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Mystery Awards

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Crime Writers of Canada Arthur Ellis Award
Best First Novel Nominees

The Joining of Dingo Radish by Rob Harasymchuk
An accomplished thief and a skilled con man, Dingo Radish is a good man who does bad things. The eldest of three children born to an alcoholic father and an emotionally unstable mother, Dingo and his family are social outcasts in the town of Bennington Falls, Saskatchewan. After the deaths of his parents, Dingo becomes responsible for his mentally handicapped brother and promiscuous sister. But going straight turns out to be harder than he’d hoped. In a desperate attempt to provide for his family, Dingo pulls one last heist: he steals a semi-trailer loaded with a genetically modified herbicide and sells it to his crooked boss. But the herbicide manufacturer is out to kill more than weeds, and Dingo stumbles into a web of greed and genetic engineering.

All Shook Up by Mike Harrison
Two years as a city cop have convinced Eddie Dancer he is better off working for himself as a private investigator. When he is hired to track down a tough, professional bank robber, Eddie has no idea he is about to pry the lid off a very nasty can of worms. When he runs up against a pair of disgraced ex-bikers, he uncovers a macabre connection between them and the "fate worse than death" that has befallen many of the city's hookers, a fate that leaves them, in an irreversible vegetative state. Eddie learns that a man who is already in prison has carried out the bank robbery and he wonders how someone can be in two different places at once. With the help of his friend, Danny Many Guns, Eddie uncovers evidence of a major conspiracy stretching from the city's back streets and tattoo parlors to the very top of the prison system food chain. Will Danny Many Guns save his friend and partner from the "fate worse than death," or will the bad guys get their revenge on the man who has exposed them?

Blue Mercy by Illona Haus
Ravaged by guilt, Detective Kay Delaney is reeling from an attack that resulted in her partner's death. Her only consolation is that serial killer Bernard Eales, who shot her partner, sits in Maryland's State Penitentiary awaiting what's expected to be a sure conviction. But when the prosecution's star witness turns up dead and the body bears the same gruesome marks found on Eales's victims, Kay wonders whether the right man is about to stand trial.

Sugarmilk Falls by Ilona van Mil
Sugarmilk Falls is a close-knit community with the worst of secrets. But secrets cannot stay buried forever. As the thick snow of a winter’s night sets in, the inhabitants gather together, induced by a questioning stranger to talk openly for the first time about the sinister events of the past. Some think that it all began when Grand’mère Osweken, an Ojibwa shaman, lost the maple forests on a gamble during a game of craps. Others contend it goes further back, to the arrival of the schoolteacher Marina Grochowska, a newcomer with a tightly guarded past. Or perhaps it really started years before that when the woodsman Zack Guillem discovered a curious powdery coating over an area of foliage in the bush.

Still Life by Louise Penny
Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Surêté du Québec and his team of investigators are called in to the scene of a suspicious death in a rural village south of Montreal. Jane Neal, a local fixture in the tiny hamlet of Three Pines, just north of the U.S. border, has been found dead in the woods. The locals are certain it’s a tragic hunting accident and nothing more, but Gamache smells something foul in these remote woods, and is soon certain that Jane Neal died at the hands of someone much more sinister than a careless bowhunter.

Crime Writers of Canada Arthur Ellis Award
Best Novel Nominees

Cemetery of the Nameless by Rick Blechta
Victoria Morgan, violin virtuoso extraordinaire, and her devoted piano accompanist Roderick Whitchurch, are on yet another European tour that stops in Vienna. While playing to a full house, Tory leaves the stage and disappears in the middle of the concert, leaving behind a puzzled audience. Tory’s decision proves fatal to her career, because the rumors surrounding her disappearance involve the accusation that Tory has committed the brutal murder of a high profile Vienna figure. As the press continues to hound anyone who knew Tory for answers, it appears she is running from them, the police, and her long-suffering husband.

Blackfly Season by Giles Blunt
A young woman has wandered bug-bitten out of the bush and can’t remember her name or where she comes from. The reason? She has been shot in the head with a small-calibre weapon and the bullet is lodged in her brain. Then a body of Wombat Guthrie turns up in a cave in the woods, the hands and feet have been removed but whose tattoos are unmistakable. At first the two cases seem unrelated but subsequent clues and another brutal murder seem to connect both of them to the fortunes of a small, even amateurish, drug gang that has recently hit the big time under the leadership of an Ojibwa shaman named Red Bear.

Cold Dark Matter by Alex Brett,
When a promising young astronomer is found hanging from the struts of the FrancoCanadian Telescope in Hawaii, Ottawa wants an investigation. They're not interested in the cause of death, suicide or murder, but his research diaries are missing, and they want them back. Morgan O’Brien is sent out to find them. Once on the Big Island she discovers she's not alone. Someone else is chasing the diaries and they are more than willing to kill to get them.

Strange Affair by Peter Robinson
An attractive woman hurtles north in a blue Peugeot with a hastily scrawled address in her pocket, while, back in London, a desperate man leaves an urgent late-night phone message on his brother's answering machine. By sunrise the next morning, the woman is found inside her car along an otherwise peaceful country lane, shot, execution-style, through the head. Detective Inspector Annie Cabbot arrives on the scene and discovers a slip of paper in the dead woman's pocket that bears the name of her colleague Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks. Banks has gone missing just when he's needed most, and has left plenty of questions behind.

April Fool by William Deverell
Arthur Beauchamp, the scholarly, self-doubting legend of the B.C. criminal bar is enjoying his retirement as a hobbyist farmer on B.C.’s Garibaldi Island when he is dragged back to court to defend an old client. Nick “the Owl” Faloon, once one of the world’s top jewel thieves, has been accused of raping and murdering a psychologist. Beauchamp has scarcely registered how unlikely it is that the diminutive Faloon has hurt anyone when his new wife, Margaret Blake, organic farmer and environmental activist, has takes up residence in a tree she is determined to save it from loggers. Beauchamp shuttles between Vancouver and the island, doing what he can to save the tree and get his wife back, and defend Faloon.

Mystery Writers of America Edgar Alan Poe Award
Best First Novel By An American Author

Die A Little by Megan Abbott
This noir tale tells the story of Lora King, a schoolteacher, and her brother Bill, a junior investigator with the district attorney's office. Lora's comfortable, suburban life is jarringly disrupted when Bill falls in love with a mysterious young woman named Alice Steele, a Hollywood wardrobe assistant with a murky past. Made sisters by marriage but not by choice, the bond between Lora and Alice is marred by envy and mistrust. Spurred on by inconsistencies in Alice's personal history and possibly jealous of Alice's hold on her brother, Lora finds herself lured into the dark alleys and mean streets of seamy Los Angeles. Assuming the role of amateur detective, she uncovers a shadowy world of drugs, prostitution, and ultimately, murder.

Immoral by Brian Freeman
Lieutenant Jonathan Stride is suffering from an ugly case of déjà vu. For the second time in a year, a beautiful teenage girl has disappeared off the streets of Duluth, Minnesota without a trace. The two victims couldn’t be more different. first it was Kerry McGrath, bubbly, sweet sixteen. And now Rachel Deese, strange, sexually charged, a wild child. The media hounds Stride to catch a serial killer, and as the search carries him from the icy stillness of the northern woods to the erotic heat of Las Vegas, he must decide which facts are real and which are illusions. And Stride finds his own life changed forever by the secrets he uncovers. Secrets that stretch across time in a web of lies, death, and illicit desire. Secrets that are chillingly immoral.

Run the Risk by Scott Frost
Los Angeles homicide detective Alex Delillo works a case that chills her from the start: one with too much ambiguity and far too many surprises. None of the evidence-and yet all of it-seems relevant. A small-time shopkeeper is shot to death. Then a rare, untraceable explosive ignites in a bungalow, hurling the front door across the yard. Finally, a teenaged girl goes missing, her car window smashed, her keys still in the ignition. Even before they tell her, Detective Delillo knows that this girl is her daughter.

Hide Your Eyes by Alison Gaylin
Samantha Leiffer has a self-centered self-help guru for a mother, a cadre of off-kilter Greenwich Village pals, and a bisexual cheating ex-boyfriend. She doesn't need more grief. Then she spies two people dumping a dubious-looking ice chest into the Hudson River, and she has a chilling hunch about what's inside. Not being the kind of girl to let two psychos get away with murder, Sam sets out to unravel a mystery-and is soon being stalked by a sinister, shadowy figure who's wearing one-of-a-kind mirrored contact lenses.

Officer Down by Theresa Schwegel
Police officer Samantha Mack is in trouble. Knocked unconscious during an impromptu sting, she woke up in the hospital to the news that her partner had been shot and killed at the scene with her gun. She remembers firing her gun at the perp until it was empty, but so far there’s no evidence that anyone else was even at the scene, alive or dead. The departmental higher-ups want to call it accidental and sweep it under the rug, but Sam wants the truth. Even when she’s suspended for refusing to follow along, she’s determined to find out what happened, no matter the consequences. The only two men who can help her are Homicide Detective Mason Imes, also her married lover, and Alex O’Connor, from Internal Affairs. But can Sam trust either of them? And will she be able to clear her name before whoever killed her partner comes back for her?

Mystery Writers of America Edgar Alan Poe Award
Best Novel Nominees

Mystery Writers of America Edgar Alan Poe Award
Best Paperback Original

Homicide My Own by Anne Argula
Homicide My Own is the story of two slog-bottom cops from Spokane, Washington, who are assigned to what appears to be a routine mission: They’re to go to an Indian reservation on the Northwest coast and pick up a man who’s being held for kidnapping a teenaged girl. Once there, however, one of the cops (given the unusual moniker of "Odd") becomes obsessed with a decades old unsolved murder and he really doesn’t want to head back to Spokane until he’s found some resolution. His partner Quinn, (the novels narrator) an acid-tongued menopausal wife of a decent and boring pharmacist, finds his behavior rather amusing at first, but then finds it to be much more than amusing.

The James Deans by Reed Farrel Coleman
It’s 1983 and Reaganomics is in full swing. Moe Prager, ex-NYPD cop turned reluctant P.I. is too busy reeling from a family tragedy to see what’s coming. He’s about to be sucked into a case that might deliver him what he’s always wanted or plunge him into purgatory. Two years earlier, Moira Heaton, a young intern for an up-and-coming politico, vanished without a trace. Although there is no evidence supporting her boss’s involvement, rumors and whispers have conspired to stall his once-promising career. Now, in a last- ditch effort to clear his name, state senator Steven Brightman enlists Moe’s help.

Kiss Her Goodbye by Allan Guthrie
When people in Edinburgh want to borrow money, they go to Cooper. When they don’t pay it back, they get a visit from Joe Hope. But now Joe’s got problems of his own. His teenage daughter is found dead, an apparent suicide. Then the police arrest him for murder. But for once in his life, Joe’s innocent and with help from Scotland’s hardest men (and one of Scotland’s hardest women), he sets out to find the person who framed him and deliver his own brutal brand of justice.

Six Bad Things by Charlie Huston
Hank Thompson is living off the map in Mexico with a bagful of cash that the Russian mafia wants back and many, many secrets. So when a Russian backpacker shows up in town asking questions, Hank tries to play it cool. But he knows the jig is up when the backpacker mentions the money and the family Hank left behind. Suddenly Hank’s in a desperate race to get to his parents in California before anyone can harm them. Along the way he’ll face Federales and Border Patrol, mafiosi and vigilantes, extortionists and drug dealers, and a couple of psychotic surf bums with an ax to grind. From the golden beaches of the Yucatán to the seedy strip clubs of Vegas, Charlie Huston opens a door to the squalid underworld of crime and corruption–and invites the reader to live it in the extreme.

Girl in the Glass by Jeffrey Ford
The Great Depression has bound a nation in despair and only a privileged few have risen above it, the exorbitantly wealthy and the hucksters who feed upon them. Diego, a seventeen-year-old illegal Mexican immigrant, owes his salvation to master grifter Thomas Schell. Together with Schell's gruff and powerful partner, they sail comfortably through hard times, scamming New York's grieving rich with elaborate, ingeniously staged séances until an impossible occurrence changes everything. While "communing with spirits," Schell sees an image of a young girl in a pane of glass, silently entreating the con man for help. Though well aware that his otherworldly "powers" are a sham, Schell inexplicably offers his services to help find the lost child drawing Diego along with him into a tangled maze of deadly secrets and terrible experimentation.

Malice Domestic Agatha Award
Best First Novel

Blood Relations by Lisa Tillman
Every reporter dreams of breaking the story of the century, but for tabloid TV reporter Abigail Gardner becoming that story will be her greatest nightmare. Abby’s nightmare begins when her troubled older brother, Bennett, is accused of murdering his girlfriend, Emily Boyle, the beloved heiress to an American political dynasty. Convinced her brother is no killer, Abby sets out to prove his innocence. She uses her investigative skills to dig into the lives of Emily and her famous family – a family repeatedly touched by tragedy and with some very well hidden skeletons.
Abby’s instincts propel her deeper and deeper into the Boyle’s past where she discovers a deadly secret the nation’s most powerful political clan has spent decades trying to hide - a secret so powerful that it could save Bennett’s life, destroy the Boyle’s legacy and rewrite history.

Jury of One by Laura Bradford
Four weeks, four murders, and a fortuneteller who holds the key. It’s a story Elise Jenkins never thought she’d cover, an investigation Mitch Burns prayed he’d never lead. Now each rise in the tide brings them closer to a killer—and a final verdict rendered by a jury of one.

Knit One, Kill Two by Maggie Sefton
Even though her aunt was an expert knitter, Kelly Flynn never picked up a pair of knitting needles she liked until she returned to her childhood home of Fort Connor, Colorado, and walked into the knitting shop, House of Lambspun. There, she learns how to knit one, purl two, and untangle the mystery behind her beloved aunt’s murder. The police are convinced that her aunt’s death was the result of a burglary gone bad, but for the accountant in Kelly, things just aren’t adding up. Why would her sensible aunt borrow $20,000 just days before her death? With the help of new friends and knitting regulars at House of Lambspun, Kelly gets a few lessons in knitting a sumptuously colored scarf—and in luring a killer out of hiding.

Witch Way To Murder by Shirley Damsgaard
Meet Ophelia Jensen, a librarian in the small Iowa town of Summerset, and her grandmother, Abigail McDonald--two women with a lot of secrets. They’re psychic and they come from a line of witches dating back over a hundred years. But according to Ophelia, the line ends with Abby. She wants no part of Abby's hocus-pocus. Then there’s that little secret of her breakdown four years ago after one of her visions failed to prevent her best friend’s murder. All she wants now is to be left alone in the nice, safe world she’s created for herself and let the past stay buried. Unfortunately, we don’t always get what we want. When a mysterious stranger shows up in Summerset asking too many questions for Ophelia’s comfort and a dead body is found in the woods, she feels her comfortable world slipping away as she’s drawn into a web of murder and magick. Ophelia must finally choose whether to follow her destiny, or not. If she does, can magick save her?

Better Off Wed by Laura Durham
Wedding planner Annabelle Archer knows better than anyone that weddings are murder. When a particularly dreadful mother of the bride is found dead at a wedding reception before the rice is even thrown, Annabelle and her motley crew of wedding associates must clear their own names before they become known around town for the notorious murder rather than their ability to put together a flawless event. Annabelle knows that even her trusted wedding emergency kit won’t be able to salvage their careers if they can’t find the real culprit. But finding the killer won’t be easy, since it turns out the victim is one of Washington D.C.’s most hated socialites, with a list of enemies longer than an itemized bill from a wedding planner!

Malice Domestic Agatha Award
Best Novel

Owls Well That Ends Well by Donna Andrews
In Owl's Well That Ends Well, Meg Langslow finds a body at her family's giant yard sale. The police close the sale and arrest a professor who's the key vote on Michael's tenure committee--and to save Michael's career, Meg must find the real killer herself, and quickly.

Pardonable Lies by By Jacqueline Winspear
London investigator Maisie Dobbs faces grave danger in a case that tests her spiritual strength, her unique intuitive methods of detection and her regard for her long-time mentor, Maurice Blanche, when she returns to the site of her most painful WWI memories to resolve the mystery of a pilot’s death.

Rituals of the Season by Margaret Maron
It's Christmas and Judge Deborah Knott's large family are over the moon that she's going to marry Sheriff's Deputy Dwight Bryant. But her house is still torn up, two budding attorneys want her help in stopping an execution, and the murder of a friend threatens the merriment of what should be a joyous season.

The Belen Hitch by Pari Noskin Taichert
Modern art and railroad culture clash when public relations consultant Sasha Solomon travels to Belen, New Mexico, to help increase tourism using a former Harvey House as the main attraction. When Sasha finds a highly controversial artist dead, the consultant's life becomes much more difficult than mere press releases and marketing plans.

Trouble in Spades by Heather Webber
Landscaping is Nina Quinn’s business, but trouble seems to be her middle name. As if becoming guardian of a neurotic, unhousebreakable Chihuahua wasn't enough, Nina must also track down her sister’s wayward fiancé, deal with a neighborhood burglar, cope with her wacky but lovable family, and sort out her messy love life. But when her gardening magic inadvertently turns up a dead body—or two—poor Nina realizes she has...Trouble in Spades.

The Body in the Snowdrift by Katherine Hall Page
When caterer Faith Fairchild learns of her father-in-law’s plan to celebrate his 70th birthday by gathering his large family together for a weeklong stay at the Vermont ski resort condo they’ve owned since the little Fairchilds could first toddle over to the rope tow, her reaction is mixed. Yes, she likes to ski and yes, she loves her husband, the Reverend Thomas’s kin, but both in smaller and shorter doses. Soon after arriving at Pine Slopes, she finds a body—an apparent heart attack victim—on a x-country ski trail. Then a series of malicious and potentially deadly pranks plagues the resort. Who is the mysterious woman living in the “gingerbread cottage” deep in the woods? What are Faith’s adolescent nephews up to? Family secrets abound and family dynamics explode as the sibs resurrect old rivalries. The resort’s star chef vanishes without a word to anyone and Faith is forced to step in—and almost out!

The Crime Writer’s Association New Blood Dagger
Awarded in memory of CWA founder John Creasey, for best first book.

Immoral by Brian Freeman
Lieutenant Jonathan Stride is suffering from an ugly case of déjà vu. For the second time in a year, a beautiful teenage girl has disappeared off the streets of Duluth, Minnesota. The two victims couldn’t be more different. First it was Kerry McGrath, bubbly, sweet sixteen and now Rachel Deese, strange, sexually charged, a wild child. The media hounds Stride to catch a serial killer, and as the search carries him from the icy stillness of the northern woods to the erotic heat of Las Vegas, he must decide which facts are real and which are illusions. And Stride finds his own life changed forever by the secrets he uncovers. Secrets that stretch across time in a web of lies, death, and illicit desire, secrets that are chillingly immmoral.

Ice Trap by Kitty Sewell
The Ice Trap is a contemporary novel set in Cardiff and in Moose Creek, a remote sub-arctic community in Northern Canada. A 46-year-old Welsh surgeon's life is turned upside down by a letter from teenaged twins in the Canadian Arctic, claiming to be his children. With his marriage in ruins, he goes back to this remote ice-bound town, intending to solve the mystery of the children he cannot remember fathering. The truth turns out to be more extraordinary than he ever imagined, and changes the course of his life.

Still Life by Louise Penny
Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Surêté du Québec and his team of investigators are called in to the scene of a suspicious death in a rural village south of Montreal. Jane Neal, a local fixture in the tiny hamlet of Three Pines, just north of the U.S. border, has been found dead in the woods. The locals are certain it’s a tragic hunting accident and nothing more, but Gamache smells something foul in these remote woods, and is soon certain that Jane Neal died at the hands of someone much more sinister than a careless bowhunter.

The Crime Writer’s Association Duncan Lawrie Dagger
The year's best crime novel written in English.

The Chemistry of Death Simon Beckett
Three years ago, David Hunter moved to rural Norfolk to escape his life in London, his gritty work in forensics, and a tragedy that nearly destroyed him. Working as a simple country doctor, seeing his lost wife and daughter only in his dreams, David struggles to remain uninvolved when the corpse of a woman is found in the woods, a macabre sign from her killer decorating her body. In one horrifying instant, the quiet summer countryside that had been David’s refuge has turned malevolent and suddenly there is no place to hide.

Red Leaves by Thomas H. Cook
Eric Moore has a prosperous business, a comfortable home, a stable family life in a quiet town. Then, on an ordinary night, his teenage son Keith babysits Amy Giordano, the eight-year-old daughter of a neighboring family. The next morning Amy is missing, and Eric isn't sure his son is innocent. In his desperate attempt to hold his family together by proving his-and the community's-suspicions wrong, Eric finds himself in a vortex of doubt and broken trust. What should he make of Keith's strange behavior? Of his wife's furtive phone calls to a colleague? Of his brother's hints that he knows things he's afraid to say?

Safer Than Houses by Frances Fyfield
Sarah Fortune inherited her flat from one of her many lovers. Now a son has appeared claiming it is his, morally if not strictly legally, and he is using illegal means to persuade Sarah to give it up: abusive letters threatening her personal harm. As it becomes more difficult to ignore these missives, Sarah comes across Henry, a timid, lonely man whose upstairs neighbour is using every trick in the racketeer landlord's book to make him leave his home: litter in the shared hallway, continual noise, poison set out for his cat. It seems that if they swap accommodation for a while, they may be able to deal with each other's problems. But these two strangers have unknown connections in common: a well-meaning widow, a struggling therapist, and a man who sets fire to other people's property for a living.

Wolves of Memory by Bill James
A large, carefully plotted "cash-in-transit" raid goes hopelessly awry when armed policemen intervene to seize the perpetrators. Relatives and friends of the incarcerated are convinced that information, the date, the time, was leaked by the only man to escape before his arrest. Deputy Constable Colin Harpur and Assistant Constable Desmond Iles are delegated the job of hiding and protecting the informant and his family.

A Thousand Lies by Laura Wilson
In 1987 Sheila Shand was given a suspended sentence for murdering her father. At her trial, it emerged that she and her mother and sister had been forced to shield brutal sadist Leslie Shand while he subjected them to a reign of terror, daily beatings and sexual abuse. Years later, investigative journalist Amy Vaughan discovers letters and a newspaper cutting about the Shand case while clearing out her late mother's flat. Concluding that she must be related to the Shands, she decides to visit Sheila's mother who is in a care home. Amy is curious about the elderly Iris Shand who pores over an album of family photos, for Amy knows that photographs tell lies. Her own mother had subjected her to a different form of abuse - Munchausen By Proxy, using snaps of the daughter she'd made sick to try to keep the affections of Amy's father George, a charismatic con-man. Then George appears on Amy's doorstep after a long absence and tells her that he is dying of cancer. Soon she discovers that he may be lying about far more than his health. As she pursues her investigation of the Shand case, Amy realises that there is more to the murder of Leslie than the police ever unearthed, including two long-buried skeletons in woods near the family's home.

Raven Black by Ann Cleeves
It is a cold January morning and Shetland lies buried beneath a deep layer of snow. Trudging home, Fran Hunter's eye is drawn to a vivid splash of colour on the white ground, ravens circling above. It is the strangled body of her teenage neighbour Catherine Ross. As Fran opens her mouth to scream, the ravens continue their deadly dance ...The locals on the quiet island stubbornly focus their gaze on one man - loner and simpleton Magnus Tait. But when police insist on opening out the investigation, a veil of suspicion and fear is thrown over the entire community. For the first time in years, Catherine's neighbours nervously lock their doors, whilst a killer lives on in their midst.

The Crime Writer’s Association Duncan Lawrie International Dagger
The year's best crime novel translated into English from another language.

Excursion to Tindari by Andrea Camilleri
A young Don Juan is found murdered in front of his apartment building early one morning, and an elderly couple is reported missing after an excursion to the ancient site of Tindari, two seemingly unrelated cases for Inspector Montalbano to solve amid the daily complications of life at Vigata police headquarters. But when Montalbano discovers that the couple and the murdered young man lived in the same building, his investigation stumbles onto Sicily's brutal 'New Mafia', which leads him down a path more evil and more far-reaching than any he has been down before.

Autumn of the Phantoms by Yasmina Khadra:
Brahim Llob, the policeman-writer, is summoned by the chief of Algerian police and is fired for having published Morituri, the book which the Algerian establishment considered dishonourable and full of lies. Following a trip back to his hometown where he becomes a victim of an attack by a GIA commando, Llob goes back to Algiers. Fiction and reality intermesh in this third volume of the Inspector Llob series, which has the violence of Algeria as a constant supporting character throughout.

Dead Horsemeat by Dominique Manotti
A group of school friends who campaigned together at Rennes in the heydey of 1968: Agathe Renourd and her protege Nicolas Berger are in charge of the communications network of a major insurance consortium; Christian Deluc has become a council member at the Elysee Palace; Amelie raises thoroughbreds. Now, in 1989, the paths of these former students are due to cross in an entirely unexpected fashion as they start playing with fire, carried along by the euphoria born of power. Events begin to take off: race horses die under mysterious circumstances; unimaginable quantities of cocaine appear at Parisian parties and dashing Nicolas Berger meets a violent end when a bomb explodes in his car.

Borkmann's Point by Håkan Nesser
A wealthy real-estate mogul is brutally murdered with an axe in the quiet coastal town of Kaalbringen, apparently the second victim of a serial killer. Chief Inspector van Veeteren, bored of his holiday nearby, is summoned to assist the local authorities. But as the investigation proceeds there seems to be nothing to link the mogul with the first victim, a seedy ex-con. Another body is discovered, again with no apparent connection to the others, and the pressure mounts. The local police chief, just days away from retirement, is determined to wrap things up before he goes. Then there's a fourth murder, and a brilliant young female detective goes missing.

Blood on the Saddle by Rafael Reig:
Dickens & Clot Investigations Ltd, a detective agency in a waterlogged, semi-buried Madrid of the near future, has a couple of unusual specialities: helping distraught authors and taking on Manex Chopeitia. The authors are frantically in search of characters who've quit the page and assumed a life of their own; Manex Chopeitia is the legendary Big Brother of the genetic-engineering company that rules over both the capital and the destiny of the US-Iberian Federation. Carlos Clot, a paunchy, sartorially inept and alcoholic private eye. cycles, boats and gumshoes his way around a drug and drink-sodden metropolis. With the help of a cowboy sidekick, on the loose from an unfinished manuscript, Carlos is on a personal quest to put some dodgy people (both 'real' and 'fictional') in their place.

The Three Evangelists by Fred Vargas
Sophia Simeonidis, a Greek opera singer, wakes up one morning to discover that a tree has appeared overnight in the garden of her Paris house. Intrigued and unnerved, she turns to her neighbours: Vandoosler, an ex-cop fired from the police for having helped a murderer to escape, and three impecunious historians, Mathias, Marc and Lucien - the three evangelists. They agree - both because they need the money and out of sheer curiosity - to dig around the tree and see if something has been buried there. They find nothing but soil. A few weeks later, Sophia disappears and nobody worries too much until her body is found burned to ashes in a car. Who killed the opera singer? Her husband, her ex-lover, her best friend? Or could it be her lovely niece recently moved to the capital? They all seem to have a motive. Vandoosler and the three evangelists set out to find the truth.

The Crime Writer’s Association Ian Fleming Steel Dagger
Awarded for the best adventure/thriller novel in the vein of James Bond.

The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly
Mickey Haller has spent all his professional life afraid that he wouldn’t recognize innocence if it stood right in front of him. Haller is a Lincoln Lawyer, a criminal defense pro who operates out of the backseat of his Lincoln Town Car. It’s no wonder that he is despised by cops, prosecutors, and even some of his own clients. When a Beverly Hills rich boy is arrested for brutally beating a woman, Haller has his first high-paying client in years. He’s sure it will be a slam dunk in the courtroom. For once, he may be defending a client who is actually innocent. But an investigator is murdered for getting too close to the truth and Haller quickly discovers that his search for innocence has taken him face-to-face with a kind of evil as pure as a flame.

Sweet Gum by Jo-Ann Goodwin
Eugene Burnside joined The Firm before he left school, running drugs. Clever and ambitious, Eugene's now 28 and definitely going places because he's come to the attention of the Faron Brothers, and the Brothers are The Firm. And promotion couldn't come a moment to soon for Eugene if it means he no longer has to deal with middleman Mal Shifter and his two old aunts. Or those dogs. The lot of them give him the creeps. If Eugene's gangland career is going well, his personal life is not so sweet. The Burnside family moved to Wentworth Road when Eugene was a toddler. He still lives there, with his widowed mum, Gladys, and his sister Simone. The star of SweetHearts lap-dancing club, sis is doing alright too. Eugene is devoted to them both. He wished he felt the same about Simone's six year-old son, Nero, aka the Minimonster, Eugene knows 'disturbed' isn't the half of it. But evil has come to haunt the alleys and arches of North London, a sado-sexual killer has begun his grisly work, and now Eugene must fight to protect everything he holds dear and everyone he loves,

Pig Island by Mo Hayder
Journalist Joe Oakes makes a living exposing supernatural hoaxes. A born sceptic, he believes everything has a rational explanation. But when he visits a secretive religious community on a remote Scottish island, everything he thought he knew is overturned. Questions mount: why has the community been accused of Satanism? What has happened to their leader, Pastor Malachi Dove? And perhaps most important, why will no one discuss the strange apparition seen wandering the lonely beaches of Pig Island? Their confrontation, and its violent and bloody aftermath, is so catastrophic that it forces Oaksey to question the nature of evil, and whether he might not be responsible for the terrible crime about to unfold.

The English Assassin Daniel Silva
Art restorer and sometime spy Gabriel Allon is asked to visit Zurich, to clean the work of an Old Master for a millionaire banker. But when he gets there he finds the corpse of his client in a pool of blood beneath the masterpiece, and discovers that a secret collection of priceless paintings stolen by Nazis in the war is missing. With the Swiss authorities trying to pin the murder on Allon and a powerful cabal determined to make sure this wartime secret remains buried, the art restorer must use all his former spy skills to find out the truth. And with an assassin that he helped to train also on the loose, Allon will need all his wits just to stay alive.

The Mercy Seat by Martyn Waites
Once a renowned investigative journalist, since the unsolved disappearance of his 6-year-old son, Joe Donovan has lived a broken, reclusive life. He's abruptly thrust back into the real world when a teenage boy makes contact, in desperate need of his help. Jamal has in his possession something that holds a key to Donovan's past, a past that can only be unlocked by forcing him to make a terrifying journey into the present. As long buried secrets begin to emerge and bodies pile up, Donovan finds himself caught up in a harrowing web of fear. In order to survive and uncover the disturbing truth at the heart of the dangerous world he's found himself in, he puts together a team to help him, a team of outsiders that doesn't care which side of the law it operates on. And, Donovan will need their help. He and Jamal are being hunted by a death metal addicted serial killer. A killer with a 100 per cent success rate. A killer who doesn't know the meaning of the word mercy.

Contact Zero by David Wolstencroft
Who, what or where is Contact Zero? Deep in the mythology of the Service, whispered in training, clung to in moments of despair, is the belief that it is out there, the last chance saloon. You think you're beaten, betrayed and utterly alone, but maybe you're not. Maybe you get your one shot at rescue, if not redemption. Contact Zero: run by members of the Service, for members of the Service. When an operation is mortally compromised four first-year probationary agents, cut adrift in four corners of the world, must put Contact Zero to the test. But first they have to find it. And maybe one of the youngsters isn't quite as innocent as the others...

Mr Clarinet by Nick Stone
Pied Piper. Soul Stealer. Serial Killer. Who is Mr Clarinet? It was a job, Miami private investigator Max Mingus found hard to refuse: $10 million to locate billionaire's son Charlie Carver missing now for over three years. Young Charlie disappeared on the island of Haiti, where over the decades scores of children have vanished. In a country dominated by voodoo, rumours abound of black magic and a mythical figure called "Mr Clarinet", who for years has been tempting children away from their families. But could the truth be even more shocking than the legend? To find out, Max will have to succeed where previous detectives have not only failed but where some have died. And suddenly, this job isn't all about finding Charlie or his killers for the money it's just about staying alive.

The Mystery Writer’s of America Anthony Awards
Best First Novel
(Winner TBA)

The Baby Game by Randall Hicks
A new attorney, Toby Dillon, hedges his bets by remaining the part-time tennis pro at the country club. Then his idyllic life changes when his two childhood friends, Brogan and Rita, Hollywood's glamour couple, ask his help in adopting a baby. The media's feel good story curdles into danger when the baby is kidnapped. When the expected ransom demand never arrives and the police turn up nothing, Toby and Brogan try to find answers on their own. First they think the baby's birth mother is responsible, but suddenly she's missing too, and their suspects start turning up dead. They soon learn there's more at stake than a kidnapping, and the answers may trace back to their shared childhood.

Die a Little by Megan Abbott
This noir tale tells the story of Lora King, a schoolteacher, and her brother Bill, a junior investigator with the district attorney's office. Lora's comfortable, suburban life is jarringly disrupted when Bill falls in love with a mysterious young woman named Alice Steele, a Hollywood wardrobe assistant with a murky past. Made sisters by marriage but not by choice, the bond between Lora and Alice is marred by envy and mistrust. Spurred on by inconsistencies in Alice's personal history and possibly jealous of Alice's hold on her brother, Lora finds herself lured into the dark alleys and mean streets of seamy Los Angeles. Assuming the role of amateur detective, she uncovers a shadowy world of drugs, prostitution, and ultimately, murder.

Immoral by Brian Freeman
Lieutenant Jonathan Stride is suffering from an ugly case of déjà vu. For the second time in a year, a beautiful teenage girl has disappeared off the streets of Duluth, Minnesota. The two victims couldn’t be more different. First it was Kerry McGrath, bubbly, sweet sixteen and now Rachel Deese, strange, sexually charged, a wild child. The media hounds Stride to catch a serial killer, and as the search carries him from the icy stillness of the northern woods to the erotic heat of Las Vegas, he must decide which facts are real and which are illusions. And Stride finds his own life changed forever by the secrets he uncovers. Secrets that stretch across time in a web of lies, death, and illicit desire, secrets that are chillingly immmoral.

Officer Down Theresa Schwegel
Police officer Samantha Mack is in trouble. Knocked unconscious during an impromptu sting, she woke up in the hospital to the news that her partner had been shot and killed at the scene with her gun. She remembers firing her gun at the perp until it was empty, but so far there’s no evidence that anyone else was even at the scene, alive or dead. The departmental higher-ups want to call it accidental and sweep it under the rug, but Sam wants the truth. Even when she’s suspended for refusing to follow along, she’s determined to find out what happened, no matter the consequences. The only two men who can help her are Homicide Detective Mason Imes, also her married lover, and Alex O’Connor, from Internal Affairs. But can Sam trust either of them? And will she be able to clear her name before whoever killed her partner comes back for her?

Tilt-a-Whirl by Chris Grabenstein
There isn't much fun in the sub when a billionaire real estate tycoon is found murdered on the Tilt-A-Whirl at a seedy seaside amusement park in the otherwise quiet summer tourist town of Sea Haven. John Ceepak, a former MP just back from Iraq, has just joined the Sea Haven police department. The job offer came from an old army buddy who hoped to give Ceepak at least a summer's worth of rest and relaxation to help him forget the horrors of war. Instead, Ceepak will head up the murder investigation. He is partnered with Danny Boyle, a 24-year-old, part-time summer cop who doesn't carry a gun and only works with the police by day so he has enough pocket money left over to play with his beach buddies by night.

The Mystery Writer’s of America Anthony Awards
Best Novel
(Winner TBA)

Bloodlines by Jan Burke
Sweeping across decades, Burke masterfully unearths a cold case that is far from closed while introducing an intrepid novice reporter, Irene Kelly, learning the ropes from her mentor, Conn O'Connor. From the late fifties, when a bloodstained car is buried on a farm and a wealthy family disappears at sea, to the seventies, when Irene makes shocking connections and brashly tracks a killer from the past, to today, when new threats and deadly surprises are closing in on the veteran journalist and her husband, Frank Harriman, Bloodlines follows a fascinating labyrinth of lives, loves, sins, and secrets with the irrepressible Irene Kelly at its core.

Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly
Mickey Haller has spent all his professional life afraid that he wouldn’t recognize innocence if it stood right in front of him. Haller is a Lincoln Lawyer, a criminal defense pro who operates out of the backseat of his Lincoln Town Car. It’s no wonder that he is despised by cops, prosecutors, and even some of his own clients. When a Beverly Hills rich boy is arrested for brutally beating a woman, Haller has his first high-paying client in years. He’s sure it will be a slam dunk in the courtroom. For once, he may be defending a client who is actually innocent. But an investigator is murdered for getting too close to the truth and Haller quickly discovers that his search for innocence has taken him face-to-face with a kind of evil as pure as a flame.

Mercy Falls by William Kent Krueger
Back in the saddle as sheriff of Tamarack County, Cork O'Connor is lured to the nearby Ojibwe reservation on what appears to be a routine call only to become the target of sniper fire. Soon after, he's called to investigate a mutilated body found perched above the raging waters of Mercy Falls. The victim is Eddie Jacoby, a Chicago businessman negotiating an unpopular contract between his management firm and the local Indian casino. Sparks fly when the wealthy Jacoby family hires a beautiful private investigator to consult on the case. But once Cork discovers an old and passionate tie between one of the Jacoby sons and his own wife he begins to suspect that dark, personal motives lurk behind recent events.

Red Leaves by Thomas H. Cook
Eric Moore has a prosperous business, a comfortable home, a stable family life in a quiet town. Then, on an ordinary night, his teenage son Keith babysits Amy Giordano, the eight-year-old daughter of a neighboring family. The next morning Amy is missing, and Eric isn't sure his son is innocent. In his desperate attempt to hold his family together by proving his-and the community's-suspicions wrong, Eric finds himself in a vortex of doubt and broken trust. What should he make of Keith's strange behavior? Of his wife's furtive phone calls to a colleague? Of his brother's hints that he knows things he's afraid to say?

To the Power of Three by Laura Lippman
Josie, Perri, and Kat have been inseparable best friends since third grade, the athlete, the brilliant, acerbic drama queen, and the popular beauty with a heart that is open to all around her. They live in an affluent suburb of Baltimore and enjoy privileges many teenagers are denied. But on the final day of school one of them brings a gun with her. And when the police break down the door of the high school girls' bathroom, locked from the inside, they find two of the friends wounded, one of them critically and the third girl is dead.

The Mystery Writer’s of America Anthony Awards
Best Paperback Original
(Winner TBA)

Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Susan McBride
Website designer and high society rebel Andrea Kendricks would never have gotten involved with ego-in-pumps life-style hostess Marilee Mabry if it weren't for the underhanded machinations of Andy's upper crust mama. But thanks to Mother Cissy, Andy's donning designer duds to attend a launch party at the intolerable domestic diva's new Dallas TV studio and she's on hand to witness the celebration site go up in flames! Then a body turns up in the rubble, the victim, apparently, of some very foul play. Even though iron-willed Cissy isn't about to let her social calendar be upset by a little inconvenience like murder, her sometime-sleuthing daughter's got a more pressing engagement, namely, hunting down a killer. But there are more than a few nasty messes tucked away in the Mabry closet and a craven assassin who has the Big D elite quaking in their cowboy boots may soon be burying Andy in hers!

The James Deans by Reed Farrel Coleman
It’s 1983 and Reaganomics is in full swing. Moe Prager, ex-NYPD cop turned reluctant P.I. is too busy reeling from a family tragedy to see what’s coming. He’s about to be sucked into a case that might deliver him what he’s always wanted or plunge him into purgatory. Two years earlier, Moira Heaton, a young intern for an up-and-coming politico, vanished without a trace. Although there is no evidence supporting her boss’s involvement, rumors and whispers have conspired to stall his once-promising career. Now, in a last- ditch effort to clear his name, state senator Steven Brightman enlists Moe’s help.

A Killing Rain by P.J. Parrish
Detective Louis Kincaid return for this complex and compelling tale. What should have been a routine case for Kincaid takes a grisly turn when he pursues a twisted madman who's made hunting humans into a bloodsport in the Florida Everglades.

Kiss Her Goodbye by Allan Guthrie
When people in Edinburgh want to borrow money, they go to Cooper. When they don’t pay it back, they get a visit from Joe Hope. But now Joe’s got problems of his own. His teenage daughter is found dead, an apparent suicide. Then the police arrest him for murder. But for once in his life, Joe’s innocent and with help from Scotland’s hardest men (and one of Scotland’s hardest women), he sets out to find the person who framed him and deliver his own brutal brand of justice.

Six Bad Things by Charlie Huston
Hank Thompson is living off the map in Mexico with a bagful of cash that the Russian mafia wants back and many, many secrets. So when a Russian backpacker shows up in town asking questions, Hank tries to play it cool. But he knows the jig is up when the backpacker mentions the money and the family Hank left behind. Suddenly Hank’s in a desperate race to get to his parents in California before anyone can harm them. Along the way he’ll face Federales and Border Patrol, mafiosi and vigilantes, extortionists and drug dealers, and a couple of psychotic surf bums with an ax to grind. From the golden beaches of the Yucatán to the seedy strip clubs of Vegas, Charlie Huston opens a door to the squalid underworld of crime and corruption–and invites the reader to live it in the extreme

The Private Eye Writer’s of America Shamus Award
Best First Novel
(Winner TBA)

Blood Ties by Lori G. Armstrong
Julie Collins is stuck in a dead-end secretarial job with the Bear Butte County Sheriff’s office, and still grieving over the unsolved murder of her Lakota half-brother. Lack of public interest in finding his murderer, or the killer of several other transient Native American men, has left Julie with a bone-deep cynicism she counters with tequila, cigarettes, and dangerous men. The one bright spot in her mundane life is the time she spends working part-time as a PI with her childhood friend, Kevin Wells. When the body of a sixteen-year old white girl is discovered in nearby Rapid Creek, Julie believes this victim will receive the attention others were denied. Then she learns Kevin has been hired, mysteriously, to find out where the murdered girl spent her last few days. Julie finds herself drawn into the case against her better judgment, and discovers not only the ugly reality of the young girl’s tragic life and brutal death, but ties to her and Kevin’s past that she is increasingly reluctant to revisit.

Still River by Harry Hunsicker
It's not easy being named Oswald, not in the city where Lee Harvey grabbed his fifteen minutes of infamy and choked it to death. For Lee Henry Oswald, a private investigator and terminal loner, it's just one more burden to face as he trudges through the gritty underbelly of the concrete and glass metropolis that is Dallas in the new millennium. A simple assignment turns deadly when Oswald asks the right questions in the wrong places, and finds himself drawn into a shadowy world of smooth-talking drug lords and double-dealing real estate developers. In the end, he learns that blood is not always thicker than water, especially the muddy tributaries of the Trinity River, where he confronts the deadly results of his own decisions as he races to save the life of his partner.

The Devil’s Right Hand by J. D. Rhoades
Ex-cons DeWayne and Leonard thought it was a simple plan, swipe the payroll from a local construction company and make off with easy cash. Ptiy they left the owner dead. Bigger pity is that the owner’s son is a violent drug dealer who’s crazier than the low caliber ex-cons he’s vowed to nail, along with anyone else who gets in his way. Jack Keller is a bounty hunter with a brain full of combat nightmares. His new quarry is bail-jumper DeWayne but even Keller isn’t prepared for where this chase is going to take him.

Forcing Amaryllis by , Louise Ure
A trial consultant in Tucson, Arizona, Calla Gentry devotes her time and energy to victims in civil cases rather than criminal trials. The rape and near murder of her sister, Amaryllis, has done much more than affect Calla's career; she hides behind locked doors and jumps at shadows, a veritable victim by proxy after Amaryllis is left in a coma following a failed suicide attempt. When Calla is assigned against her will to the trial of Raymond Cates, a wealthy landowner's son accused of rape and first degree murder, she cannot help but note the parallels between the crime he stands accused of and her sister's assault. Determined to uncover the truth, Calla begins an investigation of Cates and the events of that fateful night. But things are seldom what they seem and Calla's investigation leads her to buried lies and a whole new world of violent rage.

The Private Eye Writer’s of America Shamus Award
Best Novel
(Winner TBA)

Oblivion by Peter Abrahams
Nick Petrov is a brilliant private investigator with a reputation for bringing missing children safely home. hen a woman approaches him, begging him to use his unique gifts to find her missing daughter, Petrov's instincts sound an alarm. He senses that she's concealing something. But is she lying to get Petrov's help or to set him up? Three days later, just as he has amassed all the answers he needs to close the case, they are swept away into oblivion.
Petrov awakes in a hospital bed, his memory of the past two weeks a complete blank, his personality altered. He is tempted to just put the trauma behind him and move on with his life, but there are too many things holding him back. When he returns home, he discovers a photograph full of strangers. In his office is a greeting card with a cryptic message inside, both the receiver and the sender completely unknown. His bank account has been augmented by a $450 check from a woman he can't remember. All of it points to a case he cannot recall. Digging for answers when he doesn't even know the questions, Petrov begins to fear he is searching for the most elusive quarry he has ever hunted: himself.

The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly
Mickey Haller has spent all his professional life afraid that he wouldn’t recognize innocence if it stood right in front of him. Haller is a Lincoln Lawyer, a criminal defense pro who operates out of the backseat of his Lincoln Town Car. It’s no wonder that he is despised by cops, prosecutors, and even some of his own clients. When a Beverly Hills rich boy is arrested for brutally beating a woman, Haller has his first high-paying client in years. He’s sure it will be a slam dunk in the courtroom. For once, he may be defending a client who is actually innocent. But an investigator is murdered for getting too close to the truth and Haller quickly discovers that his search for innocence has taken him face-to-face with a kind of evil as pure as a flame.

The Forgotten Man by Robert Crais
Los Angeles, 3:58 a.m.: Elvis Cole receives the phone call he’s been waiting for since childhood. Responding to a gunshot, the LAPD has found an injured man in an alleyway. He has told the officer on the scene that he is looking for his son, Elvis Cole. Minutes later, the man is dead. Haunted throughout his life by a lack of knowledge about his father, Elvis turns to the one person who can help him navigate the minefield of his past, his longtime partner and confidant, Joe Pike. Together with hard-edged LAPD detective, Carol Starkey, they launch a feverish search for the dead man’s identity even as Elvis struggles between wanting to believe he’s found his father at last and allowing his suspicions to hold him back. With each long-buried clue they unearth, a frightening picture begins to emerge about who the dead man might have been and the terrible secret he’s been guarding.

In a Teapot by Terence Faherty
A film version of THE TEMPEST, William Shakespeare's final play, featuring the cream of Hollywood's aristocratic British Colony? When the project is announced in 1948, it sounds like an idea that can't miss. But then the whispers start about one of those British actors and a burlesque queen, and murder follows shortly. Enter Scott Elliott, top operative of Hollywood Security and the soon-to-be husband of the lovely Ella Englehart. To get to the altar, Elliott must dodge blonde bombshells and gangsters, and solve a mystery that echoes Shakespeare's crowning work.

The Man With the Iron on Badge by Lee Goldberg
Harvey Mapes is a twenty-nine-year-old security guard who spends his nights in a guard shack outside a gated community in Southern California, reading detective novels, watching TVLand reruns, and waiting for his life to finally start...which happens when Cyril Parkus, one of the wealthy residents, asks Harvey to follow his beautiful wife Lauren. The lowly security guard jumps at the opportunity to fulfill his private eye fantasies and use everything he's learned from Spenser, Magnum, and Mannix. But things don't exactly go according to the books or the reruns. As Harvey fumbles and stumbles through his first investigation, he discovers that the differences between fiction and reality can be deadly. With the help of his mortgage-broker neighbor and occasional lover Carol, Harvey uncovers a blackmail plot that takes a sudden and unexpectedly tragic turn...plunging him into a world of violence, deception, and murder and forcing him to discover what it really takes to be a private eye.

Cinnamon Kiss by Walter Mosley
It is the Summer of Love and Easy Rawlins is contemplating robbing an armored car. It’s farther outside the law than Easy has ever traveled but his daughter, Feather, needs a medical treatment that costs far more than Easy can earn or borrow in time. And his friend Mouse tells him it’s a cinch. Then another friend, Saul Lynx, offers a job that might solve Easy's problem without jail time. He has to track the disappearance of an eccentric prominent attorney. His assistant of sorts, the beautiful Cinnamon Cargill, is gone as well. Easy can tell there is much more than he is being told, Robert Lee, his new employer, is as suspect as the man who disappeared. But his need overcomes all concerns, and he plunges into unfamiliar territory, from the newfound hippie enclaves to a vicious plot that stretches back to the battlefields of Europe.

The Private Eye Writer’s of America Shamus Award
Best Paperback Original
(Winner TBA)

Falling Down by David Cole
Computer hacker Laura Winslow is hired by a woman named Mary Emich, director of park events at Tohono Chul Park. Strange messages have been turning up on the park's computers, signals that something may be very wrong in the usually tranquil area. Laura's desperate need for friendship pulls her to Mary Emich and soon deep into a case that throws her already-rocky world even more off kilter. For a dark force has entered Tohono Chul: a crime cartel that masks itself as the village and park's protector is in fact involving a hopeless town in drugs, and even worse, people smuggling across the Mexican border. And amidst a backdrop of desperation, broken trust, and murder, Laura must question even those to whom she's become close, attempting to stop a criminal enterprise that threatens to destroy an entire people.

The James Deans by Reed Farrel Coleman
It’s 1983 and Reaganomics is in full swing. Moe Prager, ex-NYPD cop turned reluctant P.I. is too busy reeling from a family tragedy to see what’s coming. He’s about to be sucked into a case that might deliver him what he’s always wanted or plunge him into purgatory. Two years earlier, Moira Heaton, a young intern for an up-and-coming politico, vanished without a trace. Although there is no evidence supporting her boss’s involvement, rumors and whispers have conspired to stall his once-promising career. Now, in a last- ditch effort to clear his name, state senator Steven Brightman enlists Moe’s help.

Deadlocked by Joel Goldman
Trial attorney Lou Mason probes into a 15-year-old murder case that may have led to the execution of an innocent man. Lou soon uncovers a shocking explosion of deceit, corruption, and deadly violence.

Cordite Wine by Richard Helms
Eamon Gold is approached by Napa Valley winery heir Asa Corona to help stop people who are blackmailing him with pictures taken in a San Francisco gay bathhouse. The routine case becomes complicated when Gold's prime suspect is murdered and his client disappears. While trying to find the murderer, and his missing client, Eamon Gold runs across closeted kiddie show stars, a gay pro football linebacker, potentially corrupted politicians, and a nasty gangster with a secret worth killing to keep.

A Killing Rain by PJ Parrish
Detective Louis Kincaid return for this complex and compelling tale. What should have been a routine case for Kincaid takes a grisly turn when he pursues a twisted madman who's made hunting humans into a bloodsport in the Florida Everglades.

The Mystery Readers International Macavity Award
Best First Novel
(Winner TBA)

Immoral by Brian Freeman
Lieutenant Jonathan Stride is suffering from an ugly case of déjà vu. For the second time in a year, a beautiful teenage girl has disappeared off the streets of Duluth, Minnesota. The two victims couldn’t be more different. First it was Kerry McGrath, bubbly, sweet sixteen and now Rachel Deese, strange, sexually charged, a wild child. The media hounds Stride to catch a serial killer, and as the search carries him from the icy stillness of the northern woods to the erotic heat of Las Vegas, he must decide which facts are real and which are illusions. And Stride finds his own life changed forever by the secrets he uncovers. Secrets that stretch across time in a web of lies, death, and illicit desire, secrets that are chillingly immmoral.

All Shook Up by Mike Harrison
Two years as a city cop have convinced Eddie Dancer he is better off working for himself as a private investigator. When he is hired to track down a tough, professional bank robber, Eddie has no idea he is about to pry the lid off a very nasty can of worms. When he runs up against a pair of disgraced ex-bikers, he uncovers a macabre connection between them and the "fate worse than death" that has befallen many of the city's hookers, a fate that leaves them, in an irreversible vegetative state. Eddie learns that a man who is already in prison has carried out the bank robbery and he wonders how someone can be in two different places at once. With the help of his friend, Danny Many Guns, Eddie uncovers evidence of a major conspiracy stretching from the city's back streets and tattoo parlors to the very top of the prison system food chain. Will Danny Many Guns save his friend and partner from the "fate worse than death," or will the bad guys get their revenge on the man who has exposed them?

Baby Game by Randall Hicks
A new attorney, Toby Dillon, hedges his bets by remaining the part-time tennis pro at the country club. Then his idyllic life changes when his two childhood friends, Brogan and Rita, Hollywood's glamour couple, ask his help in adopting a baby. The media's feel good story curdles into danger when the baby is kidnapped. When the expected ransom demand never arrives and the police turn up nothing, Toby and Brogan try to find answers on their own. First they think the baby's birth mother is responsible, but suddenly she's missing too, and their suspects start turning up dead. They soon learn there's more at stake than a kidnapping, and the answers may trace back to their shared childhood.

The Mystery