Dirt Town by Hayley Scrivenor wins the prestigious New Blood Dagger
Following the incredible wind of the ABIA General Fiction Book of the Year Award, we’re pleased to announce that Dirt Town by Hayley Scrivenor has won the prestigious ILP John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger. Praised by the judges as a ‘haunting mystery’, this adds to a growing list of nominations for Hayley’s bestselling crime debut.
Special mention also goes to The Darkest Sin by DV Bishop, winner of the CWA Historical Dagger. Set in Renaissance Florence, The Darkest Sin is an atmospheric historical thriller that judges praised as ‘well-researched’ and ‘gripping to the end.’
Read more about the award winners here, and the importance of these prestigious prizes.
About the books
Dirt Town by Hayley Scrivenor
My best friend wore her name, Esther, like a queen wearing her crown at a jaunty angle. We were twelve years old when she went missing.
On a sweltering Friday afternoon in Durton, best friends Ronnie and Esther leave school together. Esther never makes it home.
Ronnie’s going to find her, she has a plan. Lewis will help. Their friend can’t be gone, Ronnie won’t believe it.
Detective Sergeant Sarah Michaels can believe it. She has seen what people are capable of. She knows more than anyone how, in a moment of weakness, a person can be driven to do something they never thought possible.
Lewis can believe it too. But he can’t reveal what he saw that afternoon at the creek without exposing his own secret.
Five days later, Esther’s buried body is discovered.
Character-rich and propulsive, with a breathtakingly original use of voice and revolving points of view, Dirt Town delves under the surface, where no one can hide. With emotional depth and sensitivity, this stunning debut shows us how much each person matters in a community that is at once falling apart and coming together.
Esther will always be a Dirt Town child, as we are its children, still.
WINNER OF THE ABIA GENERAL FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023
WINNER OF THE 2023 CWA ILP JOHN CREASEY (NEW BLOOD) DAGGER AWARD
SHORTLISTED FOR THE INDIE BOOK AWARDS 2023 FOR DEBUT FICTION
SHORTLISTED FOR THE ABIA THE MATT RICHELL AWARD FOR NEW WRITER OF THE YEAR 2023
FINALIST FOR THE 2023 ITW THRILLER AWARDS FOR BEST FIRST NOVEL
The Darkest Sin by DV Bishop
The Darkest Sin is an atmospheric historical thriller by D. V. Bishop, set in Renaissance Florence and is the sequel to City of Vengeance.
Florence. Spring, 1537.
When Cesare Aldo investigates a report of intruders at a convent in the Renaissance city’s northern quarter, he enters a community divided by bitter rivalries and harbouring dark secrets.
His case becomes far more complicated when a naked man’s body is found deep inside the convent, stabbed more than two dozen times. Unthinkable as it seems, all the evidence suggests one of the nuns must be the killer.
Meanwhile, Constable Carlo Strocchi finds human remains pulled from the Arno that belong to an officer of the law missing since winter. The dead man had many enemies, but who would dare kill an official of the city’s most feared criminal court?
As Aldo and Strocchi close in on the truth, identifying the killers will prove more treacherous than either of them could ever have imagined . . .