Shortening the Shorts List

This is too bad, but unavoidable: Michael Malone’s “White Trash Noir” has been withdrawn from the running in the 2007 Edgar Award competition for best short story. As Jiro Kimura of The Gumshoe Site explains, while Malone’s tale appeared in last year’s collection Murder at the Foul Line (Mysterious Press), edited by Otto Penzler, it had previously been featured in Malone’s own wonderful, 2002 book of short stories about Southern women, Red Clay, Blue Cadillac. “The publisher,” says Kimura, “did not know about this and the writer withdrew his story from the nomination.”

Without “White Trash Noir,” the short-story category is reduced to: “The Home Front,” by Charles Ardai (in Death Do Us Part, edited by Harlan Coben; Little, Brown and Company); “Rain,” by Thomas H. Cook (in Manhattan Noir, edited by Lawrence Block; Akashic Books); “Cranked,” by Bill Crider (in Damn Near Dead, edited by Duane Swierczynski; Busted Flush Press); and “Building,” by S.J. Rozan (also in Manhattan Noir).