The first retrospective of the CWA’s Dagger Award winners gathers rogether some of the greatest names in crime fiction – get ready for blood on the floor scenarios, serial killers, world weary detectives, drug dealers, maybe forgers – yeah, let’s collect them all. Not sure a launch party would be a good idea though – all these fertile imaginations in discussion.

Ian Rankin  is there, within the covers, manipulating a Senior Curator at the Tate Gallery into constructing the perfect crime, or is it? Stella Duffy’s souring romance becomes a deadly obsession under her incisive pen. And what about parents who discover their child has committed the unthinkable or at least in Denise Mina’s imaginagion., and those are just a few.

I am beginning to like crime short stories – is it because the mystery is wrapped up quickly and satisfactorily, so one can get some sleep, with another to read tomorrow night? A well written sharp, incisive crime story (much like a dagger thrust should be) is a thing of beauty. There are many in this anthology.  Read and enjoy.

Edited by Maxim Jakubowski,  the well respected anthology editor with over 70 volumes to his credit – so applause to Maxim.

Daggers Drawn Edited by Maxim Jackubowski – 19 CWA Dagger Award-winning short stores from the best of best in crime fiction.

HB £17.99 Pub. Titan Books.