A New Year, and a new opportunity to revive my efforts to review the CWA Dagger nominees. This time I’m going to be sampling titles submitted by publishers for the awards, ahead of the longlist announcements in May. My new job with its hour or so of commuting has given me more reading time (and the more sociable shift patterns have also helped.) There will be (I hope) occasional diversions back to previous winners and other acquisitions from Alton’s excellent second-hand bookshop.
( ‘Terrible news, isn’t it? They’ve fenced off half the bank, Mick White says, though you can’t see it from here. Police teams, sniffer dogs, them white tent things … though what good they think that’ll do now, I don’t know. Whatever’s buried there, it’s been out there in the wind and rain long enough, from what Judy Wallace’s old man said. Her it was that found it, and to hear Mick’s account, their dog snapped it right in half at the elbow, brittle as a stick. Between that and the salt, I don’t suppose there’s much left of it now.’ )