It’s a Shamus, Ain’t It

The Private Eye Writers of America (PWA) has announced its nominees for the 2006 Shamus Awards, which honor excellence among works in the private-eye genre. Winners will be announced and awards presented during the PWA’s 25th anniversary banquet, to be held on September 29 in Madison, Wisconsin, during this year’s Bouchercon. And the nominees are ...

Best Hardcover:
• Oblivion, by Peter Abrahams (Morrow)
• The Lincoln Lawyer, by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown)
• The Forgotten Man, by Robert Crais (Doubleday)
• In a Teapot, by Terence Faherty (Crum Creek Press)
• The Man with the Iron-On Badge, by Lee Goldberg (Five Star)
• Cinnamon Kiss, by Walter Mosley (Little, Brown)

Best Paperback Original:
• Falling Down, by David Cole (Avon)
• The James Deans, by Reed Farrel Coleman (Plume)
• Deadlocked, by Joel Goldman (Pinnacle)
• Cordite Wine, by Richard Helms (Back Alley Books)
• A Killing Rain, by P.J. Parrish (Pinnacle)

Best First Novel:
• Blood Ties, by Lori G. Armstrong (Medallion)
• Still River, by Harry Hunsicker (Thomas Dunne/St. Martin’s Minotaur)
• The Devil’s Right Hand, by J.D. Rhoades (St. Martin’s Minotaur)
• Forcing Amaryllis, by Louise Ure (Mysterious Press)

Best Short Story:
• “Oh, What a Tangled Lanyard We Weave,” by Parnell Hall (in Murder Most Crafty, edited by Maggie Bruce; Berkley)
• “Two Birds with One Stone,” by Jeremiah Healy (Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine [AHMM], January-February 2005)
• “The Big Road,” by Steve Hockensmith (AHMM, May 2005)
• “A Death in Ueno,” by Michael Wiecek (AHMM, March 2005)
• “The Breaks,” by Timothy Williams (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, September-October 2005)

I’m pleased to see Steve Hockensmith’s nomination here (duplicating picks for the same short story by the Barry and Macavity nominating committees). I very much enjoyed Hockensmith’s first novel, Holmes on the Range, which made it to bookstores earlier this year, and I hope to see much more of his writing in the near future. And I must confess to having not sufficiently recognized the talents of Lee Goldberg, whose first adventure featuring Southern California P.I. Harvey Mapes book, The Man with the Iron-On Badge, is up for a Best Novel commendation. That book came into my hands at an extremely busy time, and I set it aside, thinking I might or might not return to it later. Given this Shamus nod, I evidently misjudged the novel’s value. I’ll have to go find it again now. But that’s always one of the best things about awards nominations: They make you sit up and take notice of works you might otherwise have overlooked.