; Wendy Joseph
Call Number: 34.42.01 C1 JOSEP U
ISBN: 9780857528438
Publication Date: 2022-10-01
By detailing the inner workings of the Old Bailey and UK law, the author makes clear that each of us has a vested interest in what happens in the courtroom - especially when it comes to the death of a fellow human being. Any one of us could end up in the witness box or even in the dock. And yet most people have only the sketchiest idea of what happens inside a Crown Court. With breath-taking skill and deep compassion, the author describes how cases unfold and illustrates exactly what it's like to be a murder trial judge and a witness to human good and bad. Sometimes very bad. Right now, with our courts straining under the weight of the many heinous crimes being committed, it's not merely the system that is flawed. The fracture lines that run through our society are becoming harder and harder to ignore and, from a unique vantage point, the author warns that we do so at our peril.

FINALISTS

The Life of Crime by Martin Edwards
The Poisonous Solicitor by Stephen Bates
About a Son by David Whitehouse
Tremors in the Blood by Amit Katala
To Hunt a Killer by Julie Mackay and Robert Murphy

The Life of Crime : detecting the history of mysteries and their creators by Martin Edwards
Call Number: 809.3872 E26L (Adult nonfiction)
ISBN: 9780008192426
Publication Date: 2022-05-26
In the first major history of crime fiction in fifty years, The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and their Creators traces the evolution of the genre from the eighteenth century to the present, offering brand-new perspective on the world's most popular form of fiction.
The Poisonous Solicitor : the true story of a 1920s murder mystery by Stephen Bates
Call Number: 364.1523 BATES P
ISBN: 9781785788178
Publication Date: 2022-07-19
In 1922, Major Herbert Armstrong, a Hay-on-Wye solicitor, was found guilty of, and executed for, poisoning his wife, Katharine, with arsenic. Armstrong’s case has all the ingredients of a classic murder mystery, from a plot by Agatha Christie or Dorothy Sayers (indeed some aspects of his story appear in Sayers’ Unnatural Death). It is a near-perfect whodunnit. One hundred years later, Agatha Award-shortlisted Stephen Bates examines and retells the story of the case, evoking the period and atmosphere of the early 1920s, a time of newspaper sensationalism, hypocrisy and sanctimonious morality.
Tremors in the Blood : murder, obsession, and the birth of the lie detector by Amit Katwala
Call Number: 365.254 KATWA T
ISBN: 9781639103423
Publication Date: 2023-03-07
Summer, 1922. Henry Wilkens burst through the doors of the emergency room covered in his wife's blood. Was he a grieving husband, or a ruthless killer who had conspired with bandits to have her murdered? San Francisco police turned to a new machine that had just been invented in Berkeley. The inventors, John Larson, Gus Vollmer, and Leonarde Keeler, hoped the lie detector would make the justice system fairer. Instead, the flawed device poisoned their lives, turned fast friends into bitter enemies, and transformed our relationship with the truth in ways that are still being felt. Katwala reveals the incredible truth behind the creation of the polygraph.
To Hunt a Killer by Julie McKay; Rob Murphy
Call Number: 364.1523 MKAY T
ISBN: 9780008507473
Publication Date: 2022-06-23
BATH, 1984. Jean Road, a 49-year-old mother of three, awakens to news that her daughter Melanie has been murdered in a nearby street as she walked home from a club in the early hours. Britain's biggest manhunt begins. A trail of blood is found leading away from the scene. It's a rare blood type. But despite a year-long inquiry and 94 arrests, the case is wound down. No one is charged with Melanie's murder. AVON & SOMERSET POLICE HQ, 2009. Detective Sergeant Julie Mackay, a 41-year-old single mother of three who has been overlooked for promotion for years, transfers to the Cold Case Unit. She unearths a file from the original inquiry and becomes hooked by the details: the rare blood type, Bath on a summer's night, the investigative wrong turns... She takes on the case, and with the help of Melanie's inspirational mother works tirelessly to rebuild it. This is the true story of how she did it.

2010-2019

WINNER: Aftermath : The Omagh Bombing & the Families' Pursuit of Justice by Ruth Dudley Edwards

WINNER: The Killer of Little Shepherds by Douglas Starr

WINNER: The Eleventh Day by Anthony Summers & Robbyn Swan

The Eleventh Day : the full story of 9/11 by Anthony Summers; Robbyn Swan
Call Number: 973.931 S955e (Adult fiction)
ISBN: 9780812978094
Publication Date: 2012-08-14
Draws on thousands of recently released official documents and new interviews to present a report on the September 11 attacks that examines why the crisis was not prevented, how the government and military responded, and who was behind it.

WINNER: Midnight in Peking by Paul French

WINNER: The Siege by Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark

WINNER: In Plain Sight : the Life and Lies of Jimmy Savile by Dan Davies

WINNER: You Could Do Something Amazing With Your Life [You Are Raoul Moat] by Andrew Hankinson

You Could Do Something Amazing with Your Life (You Are Raoul Moat) by Andrew Hankinson
Call Number: 364.15 H241y (Adult nonfiction)
ISBN: 9781925106558
Publication Date: 2018-02-13
These are the last days of Raoul Moat. Raoul Moat was the fugitive Geordie bodybuilder-mechanic who became notorious one hot July week when, after killing his ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend, shooting her in the stomach, and blinding a policeman, he disappeared into the woods of Northumberland, evading discovery for seven days - even after TV tracker Ray Mears was employed by the police to find him. Eventually, cornered by the police, Moat shot himself. Andrew Hankinson, a journalist from Newcastle, re-tells Moat's story using Moat's words, and those of the state services which engaged with him, bringing the reader disarmingly close at all times to the mind of Moat.

WINNER: Close But No Cigar by Stephen Purvis

Close but No Cigar : a true story of prison life in Castro's Cuba by Stephen Purvis
Call Number: BIO PURVI STE C (Adult biographieis)
ISBN: 9781474605045
Publication Date: 2018-03-13
Purvis, Stephen, (Architect)
Political prisoners -- Cuba -- Biography.
Prisons -- Cuba.

WINNER: Blood on the Page by Thomas Harding

WINNER: The Spy and the Traitor by Ben Macintyre

The Spy and the Traitor by Ben Macintyre
Call Number: 327.1273 M152s (Adult fiction)
ISBN: 9781101904190
Publication Date: 2018-09-18
Oleg Gordievsky was a spy like no other. The product of a KGB family and the best Soviet institutions, the savvy, sophisticated Russian eventually saw the lies and terror of the regime for what they were, a realization that turned him irretrievably toward the West. His KGB career took flight in Copenhagen in 1966 and eventually brought him to the highest post in the KGB's London station--but throughout that time he was secretly working for MI6, the British intelligence service. Gordievsky was a spy of tremendous consequence.

2000-2009

WINNER

Mr. Blue : Memoirs of a Renegade by Edward Bunker

WINNER

The Infiltrators : the Fist Inside Account of Life Deep Undercover with Scotland Yard's Most Secret Unit by Philip Etienne and Martin Maynard (with Tony Thompson)

FINALISTS

Maggots, Murder and Men : Memories and Reflections of a Forensic Entomologist by Zacaria Erzinçlioglu
Patriot Traitors : Roger Casement, John Amery and the Real Meaning of Treason by Adrian Weale

Maggots, Murder, and Men by Zakaria Erzinçlioglu
Call Number: 614.1 E73m (Adult nonfiction)
ISBN: 9780312311322
Publication Date: 2003-04-10
Dr. Zakaria Erzinclioglu--known affectionately as Dr. Zak or the Maggotologist--studies and outlines how insects can be used to aid a murder investigation.

WINNER

Dead Man's Wages : the Secrets of a London Conman and His Familiy by Lillian Pizzichini

FINALISTS

Anthony Blunt, His Lives by Miranda Carter
Town Without Pity : the Fight to Clear Stephen Downing of the Bakewell Murder by Don Hale

SPECIAL MENTION

Scene of the Crime : a Guide to the Landscapes of British Detective Fiction by Julian Earwaker & Kathleen Becker

WINNER

Pointing from the Grave : a True Story of Murder and DNA by Samantha Weinberg

FINALISTS

Wicked Beyond Belief : the Hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper by Michael Bilton
Devil in The White City : Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson
Imprint of the Raj : the Colonial Origin of Fingerprinting and Its Voyage to Britain by Chandak Sengoopta
An Underworld at War : Spivs, Deserters, Racketeers and Civilians in the Second World War by Donald Thomas
Gang War : the Inside Story of the Manchester Gangs by Peter Walsh

The Devil in the White City : murder, magic, and madness at the fair that changed America by Erik Larson
Call Number: 364.15 L318d (Adult Nonfiction)
ISBN: 9780609608449
Publication Date: 2003-02-11
Two men, each handsome and unusually adept at his work, embodied an element of the great dynamic that characterized America's rush toward the twentieth century. Daniel Hudson Burnham, a renowned architect, was the brilliant director of works for the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. Henry H. Holmes, a young doctor, was the satanic murderer of scores of young women in a torture palace built for the purpose near the fairgrounds.
The Devil in the White City [OverDrive E-Book] : a saga of magic and murder at the fair that changed America by Erik Larson
Call Number: OverDrive E-Book
ISBN: 9781400076314
Publication Date: 2004
The Devil in the White City [OverDrive Audiobook] : murder, magic, and madness at the fair that changed America by Erik Larson
Call Number: OverDrive Audiobook
ISBN: 9780739353011
Publication Date: 2006

JOINT WINNERS

Cosa Nostra : a History of the Sicilian Mafia by John Dickie
The Italian Boy : Murder and Grave Robbery in 1830s London by Sarah Wise

Cosa Nostra : a History of the Sicilian Mafia by John Dickie
Call Number: 364.106 D552c (Adult fiction)
ISBN: 9781403970428
Publication Date: 2005-10-21
Cosa Nostra vividly reconstructs the stories of the men and women who have lived and died in the mafia's shadow. It explains how the mafia began, how it responds to threats and challenges and how it maintains its grip on the society where it was born. Cosa Nostra takes us inside the thought-processes of the mafia's leaders and foot soldiers, its friends and its foes. Its cast of characters includes Antonino Giammona, the first man with a claim to the title 'boss of bosses'; Emanuele Notarbartolo, the honest and courageous banker who in 1893 became the mafia's first 'eminent corpse'; New York cop Joe Petrosino who underestimated the Sicilian mafia and paid for this with his life, and Bernardo 'the Tractor' Provenzano, the current boss of bosses who has been in hiding in Sicily since 1963.

FINALISTS

The Swamp of Death : a True Tale of Victorian Lies and Murder by Rebecca Gowers
The Trials of Hank Janson by Steve Holland
Slave : the True Story of a Girl's Lost Childhood and her Fight for Survival by Mende Nazer and Damian Lewis

Slave : my true story by Mende Nazer; Damien Lewis
Call Number: BIO NAZER MEN S (Adult biography)
ISBN: 9781586483180
Publication Date: 2005-04-27
Nazer, Mende.
Child slaves -- Sudan -- Kharoum -- Biography.
Child slaves -- England -- London -- Biography
Nuba (African people) -- Biography.

WINNER: On the Run : a Mafia childhood by Gregg and Gina Hill

FINALISTS:

The Wreckers : a story of killing seas, false lights, and plundered shipwrecks by Bella Bathurst
The Last Duel : a true story of crime, scandal, and trial by combat in Medieval France by Eric Jager
The Trial : a history from Socrates to O. J. Simpson by Sadakat Kadri
A Serpent in Eden : the greatest murder mystery of all time by James Owen

WINNER: The Dagenham Murder : The Brutal Killing of PC George Clark, 1846 by Linda Rhodes, Lee Shelden, and Kathryn Abnett

FINALISTS:

A Death in Belmont by Sebastian Junger
The Story of Chicago May by Nuala O'Faolain
The Death of Innocents : an Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions by Sister Helen Prejean
Under and Alone : the True Story of the Undercover Agent Who Infiltrated America's Most Violent Outlaw Motorcycle Gang by William Queen
And Then the Darkness : the Fascinating Story of the Disappearance of Peter Falconio and the Trials of Joanne Lees by Sue Williams

A Death in Belmont by Sebastian Junger
Call Number: 364.1523 J95f (Adult nonfiction)
ISBN: 0393059804
Publication Date: 2006-04-17
In the spring of 1963, the quiet suburb of Belmont, Massachusetts, is rocked by a shocking sex murder that exactly fits the pattern of the Boston Strangler. Sensing a break in the case that has paralyzed the city of Boston, the police track down a black man, Roy Smith, who cleaned the victim's house that day and left a receipt with his name on the kitchen counter. Smith is hastily convicted of the Belmont murder, but the terror of the Strangler continues. On the day of the murder, Albert DeSalvo--the man who would eventually confess in lurid detail to the Strangler's crimes--is also in Belmont, working as a carpenter at the Jungers' home. In this spare, powerful narrative, Sebastian Junger chronicles three lives that collide--and ultimately are destroyed--in the vortex of one of the first and most controversial serial murder cases in America.

The Story of Chicago May by Nuala O'Faolain
Call Number: 364.1 M463o (Adult nonfiction)
ISBN: 1573223204
Publication Date: 2005-09-22
An excursion into the American underworld at the dawn of the twentieth century, the life of an unrespectable Irish woman, and the hidden inner life of any woman who has tried to choose the unconventional path. The legend says that May was compellingly attractive. At 19, she stole her family's savings and ran away to America, where she worked as a grifter, a confidence trickster, a prostitute, a showgirl--and was hailed in tabloids as "Queen of the Underworld." Then she fell in love with a big-league criminal and followed him to Paris where they robbed the American Express. May survived prison, returned to America, and was reborn again and again--falling in love, lapsing back into the criminal life, flirting with legitimacy, writing her memoirs. O'Faolain brings a sympathetic scrutiny to this extraordinary life, reaching across the decades for points of connection. May was born in post-famine Ireland and died in the world of telephones, sportscars, and movies, just before the stock-market crash. Is there a woman's experience they can share? An Irishwoman's experience? An outsider's?

The Death of Innocents : an eyewitness account of wrongful executions by Helen Prejean
Call Number: 364.66 P924d (Adult nonfiction)
ISBN: 0679440569
Publication Date: 2004-12-28
CONTENTS: Dobie Gillis Williams -- Joseph O'Dell -- The machinery of death -- The death of innocence.

Under and Alone : the true story of the undercover agent who infiltrated America's most violent outlaw motorcycle gang by William Queen
Call Number: 364.1 Q3u (Adult nonfiction)
ISBN: 1400060842
Publication Date: 2005-04-05
In 1998, William Queen was a veteran law enforcement agent with a lifelong love of motorcycles and a lack of patience with paperwork. When a "confidential informant" made contact with his boss at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, offering to take an agent inside the San Fernando chapter of the Mongols (the scourge of Southern California, and one of the most dangerous gangs in America), Queen jumped at the chance, not realizing that he was kick-starting the most extensive undercover operation inside an outlaw motorcycle gang in the history of American law enforcement. Nor did Queen suspect that he would penetrate the gang so successfully that he would become a fully "patched-in" member, eventually rising through their ranks to the office of treasurer, where he had unprecedented access to evidence of their criminal activity. After he spent twenty-eight months as "Billy St. John," the bearded, beer-swilling, Harley-riding gang-banger, the truth of his identity became blurry, even to himself.
Under and Alone [E-Book] : the true story of the undercover agent who infiltrated America's most violent outlaw motorcycle gang by William Queen
Call Number: 364.1 Q3u Ebook (OverDrive)
ISBN: 9781588364401
Publication Date: 2005

No Awards

WINNER: Nationality : Wog - The Hounding of David Oluwale by Kester Aspden

FINALISTS:

The Art of Political Murder : Who Killed Bishop Gerardi by Francisco Goldman
Violation : Justice, Race and Serial Murder in the Deep South by David Rose
The Lost Boy by Duncan Staff
The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, or, the Murder at Road Hill HOuse by Kate Summerscale
Into the Darkness : 7/7 by Peter Zimonjic

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher [E-Book] by Kate Summerscale
Call Number: OverDrive E-Book
ISBN: 9780802779298
Publication Date: 2010-06-05
In June of 1860 three-year-old Saville Kent was found at the bottom of an outdoor privy with his throat slit. The crime horrified all England and led to a national obsession with detection, ironically destroying, in the process, the career of perhaps the greatest detective in the land. At the time, the detective was a relatively new invention; there were only eight detectives in all of England and rarely were they called out of London, but this crime was so shocking, as Kate Summerscale relates in her scintillating new book, that Scotland Yard sent its best man to investigate, Inspector Jonathan Whicher. Whicher quickly believed the unbelievable; that someone within the family was responsible for the murder of young Saville Kent. Without sufficient evidence or a confession, though, his case was circumstantial and he returned to London a broken man. Though he would be vindicated five years later, the real legacy of Jonathan Whicher lives on in fiction: the tough, quirky, knowing, and all-seeing detective that we know and love today . . . from the cryptic Sgt. Cuff in Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone to Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade.

No Awards

1978-1999

1978

The Mystery of the Princes by Audrey WIlliamson

1979

Rachman by Shirley Green

1980

Conspiracy by Anthony Summers

1981

Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number by Jacobo Timerman

Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number by Jacobo Timerman; Ilan Stavans (Introduction by); Arthur Miller (Foreword by); Toby Talbot (Translator)
Call Number: BIO TIMER JAC P (Adult biography)
ISBN: 9780299182441
Publication Date: 2002-08-20
Timerman, Jacobo, 1923-1999.
Political prisoners -- Argentina -- Biography.
Jews -- Argentina -- Biography.
Journalists -- Argentina -- Biography.

1982

Earth to Earth by John Cornwell

1983

Double Dealer : How Five Art Dealers, Four Policemen, Three Picture Restorers, Two Auction Houses and a Journalist Plotted to Recover Some of the World's Most Beautiful Stolen Paintings

1984

In God's Name by David Yallop

In God's Name : an investigation into the murder of Pop John Paul I by David Yallop
Call Number: 364.152 Y16i (Adult nonfiction)
ISBN: 9780786719846
Publication Date: 2007-04-09
Only thirty-three days after his election, Pope John Paul I,Albino Luciani, died in strange circumstances. Almost immediately rumours of a cover-up began to circulate around the Vatican. In his researches David Yallop uncovered an extraordinary story: behind the Pope's death lay a dark and complex web of corruption within the Church that involved the Freemasons, Opus Dei and the Mafia and the murder of the 'Pope's Banker' Roberto Calvi. When first published in 1984 In God's Name was denounced by the Vatican yet became an award-winning international bestseller. In this new edition, Yallop brings the story up to date and reveals new evidence that has been long buried concerning the truth behind the Vatican cover-up. This is a classic work of investigative writing whose revelations will continue to reverberate around the world.

1985

Killing for Company by Brian Masters

1986

Evil Angels by John Bryson

Evil Angels : the case of Lindy Chamberlain by John Bryson
Call Number: 349.4 B916e (Adult nonfiction)
ISBN: 9781504049474
Publication Date: 2018-02-20
On a camping trip at Ayer’s Rock, the Chamberlain family’s infant daughter disappeared in the middle of the night. Her distraught mother, Lindy, claimed she saw a dingo carry her off into the Australian outback. Two years later, their tragedy worsened when, without a murder weapon, a body, or even a motive, a jury convicted Lindy Chamberlain of killing her own daughter. The public cheered. John Bryson, a trial lawyer and award-winning journalist, deconstructs the factors that led to a seemingly reasonless incarceration and the public attitude that demanded it. With this book, he began to sway popular opinion in the Chamberlains’ favor by discussing the failures on the part of the police, forensics team, and press.

1987

Perfect Murder by Bernard Taylor and Stephen Knight

1988

The Secret Lives of Trebitsch Lincoln by Bernard Wasserstein

1989

A Gathering of Saints : a True Story of Money, Murder and Deceit by Robert Lindsey

A Gathering of Saints : a true story of money, murder, and deceit by Robert Lindsey
Call Number: 364.1 L753g (Adult nonfiction)
ISBN: 9781501153112
Publication Date: 2016-06-04
An investigation into the murder of two people and the wounding of an obscure document dealer in Salt Lake City in 1985 and its implication for the hierarchy of the Morman faith.

Dagger Awards

Title Box

2020-2029

WINNER: Furious Hours : Murder, Fraud and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep

WINNER

Written in Bone by Sue Black

SHORTLIST

We Keep the Dead Close : a Murder at Harvard and a Half Century of Silence by Becky Cooper

These Are Not Gentle People by Andrew Harding

Dancing with the Octopus by Debora Harding

The Book of Trespass by Nick Hayes

Agent Sonya by Ben MacIntyre

WINNER

The Disappearance of Lydia Harvey: a true story of sex, crime and the meaning of justice by Julia Laite

FINALISTS:

The Devil You Know: stories of human cruelty and compassion by Gwen Adshead & Eileen Horne

The Irish Assassins: conspiracy, revenge and the murders that stunned an empire by Julie Kavanagh

Empire of Pain: the secret history of the Sackler dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe

The Unusual Suspect by Ben Machell

The Dublin Railway Murder by Thomas Morris

WINNER

Unlawful Killings : Life, Love and Murder : Trials at the Old Bailey by Wendy Joseph

FINALISTS

The Life of Crime by Martin Edwards

The Poisonous Solicitor by Stephen Bates

About a Son by David Whitehouse

Tremors in the Blood by Amit Katala

To Hunt a Killer by Julie Mackay and Robert Murphy

2010-2019

WINNER: Aftermath : The Omagh Bombing & the Families' Pursuit of Justice by Ruth Dudley Edwards

WINNER: The Killer of Little Shepherds by Douglas Starr

WINNER: The Eleventh Day by Anthony Summers & Robbyn Swan

WINNER: Midnight in Peking by Paul French

WINNER: The Siege by Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark

WINNER: In Plain Sight : the Life and Lies of Jimmy Savile by Dan Davies

WINNER: You Could Do Something Amazing With Your Life [You Are Raoul Moat] by Andrew Hankinson

WINNER: Close But No Cigar by Stephen Purvis

WINNER: Blood on the Page by Thomas Harding

WINNER: The Spy and the Traitor by Ben Macintyre

2000-2009

WINNER

Mr. Blue : Memoirs of a Renegade by Edward Bunker

WINNER

The Infiltrators : the Fist Inside Account of Life Deep Undercover with Scotland Yard's Most Secret Unit by Philip Etienne and Martin Maynard (with Tony Thompson)

FINALISTS

Maggots, Murder and Men : Memories and Reflections of a Forensic Entomologist by Zacaria Erzinçlioglu

Patriot Traitors : Roger Casement, John Amery and the Real Meaning of Treason by Adrian Weale

WINNER

Dead Man's Wages : the Secrets of a London Conman and His Familiy by Lillian Pizzichini

FINALISTS

Anthony Blunt, His Lives by Miranda Carter

Town Without Pity : the Fight to Clear Stephen Downing of the Bakewell Murder by Don Hale

SPECIAL MENTION

Scene of the Crime : a Guide to the Landscapes of British Detective Fiction by Julian Earwaker & Kathleen Becker

WINNER

Pointing from the Grave : a True Story of Murder and DNA by Samantha Weinberg

FINALISTS

Wicked Beyond Belief : the Hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper by Michael Bilton

Devil in The White City : Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson

Imprint of the Raj : the Colonial Origin of Fingerprinting and Its Voyage to Britain by Chandak Sengoopta

An Underworld at War : Spivs, Deserters, Racketeers and Civilians in the Second World War by Donald Thomas

Gang War : the Inside Story of the Manchester Gangs by Peter Walsh

JOINT WINNERS

Cosa Nostra : a History of the Sicilian Mafia by John Dickie

The Italian Boy : Murder and Grave Robbery in 1830s London by Sarah Wise

FINALISTS

The Swamp of Death : a True Tale of Victorian Lies and Murder by Rebecca Gowers

The Trials of Hank Janson by Steve Holland

Slave : the True Story of a Girl's Lost Childhood and her Fight for Survival by Mende Nazer and Damian Lewis

WINNER: On the Run : a Mafia childhood by Gregg and Gina Hill

FINALISTS:

The Wreckers : a story of killing seas, false lights, and plundered shipwrecks by Bella Bathurst

The Last Duel : a true story of crime, scandal, and trial by combat in Medieval France by Eric Jager

The Trial : a history from Socrates to O. J. Simpson by Sadakat Kadri

A Serpent in Eden : the greatest murder mystery of all time by James Owen

WINNER: The Dagenham Murder : The Brutal Killing of PC George Clark, 1846 by Linda Rhodes, Lee Shelden, and Kathryn Abnett

FINALISTS:

A Death in Belmont by Sebastian Junger

The Story of Chicago May by Nuala O'Faolain

The Death of Innocents : an Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions by Sister Helen Prejean