Authors from Cornerstone, Vintage and Transworld were awarded three of the four Specsavers Crime Thriller Award daggers last night.

Gene Kerrigan's The Rage (Harvill Secker) won the CWA Gold Dagger. His suspense driven storm of violence set in the backstreets of Dublin proved unbeatable, an immense accolade given the literary oomph of his co-nominees.   

The CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger was awarded to Wiley Cash, named the best new crime author of the year for A Land More Kind than Home (Bantam). Cash toughed it out against serious competition from Tanya Byrne, Tom Wright and Ewart Hutton to win the title for his tale of the smarting underbelly of religious fanaticism of his Deep South youth.

The Bestseller Dagger was awarded to Kathy Reichs.  All five shortlisted authors were also inaugurated into the Crime Thriller Hall of Fame alongside such all-time greats as Colin Dexter, Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle.

The awards are a showcase of the UK's most wanted crime fiction and drama and run by Cactus TV and ITV3, in partnership with the Crime Writers' Association (CWA).  They will be televised on ITV3 on Tuesday 23rd October.