Wednesday 8th February 6.30pm at Belgravia Books…

• Ann Cleeves, author of the Vera novels, now a successful ITV drama series.
• MJ McGrath, author of the critically acclaimed White Heat, longlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger 2011
• NJ Cooper, author of Life Blood and former chair of the Crime Writers’ Association

The event is FREE, with wine and nibbles provided.

To book your place, email jimena@belgraviabooks.com

• ITV3 People’s Bestseller Dagger 2011: Peter James
• CWA Gold Dagger: Tom Franklin’s Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter
• CWA Ian Fleming: Steel Dagger for Best Thriller: Steve Hamilton’s The Lock Artist
• CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger: S.J. Watson’s Before I Go To Sleep

The Awards also included the ITV3 viewers vote for their favourite Crime Thriller author in the ITV3 People’s Bestseller Dagger category. The full Awards winners were as follows:

• ITV3 People’s Bestseller Dagger 2011: Peter James for Dead Man’s Grip
• The Film Dagger: True Grit (Paramount Pictures)
• CWA Gold Dagger: Tom Franklin’s Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter
• CWA Ian Fleming: Steel Dagger for Best Thriller: Steve Hamilton’s The Lock Artist
• CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger: S.J. Watson’s Before I Go To Sleep
• The TV Dagger: Case Histories (Ruby Films, BBC One)
• The International TV Dagger: The Killing, (Arrow Films, BBC Four)
• Best Actress Dagger: Sofie Gråbøl for The Killing (Arrow Films, BBC Four)
• Best Actor Dagger: Idris Elba for Luther (BBC One)
• Best Supporting Actor Dagger: Rafe Spall for The Shadow Line (Company Pictures, BBC Two)
• Best Supporting Actress Dagger: Ann Eleonora Jørgensen for The Killing (Arrow Films, BBC Four)

The shortlists are as follows:

CWA GOLD DAGGER 2011

• Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin (Pan)
• Snowdrops by A.D. Miller (Atlantic Books)
• The End of the Wasp Season by Denise Mina (Orion)
• The Lock Artist by Steve Hamilton (Orion)

CWA IAN FLEMING STEEL DAGGER 2011, SPONSORED BY IAN FLEMING PUBLICATIONS LTD

• Before I Go To Sleep by S.J. Watson (Doubleday)
• Cold Rain by Craig Smith (Myrmidon)
• The Good Son by Michael Gruber (Corvus)
• The Lock Artist by Steve Hamilton (Orion)

CWA JOHN CREASEY (NEW BLOOD) DAGGER 2011

• Before I Go To Sleep by S. J. Watson (Doubleday)
• Kiss Me Quick by Danny Miller (Robinson)
• The Dead Woman of Juárez by Sam Hawken (Serpent’s Tail)
• The Dogs of Rome by Conor Fitzgerald (Bloomsbury)

ITV3 PEOPLE’S BESTSELLER DAGGER 2011

• David Baldacci – The Sixth Man (Macmillan)
• Lee Child – Worth Dying For (Bantam)
• Mark Billingham – Good As Dead (Little, Brown)
• Peter James – Dead Man’s Grip (Macmillan)
• Peter Robinson – Before the Poison (Hodder)

These five authors are also the subject of the 2011 season documentary series The A-Z of Crime, which will be shown at 9pm on ITV3 from 1st September.

In the weeks running up to The Crime Thriller Awards 2011, viewers will be encouraged to vote for their favourite by following this link: http://www.itv.com/crimethrillerawards. The winner will be presented with the ITV3 People’s Bestseller Dagger at the awards ceremony on 7th October.

Body in the Library – Crime Writing Workshop with Heather Steed – 9.30-11am • Bromley Library Workshop • £7.50

Thriller writer and creative writing teacher, Heather Steed, looks at what makes gripping and successful crime fiction with some exercises to aid and abet writers in creating murder, mystery and suspense.

Murder You Wrote with Linda Regan – 11.15am-1.15pm • Bromley Library Workshop • £7.50

A fun workshop where participants work together and learn how to construct a murder story, invent characters and killers, plant clues, then find out what works and why.

Conspiracy, Murder & the Cold War in the Caribbean with Alex von Tunzlemann – 11.45am-12.45pm • Bromley Library Hall • £3

Red Heat: Conspiracy, Murder & the Cold War, argues that the Bay of Pigs invasion was part of a covert war run by the CIA against communism in Latin America during the 50s & 60s. Focusing on the CIA’s tactics of subversion, terrorism and political assassination, Alex tells the story of this secret war.

Murder, Corruption and the Death Penalty with Colin Evans – 1-2pm • Bromley Library Hall • £3

Sing Sing Prison, New York, July 1916. Charles Stielow, a 37 year-old farmhand with the mind of an infant, is minutes away fromthe electric chair for a double murder he didn’t commit. Colin Evans’ Slaughter on a Snowy Morn (shortlisted for CWA Gold Dagger Award) discusses the case that changed forensic science forever.

Crime Writers’ Question Time & Signing – 3-4.30pm, Bromley Library Hall • £4

A chance for you to put some fantastic crime writers in the hot seat and get tips and advice on their deadly craft. The panel includes 2010 winner of CWA Ellis prize, Rory Clements, Julia Crouch & M.J. Mcgrath.

• More information at the Festival’s website

Good luck!

The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag (FLAVIA DE LUCE MYSTERY)

Orion 2010, Hardcover, 352 pages, £12.99

The story opens with the immortal words ‘I was lying dead in the churchyard’ (spoken, astonishingly, by Flavia herself) and ends with a funeral watched by the De Luce family on a newly-installed television set. Inbetween, Alan Bradley weaves a hauntingly nightmarish tale that involves Punch & Judy – and in particular Mr Punch’s nemesis, the hangman, Jack Ketch – a frighteningly realistic puppet show, and a hitherto unexplored corner of Bishop’s Lacey known as Gibbet’s Wood. The plot, beginning with the arrival in Bishop’s Lacey of a travelling puppet show, features a grisly murder during a performance of Jack and the Beanstalk in the village hall and reaches back to an earlier, even nastier crime centring on an ancient, rotting gibbet that has lain like a shadow over the village for years. For Flavia, undoing the complex knot that ties these strands together will test her precocious powers of deduction to the limit – and provide a shocking insight into some of the darker corners of the adult world.

The Detective Branch

W&N 2010, Paperback, 384 pages, £12.99

Drury Lane, 1844. A robbery has been committed at a pawnbroker’s, leaving three people dead. The man called in to investigate is Pyke, head of the Metropolitan Police’s newly formed Detective Branch at Scotland Yard.Pyke must find the culprit and quickly, especially as the identity of one of the victims threatens to expose his own criminal past. A valuable religious artefact appears to have motivated the robbery but when the main suspect commits suicide in police custody, the investigation falters. Then the rector of a wealthy parish is brutally murdered and Pyke spots a connection. His suspicions lead him to a dissolute former Catholic priest, rumours of devil worship, and an old case that no one wants him to investigate. With time running out and the murderer threatening to kill again, Pyke must face up to forces within the police and the church who would prefer the secrets of the past to remain buried forever.

A Dark Matter

Orion 2010, Hardcover, 416 pages, £14.99

The charismatic and cunning Spenser Mallon is a campus guru in the 1960s, attracting the devotion and demanding sexual favors of his young acolytes. After he invites his most fervent followers to attend a secret ritual in a local meadow, the only thing that remains is a gruesomely dismembered body-and the shattered souls of all who were present. Years later, one man attempts to understand what happened to his wife and to his friends by writing a book about this horrible night, and it’s through this process that they begin to examine the unspeakable events that have bound them in ways they cannot fathom, but that have haunted every one of them through their lives. As each of the old friends tries to come to grips with the darkness of the past, they find themselves face-to-face with the evil triggered so many years earlier. Unfolding through the individual stories of the fated group’s members, A Dark Matter is an electric, chilling, and unpredictable novel that will satisfy Peter Straub’s many ardent fans, and win him legions more.

Saints of New York

Orion 2010, Paperback, 464 pages, £12.99

The death of a young heroin dealer causes no great concern for NYPD Detective Frank Parrish – Danny Lange is just another casualty of the drug war. But when Danny’s teenage sister winds up dead, questions are raised that have no clear answers. Parrish, already under investigation by Internal Affairs for repeatedly challenging his superiors, is committed to daily interviews with a Police Department counsellor. As the homicides continue – and a disturbing pattern emerges – Frank tries desperately to make some sense of the deaths, while battling with his own demons. Trying to live up to the reputation of his father, John – not only a legendary NYPD detective, but also one of the original ‘Saints of New York’ – the men charged with the responsibility of ridding New York of the final vestiges of Mafia control in the 1980s – Parrish struggles to come to terms with the broken pieces of his own life. But, as the murders escalate, he must discover the truth behind them before there are further innocent victims. Dark and intense, Saints of New York is a novel of corruption and redemption, of the relentless persistence required to find the truth, and of one man’s search for meaning amidst the ghosts of his own conscience.

Like the sound of one or all of those?! Then read on…

Real Readers gives you the chance to read and review crime and thriller books before they are published, comment on cover designs and feedback on specific topics to publishers, so if you’re interested in one of the above titles, this is how it works:

• Tell us a bit about yourself, your reading habits and preferences and your online life
• We will send you crime books carefully selected for your reading tastes, before they are published, so you can tell us – and the world – what you think
• There will also be chances to get books for friends and family, attend exclusive author events and share your thoughts with authors and publishers
• Please note that you must be resident in the UK or Republic of Ireland to take part

To join Real Readers please follow the link below, fill in the form, tell us as much about your likes and dislikes as you can, mention which one of the above titles you’d like to receive, and we will take it from there!

To apply, visit the Read Readers website

Belinda Bauer has won the CWA Gold Dagger with Blacklands, published by Corgi

The awards ceremony will be televised on ITV3 on Tuesday, October 12th at 9pm as part of the Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards.

More information on the Daggers can be found at the CWA website.

Detective Robert Miller is assigned to the case, and rapidly uncover a complication. The victims do not officially exist. Their personal details do not register on any known systems. And as Miller unearths ever more disturbing facts, he starts to face truths so far-removed from his own reality that he begins to fear for his life.

Washington has a new menace… a serial killer whose victims don’t exist…

• Listen to an extract from A Simple Act of Violence

• Download the Prologue and First Chapter of A Simple Act of Violence

R.J. Ellory is the author of seven previous novels including the bestselling A Quiet Belief In Angels, which was a Richard & Judy Book Club selection in 2008 and was shortlisted for the Barry Award, the 813 Trophy, the Quebec Bookselers’ Prize and was winner of the Nouvel Observatour Crime Fiction Prize. His work has been translated into twenty-three languages. R.J. Ellory currently lives in England. Find out more about R.J. Ellory at his YouTube channel.

This is how it works:

• Tell us a bit about yourself, your reading habits and preferences and your online life
• We will send you crime books carefully selected for your reading tastes, before they are published, so you can tell us – and the world – what you think
• There will also be chances to get books for friends and family, attend exclusive author events and share your thoughts with authors and publishers
• Please note that you must be resident in the UK or Republic of Ireland to take part

If you are interested in joining Real Readers please follow the link below, fill in the form, tell us as much about your likes and dislikes as you can, and we will take it from there!

To apply, visit the Read Readers website

Next week we’re kicking off Windmill’s presence on Bookdagger with a great competition, so make sure you visit us on Wednesday 10th March for your chance to win some cracking crime fiction.

In the meantime, why not get yourself aquainted with Windmill’s titles and authors by visiting their excellent new website and blog at http://www.windmill-books.co.uk/