Disordered Daggers : Missing by Sam Hawken (2014)
(Gold and Steel, shortlisted.) This has the most striking cover design of any of this year's nominees, created by Tony Lyons of Estuary English. Like his debut The Dead Women of Juarez, Sam Hawken grounds his plot in the brutal present day reality of a Mexican town controlled by gangs. Hawken puts his lead character, Jack Searle, through the wringer, as he tries to find out what has happened to his step daughter and her cousin when both girls fail to come back from a concert in Nuevo Laredo.
Searle's despair and determination are the engine of a gripping narrative, where one of the big plot developments - the replacement and dismissal of the Nuevo Laredo civilian police force - is sadly not an authorial invention. As with The Night the Rich Men Burned this is a dark world of criminality in ascendance, and Hawken steers the book away from the Death Wish revenge tale the final chapters might have been. Searle might have some military training in his past life, but it counts for nothing across the border. This is memorable, powerful, and I definitely agree with the fourteen Dagger judges who have shortlisted it as one of the best of the year.
Searle's despair and determination are the engine of a gripping narrative, where one of the big plot developments - the replacement and dismissal of the Nuevo Laredo civilian police force - is sadly not an authorial invention. As with The Night the Rich Men Burned this is a dark world of criminality in ascendance, and Hawken steers the book away from the Death Wish revenge tale the final chapters might have been. Searle might have some military training in his past life, but it counts for nothing across the border. This is memorable, powerful, and I definitely agree with the fourteen Dagger judges who have shortlisted it as one of the best of the year.