It is probably best known for the prestigious prizes that it awards (known as Daggers).
From 1955 to 1959 it awarded the Crossed Red Herring Award for the best crime novel of the year, after which the award was renamed the Gold Dagger. From 1969 to 2005, the CWA also awarded a Silver Dagger to the runner-up.
In 2006, Duncan Lawrie Bank sponsored the top award and dropped the Silver Dagger. It was called the Duncan Lawrie Gold Dagger and carried a prize of £20,000, the largest award for crime fiction in the world. In 2008 Duncan Lawrie withdrew from sponsorship and the value of the top prize was reduced.
Read more about this topic: Crime Writers' Association
Famous quotes containing the word daggers:
“There’s daggers in men’s smiles.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“It is a very true and expressive phrase, “He looked daggers at me,” for the first pattern and prototype of all daggers must have been a glance of the eye.... It is wonderful how we get about the streets without being wounded by these delicate and glancing weapons, a man can so nimbly whip out his rapier, or without being noticed carry it unsheathed. Yet it is rare that one gets seriously looked at.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)