Reading List · Crime fiction
The Gold Dagger is the Crime Writers’ Association’s award for the best crime novel of the year. The CWA, founded in 1953 by John Creasey, set up a judging panel in 1955; its first award, then called the Crossed Red Herring Award, went to Winston Graham’s The Little Walls. Ruth Rendell won it four times, twice as Barbara Vine. It is presented each summer at the CWA gala dinner alongside the other Daggers, among them the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for thrillers and the Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement.
By Lisanne Swart · 72 winners since 1955 · Crime fiction · All literary prizes · Last reviewed 29 October 2026
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The 2026 Gold Dagger went to Abigail Dean’s The Death of Us at the CWA gala dinner, reported on 2 July 2026. Entries for the 2027 Daggers are open; the date of the 2027 ceremony had not been published in the sources consulted.
Quick answer
The CWA Gold Dagger is the Crime Writers’ Association’s prize for the best crime novel of the year, awarded since 1955 and first known as the Crossed Red Herring Award. The 2026 winner is The Death of Us by Abigail Dean.
How this page chooses
The timeline at the top lists every winner for Best crime novel, all 72 of them. The latest fifteen have their own entry further down, oldest first; the titles in the timeline that you can click are those.
Under each book is a line of plain fact about the book or its author, and nothing that cannot be checked.
Oldest first. The line in red is a fact about the book or its author, not an opinion about it.
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In contemporary Dublin, career thief Vincent Naylor, just out of prison, joins a plan to rob a van used by the Ulster Bank, while Detective Sergeant Bob Tidey faces a crisis over his own testimony.
The story is told from the viewpoints of criminals, police and witnesses, according to Kirkus Reviews.
A Slough House novel: MI5 agents exiled for their failures to a dead-end office near the Barbican work under the crude Cold War veteran Jackson Lamb, hoping to get back into real fieldwork.
Adapted as the second season of the Apple TV+ series Slow Horses (December 2022).
Twelve-year-old Easter Quillby and her younger sister Ruby are taken from a Gastonia foster home by their estranged father, a former minor-league baseball player, who is linked to a stolen haul from an armoured car heist.
The journey runs from Gastonia, North Carolina, across the Carolinas to St. Louis.
Audie Palmer escapes from a Texas prison the day before his release, ten years after an armoured truck robbery in which $7 million vanished, setting off a manhunt led by a sheriff and an FBI agent.
Robotham won the Gold Dagger again in 2020, with Good Girl, Bad Girl.
East, a 16-year-old lookout at a Los Angeles drug house, is sent with three other young men, one of them his brother, on a drive across America to kill a witness in Wisconsin.
Bill Beverly’s first novel.
Federal Police agent Aaron Falk returns to the struggling farming town of Kiewarra for the funeral of a childhood friend believed to have killed his family, and confronts a death from twenty years earlier.
Filmed with Eric Bana as Aaron Falk; released in Australia on 1 January 2021.
When businessman Leonard Howell’s daughter is kidnapped, he turns to Eddie Flynn, a former con artist turned criminal lawyer, who soon faces a client on trial for his life and a rising body count.
Part of the Eddie Flynn series, after The Defence and The Plea.
A killer known as the Immolation Man burns victims at Cumbria’s stone circles; when one is found with the name of suspended detective Washington Poe on his chest, Poe is pulled back in, working with analyst Tilly Bradshaw.
Craven won the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger in 2022 with Dead Ground.
Forensic psychologist Cyrus Haven assesses Evie Cormac, a girl found in a secret room who wants to be declared an adult, while investigating the murder of the champion figure skater Jodie Sheehan.
Also a finalist for the 2020 Edgar Award for Best Novel.
Thirty years after a girl’s death, Vincent King returns to the coastal town of Cape Haven, where police chief Walk and thirteen-year-old Duchess, caring for her brother and mother, are drawn into new violence.
Also won the 2021 Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year.
At Christmas 1967 a serial killer terrorises Los Angeles, as a nurse searches for her missing brother, retired investigator Ida Young is drawn into a motel murder and a mob fixer chases a bail jumper.
The final book of Celestin’s City Blues Quartet; it also won the 2022 CWA Historical Dagger.
After a night at a Savannah bar ends with one man murdered and another abducted, the scheming socialite Morgana Musgrove takes up the case with her four reluctant adult children, uncovering secrets about the city’s powerful.
Green founded The Moth; his first novel, The Caveman’s Valentine, won an Edgar Award.
Over fourteen years, Ruby, raised in rural Vermont and told her mother abandoned her, and her aunt Nessa in Pennsylvania each search for the truth about what happened to Ruby’s mother, Deena.
Mannion was born in Philadelphia and has lived most of her life in County Sligo, Ireland.
In Rome in 1659, months after the plague, men are still dying in unusual numbers, and the prosecutor Stefano Bracchi is sent to find out why, leading him to a circle of women west of the Tiber.
Inspired by the real prosecution of Gironima Spana over the poison Aqua Tofana.
Twenty-five years after a serial killer broke into their London home, Edward and Isabel, long since apart, reunite for his sentencing and must revisit the night that pulled their marriage apart.
Dean’s third novel; it also won Best International Crime Fiction at the 2026 Ned Kelly Awards.
The CWA was founded in 1953 by John Creasey, and in 1955 it set up a panel to choose the best crime book of the year. The first award, the Crossed Red Herring Award, went to Winston Graham’s The Little Walls and was presented at the first awards dinner at the Criterion Restaurant on 5 April 1956, with Agatha Christie as principal guest.
The award has been called the Gold Dagger since 1960, with sponsored names along the way: the Macallan Gold Dagger (1995–2002), the Duncan Lawrie Dagger (2006–2007, worth £20,000) and, in 2025, the KAA Gold Dagger. A runner-up Silver Dagger ran from 1969 to 2005.
The Gold Dagger is the top prize among a dozen or so Daggers. The Ian Fleming Steel Dagger is for the best thriller (S. A. Cosby’s King of Ashes in 2026); the debut award, long known as the John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger, was presented in 2026 as the Creasey First Novel Dagger, to Laura McCluskey’s The Wolf Tree.
The Diamond Dagger honours a lifetime’s achievement in crime writing; Mick Herron received it in 2025 and Mark Billingham in 2026. Other categories include the Historical Dagger, the Crime Fiction in Translation Dagger, a Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction, the Short Story Dagger, the librarian-voted Dagger in the Library, the Emerging Author Dagger (formerly the Debut Dagger) and, since 2025, the Twisted and Whodunnit Daggers.
The Crime Writers’ Association’s annual award for the best crime novel of the year, presented since 1955.
Abigail Dean won for The Death of Us, ahead of a shortlist including Holly Jackson, S. A. Cosby, Vaseem Khan, Ariel Lawhon and Laura Shepherd-Robinson.
Anna Mazzola won the 2025 KAA Gold Dagger for The Book of Secrets, set in Rome in 1659.
The Crossed Red Herring Award. Winston Graham’s The Little Walls was the first winner, for 1955.
Ruth Rendell, with four wins: two under her own name (1976, 1986) and two as Barbara Vine (1987, 1991). Lionel Davidson won three times.
The Duncan Lawrie Dagger of 2006–2007 carried £20,000; Wikipedia states that the Gold Dagger has had no monetary prize since 2008.
A separate CWA award for a lifetime’s achievement in crime writing. Mick Herron received it in 2025 and Mark Billingham in 2026.
The CWA’s award for the best thriller of the year. Jordan Harper won it in 2024 and S. A. Cosby in 2026.
Winner list last verified 29 October 2026.
The notes on this page are all mine,
and the books are all theirs.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
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