Monday, March 10, 2008

More Reasons to Bite Your Nails

The Web site Mystery Ink is out with its nominees for the 7th Annual Gumshoe Awards. This year’s contenders are as follows:

Best Mystery:
The Tin Roof Blowdown, by James Lee Burke (Simon & Schuster)
The Unquiet, by John Connolly (Atria)
Mistress of the Art of Death, by Ariana Franklin (Putnam)
The Shotgun Rule, by Charlie Huston (Ballantine)
What the Dead Know, by Laura Lippman (Morrow)

Best Thriller:
Bad Luck and Trouble, by Lee Child (Delacorte)
The Watchman, by Robert Crais (Simon & Schuster)
Power Play, by Joseph Finder (St. Martin’s Press)
The Book of Air and Shadows, by Michael Gruber (Morrow)
Thirteen, by Richard K. Morgan (Del Rey)

Best First Novel:
Big City, Bad Blood, by Sean Chercover (Morrow)
Stigma, by Philip Hawley Jr. (Harper)
The Spellman Files, by Lisa Lutz (Simon & Schuster)
Head Games, by Craig McDonald (Bleak House Books)
Mr. Clarinet, by Nick Stone (HarperCollins)

“Still to be announced,” reports Mystery Ink, “is the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award, which will be presented at the same time as the other winners.” We can only assume that there will be an announcement forthcoming, too, of nominees for this year’s Best European Crime Novel commendation and an award given for Best Crime Fiction Web Site--both traditional Gumshoe categories. Demolition Magazine picked up that last honor in 2007, and January Magazine won the same award in 2005 for its crime-fiction coverage.

All Gumshoe winners will be announced on April 21.

UPDATE: Mystery Ink editor David J. Montgomery left the following information in the Comments section of this post, but since not everyone reads those comments, I thought it best to quote him here:
After a great deal of discussion, we decided to eliminate the category for Best European Crime Novel. It was never a strength of the Gumshoes, and I'm not a fan in general of that type of niche award. (Same thing goes for Best Paperback, etc.)

As for Best Website, that one’s still up in the air. We’ve been considering a new way of handling that award, but I don’t know if it will be implemented in time. So we might have to wait for next year on that one.
We will keep you posted.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the mention! I'm excited about this list of books.

After a great deal of discussion, we decided to eliminate the category for Best European Crime Novel. It was never a strength of the Gumshoes, and I'm not a fan in general of that type of niche award. (Same thing goes for Best Paperback, etc.)

As for Best Website, that one's still up in the air. We've been considering a new way of handling that award, but I don't know if it will be implemented in time. So we might have to wait for next year on that one.