Dagger Day, Part III: Who wins and Why

One thing I have noticed informally as I compare the Gold & Silver Dagger winners to say, the Edgar Award winners is how the CWA tends to pick more (for lack of a better term) high-falutin’ choices. For whatever reason, the CWA seems to want to elevate itself; in a sense, much as everyone hates the term, their book choices tend to be those works or those authors best known for genre-transcending. Or that barely belong within genre confines at all.

Looking over the last ten years of Gold Dagger winners, we have:

2003: Minette Walters, FOX EVIL
2002: Jose Carlos Somoza, THE ATHENIAN MURDERS
2001: Henning Mankell, SIDETRACKED
2000: Jonathan Lethem, MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN
1999: Robert Wilson, A SMALL DEATH IN LISBON
1998: James Lee Burke, SUNSET LIMITED
1997: Ian Rankin, BLACK AND BLUE
1996: Ben Elton, POPCORN
1995: Val McDermid, THE MERMAIDS SINGING
1994: Minette Walters, THE SCOLD’S BRIDLE

Now compare this list with the last ten years’  worth of Edgar Award winners:

2004: Ian Rankin, RESURRECTION MEN
2003: S.J. Rozan, WINTER & NIGHT
2002: T. Jefferson Parker, SILENT JOE
2001: Joe R. Lansdale, THE BOTTOMS
2000: Jan Burke, BONES
1999: Robert Clark, MR. WHITE’S CONFESSION
1998: James Lee Burke, CIMARRON ROSE
1997: Thomas H. Cook, THE CHATHAM SCHOOL AFFAIR
1996: Dick Francis, COME TO GRIEF
1995: Mary Willis Walker, THE RED SCREAM

In the Edgar list, the only book that isn’t really like the others

is Robert Clark’s. It’s a mystery, but it’s one as fashioned by one who

isn’t as rooted in genre conventions as those more at home with them.

It’s also a much less international list, as only non-American winners

over the last decade are Rankin and Francis.

The Dagger list is a rather different story. Though I adore Lethem

and Somoza, they are certainly not anywhere near to being genre

writers, though by messing around with them liberally, they create

their best books (Lethem, of course, mixes the hardboiled traditions

with sci-fi ones with comic books. Somoza, at least in THE ATHENIAN

MURDERS, mixed classical translation, stories-within-stories,

existentialism and some ghastly murders. It’s really trippy stuff, but

it isn’t a conventional genre book by a longshot.) Walters, Wilson,

McDermid and Mankell are certainly writing crime novels, but they

appeal to the snobs, the ones who wouldn’t be caught dead reading mere

“mysteries” (and shame on them for thinking that way.) Burke &

Rankin certainly do, of course, but both have literary backgrounds as

well. Ben Elton’s the one who doesn’t really fit, IMO–I guess he’s

writing crime novels of the comic variety, but I never really thought

of him as a genre writer at all because he’s so much more famous for

writing the book to unbelievably crap musicals and ruining the reputation he’d built working on this one.

The Dagger list is also much more international:  Two Britons who still live in the UK (Walters & Elton) One Brit who lives abroad (Wilson) Two Scots (Rankin & McDermid) A Spaniard (Somoza), a Swede (Mankell) and two Americans (Lethem, Burke). The Silver Daggers (aka the runners-up) have an international flavor though not as much: four Brits  (Peter Lovesey, Adrian Matthews, Morag Joss and Nicholas Blincoe) 3 Americans (Janet Evanovich, James Crumley and Donna Leon), one Canadian (Giles Blunt).

So what, if anything, does all this mean for tonight’s Gold Dagger winner? Only that the eventual choice will likely harken to the CWA’s strong penchant for picking something that has the whiff of snobbery about it–something that transcends genre, that is literary crime, whatever label you want to put on it. And as it happens, all of the nominees (McDermid, John Harvey, Mo Hayder, Sara Paretsky, James W. Nichol, Laura Wilson) fit that criteria to a tee.