{"id":10720,"date":"2023-11-13T08:21:32","date_gmt":"2023-11-13T13:21:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10720"},"modified":"2024-02-15T07:57:33","modified_gmt":"2024-02-15T12:57:33","slug":"expanding-crime-fiction-awards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10720","title":{"rendered":"Expanding Crime Fiction Awards"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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Like the Mystery Writers of America and other US groups, the UK\u2019s Crime Writers\u2019 Association issues annual awards for the \u201cbest\u201d books in various categories. The awards, called Daggers are numerous, but unlike most award programs divide into the form of the submission\u2014paperback original, debut, nonfiction, etc.\u2014this program has separate awards for espionage (plus, oddly, psychological and adventure thrillers) and historical. It makes sense to carve out certain topics because, really, how do you compare books across a field with such diverse tropes and traditions? An excellent police procedural\u2014I\u2019m thinking Harry Bosch\u2014 or gritty thriller can\u2019t easily be compared to a cozy mystery, where there isn\u2019t much blood, the murders occur off-stage, and the protagonist runs a cupcake shop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next year, the UK Association\u2019s boffins are bowing to market pressure and adding two new categories to its list of awards: the Twisted Dagger for psychological thrillers\u2014think Gone Girl<\/em> and Ruth Ware\u2014and the Whodunnit Dagger for cozy (or as the Brits have it, cosy) crime. The latter became almost inevitable when Richard Osman\u2019s novel, The Last Devil to Die<\/em>, part of his series that began with The Thursday Murder Club<\/em>, became the fastest-selling hardcover novel by a British author in UK history.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Readers of the UK Website CrimeFictionLover.com (for which I write book reviews) currently may vote on their favorite books<\/a> of the last year, nominated by other readers. This is the third year for these readers\u2019 choice awards, and voting ends 4 December. This award program has a separate category for \u201cIndie\u201d publication, by which they mean smaller publishers and self-published.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mystery Writers of America\u2019s Edgar awards categories for novels take into account the different ways books are published today and age group of intended audience, but don\u2019t distinguish among content subgenres. However, US authors of cozy mysteries can compete against works more generally in that category through the Agatha Awards, a project of the Malice Domestic conference. And for private-eye novels, there are the Shamus Awards. And the . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The plethora of awards may seem a bit confusing (and it is), but the difference in tastes reflected by these different approaches to recognizing excellence helps authors and their books more easily find their niche and their audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given that I read about 90 books a year, I\u2019m frequently dismayed at how few of the winners I\u2019ve actually read! But when I\u2019m looking for a great audio book, the lists of finalists are where I start.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Like the Mystery Writers of America and other US groups, the UK\u2019s Crime Writers\u2019 Association issues annual awards for the \u201cbest\u201d books in various categories. The awards, called Daggers are numerous, but unlike most award programs divide into the form … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Do the categories of crime fiction awards work for you--as reader, as author?","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[40,104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-the-morgue"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2MU","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10720"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10722,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10720\/revisions\/10722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}