( The guests chattered. Everything was bright with summer sunshine. She took in every detail, as if looking for something out of place, something that could spoil this perfect day. She looked at the children playing tag in the car park. She looked at a kite shaped like a comma, dipping down over the flat ground, then soaring up again. She looked at lovers, holding hands as they walked by the tiny art gallery by the lighthouse. And then she saw the woman, a long way off, striding with a sense of purpose. As the guests chatted, she approached. She was walking towards them at speed. “Excuse me,” Alex said to Curly. She untangled herself from the packed picnic table and stood. The woman was in her fifties or sixties, dressed in a plain grey mac, gloves still on, as if defying the summer. )

 

 

( If you can solve these further riddles, then it’s more than I could at the original hearing: three people are not who they say they are. Three masquerade as others. One does not exist at all. )

 

 

( Everywhere I see signs of the police search – evidence markers, broken twigs, boot prints – but I’m not looking for the same things they were. A psychologist views a crime scene differently from a detective. Police search for physical clues and witnesses. I look at the overall picture and the salience of certain landmarks and features. Where are the obstacles and boundaries that alter behaviour? How quickly does someone disappear from sight? How far can I see in each direction? What are the vantage points and the shortcuts? )

23rd October - it won the category which shows what little I know!

 

( You want the facts before judging me. I cannot ask for a fairer hearing than this. So, assuming nothing, let me give them to you. Whether this serves my own ends or not, when you finish reading this letter you will know ‘who I really am’. And then you can decide for yourself.  )

 

 

( They drove out of the city in silence, skirting the suburbs and endless housing estates, making fast progress on the parkway that snaked through the blocky landscape of warehousing and big-box megastores, heading into the bustle of the sprawling Eastern Industrial Estate, with its scent of green waste and rubble dust and epoxy. Then the city fell away with an abruptness that always struck Zigic as slightly unreal and ahead the fenland unfolded, wild and flat, and near lawless, all the way to the Wash. The sky was vast and cloudless, heat shimmering up off the road, haze in the distance, the light wind stirring up the threat of dirt storms as the fields lay parched from the rainless weeks. Crops were wilting, standing unharvested, vegetation yellowing, fruit dying on the stem. The shortage of seasonal labour was beginning to tell now. Hardly any sign of activity in the fields they passed. People who went home for Easter had decided against returning, heading for more welcoming options instead. )

Update at 12 pm - And it did indeed make the Steel Daggers longlist.

 

 

 

 

 

 

( There were lush evergreen bushes studded with berries of all types, overgrown tangled creepers, and a few flowers struggling to survive beneath the onslaught. I recognized a few—hellebores and snowberries springing up from between dark-leaved laurels, and what I thought might be a laburnum up ahead. As we turned a corner, we passed underneath an ancient-looking yew so old it formed a tunnel over the path, its strange, tubular berries crunching underfoot. Its leaves had poisoned the ground, and nothing grew underneath its spread. There were more greenhouses in here, I saw, though they were smaller, still with enough glass in their broken frames to have built up an impressive amount of condensation. The inside of the glass was blotched with green lichen and mold, so thickly that I could barely see the remains of the plants inside, though some struggled up through the broken panes of the roof. Four brick paths quartered the garden, meeting in a small circle in the centre, where the statue stood. It was so covered in ivy and other creepers that it was hard to make out, but as I drew nearer, brushing aside some of the foliage, I saw that it was a woman, thin and emaciated and broken down, her clothes ragged, her face skull-like, her blank stone eyes fixing mine with an accusing stare. Her cheeks were scored with what looked like scratches, and when I peered closer I saw that the nails on her skeletal hands were long and pointed. )

 

 

( He reached inside and felt around. The recess in the ceiling was of the same dimensions as the opening except on one side, where it extended at least a foot farther onto a small shelf above the ceiling. He groped back, reaching as far as he could until he felt the edge of a small envelope. “Got something.” He grabbed it and slid it free. Then he stepped down from the chair. The envelope was tiny, only two by three and a half inches, with a clasp closure. On the outside, in cursive lettering in black ink, was the word Sisterhood. )

 

So the long lists have been announced, and unlike last year the lists themselves are a manageable 10 per category. Both Mrs Fen and myself were cheered to see Stuary Turton's "Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle" on both the Gold and the New Blood slates. Abir Mukherjee's "A Necessary Evil" clearly struck a chord, being selected for the Gold, Historical  and Steel categories - his first novel, "A Rising Man", won the Historical Dagger last year, and was one that I thoroughly enjoyed.

"Merlin at War" made the Historical dagger longlist, although I suspect that "Prussian Blue" owns this category this year. Mick Herron makes it three years in a row with nominations in both the Gold and Steel lists : I thought "London Rules" was as good as those previous contenders (and winner) if just a bit too obvious a set-up for the next book to come in the Slow Horses series. Congratulations also to Matthew Sweet, who I'm sure has a good chance with "Operation Chaos" in the Non Fiction category.

Ngaio Marsh is nominated for the first time, as far as I can tell, since 1957's "Off with his Head", for the first three chapters of "Money in the Morgue".  Josephine Tey (my current go-to audiobook obsession for my train journey) is also competing in the Historical category, kind of, as the heroine of Nicola Upson's "Nine Lessons".

Missing in action - no M L Rio, alas, and nothing at all for the current Girl on the Train / Gone Girl wannabe "The Woman at the Window".  I was also surprised by the absence of last year's Gold winner, Jane Harper, whose "Force of Nature" has been as well-reviewed as "The Dry" was.

Here are this year's shortlists in the categories that I'm particularly interested in:

Goldsboro Gold Dagger, Best Crime Novel of the Year:
Black Widow, Chris Brookmyre