Recommendations from our site
“The Girl in Cell A by Vaseem Khan is closer to a traditional whodunnit than a lot of the books on this shortlist, in that you’re wondering who committed a crime, start suspecting people, and in the end there’s a plot twist. That said, there’s violence, there’s incest; this is not a cozy mystery. It’s about a woman who was imprisoned as a girl, accused of a crime she doesn’t remember committing. She lived in a god-fearing community in the US, with a dominant family – for whom her mother was the housekeeper. The book charts her return to find out what happened after she gets out of prison and the resistance she faces from local townspeople.” Read more...
The Best Crime Fiction: The 2026 Gold Dagger Shortlist
Sophie Roell, Journalist
