Annual CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger award shortlist announced

The judging lunch for the 2004 CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger took place on Thursday at Soho House in London.
After a lively debate, the panel arrived at a shortlist that encompasses a wide collection of authorial voices and styles, from the traditional to the profoundly disturbing - reports Ian Fleming Publications.

The shortlisted books cover a range of diverse plots, from terrorism in the Afghan mountains to high-tech industrial espionage to undercover narcotics operations. They also feature an array of geographical and temporal locations, including Venice and Tokyo in the present day, 1930s Berlin and 1980s New York: Thrilling Cities uniquely and powerfully portrayed.

For all their apparent differences, these books all have two things in common: pure quality of writing and that elusive degree of compulsive readability once highlighted by Fleming himself as a pre-requisite for a successful thriller.

The winner will be announced at the CWA awards lunch in London on 9 November.

The shortlist in alphabetical order:

Jeffery Deaver - Garden of Beasts, Dan Fesperman - The Warlord's Son, Joseph Finder - Paranoia, Mo Hayder - Tokyo, Stephen Leather - Hard Landing, Adrian McKinty - Dead I well may be, Daniel Silva - The Confessor

Thanks to `JP` for the alert.

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