Only the Barry Best

’Tis the season for crime-fiction award nominations. The Hammett Prize, the Arthur Ellis Awards, the Last Laugh Award, the Ned Kelly Awards, the Duncan Lawrie Dagger Awards, and now comes the list of contenders for this year’s Barry Awards, given out by Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine. The envelopes, please ...

Best Novel (published in the U.S. in 2007):
• Soul Patch, by Reed Farrel Coleman (Bleak House)
• The Unquiet, by John Connolly (Atria)
• Down River, by John Hart (St Martin’s Minotaur)
• Dirty Martini, by J.A. Konrath (Hyperion)
• What the Dead Know, by Laura Lippman (Morrow)
• Red Cat, by Peter Spiegelman (Knopf)

Best First Novel (published in the U.S. in 2007):
• Missing Witness, by Gordon Campbell (Morrow)
• Big City, Bad Blood, by Sean Chercover (Morrow)
• In the Woods, by Tana French (Viking)
• The Spellman Files, by Lisa Lutz (Simon & Schuster)
• The Collaborator of Bethlehem, by Matt Beynon Rees (Soho Press)
• The Blade Itself, by Marcus Sakey (St. Martin’s Minotaur)

Best British Crime Novel (published in the U.K. in 2007, not necessarily written by a British writer nor set in the U.K.):
• A Quiet Belief in Angels, by R.J. Ellory (Orion)
• Pig Island, by Mo Hayder (Bantam Press)
• One Under, by Graham Hurley (Orion)
• The Death List, by Paul Johnston (Mira)
• The 50/50 Killer, by Steve Mosby (Orion)
• Damnation Falls, by Edward Wright (Orion)

Best Paperback Original:
• Queenpin, by Megan Abbott (Simon & Schuster)
• Black Widow Agency, by Felicia Donovan (Midnight Ink)
• Choke Point, by Jay MacLarty (Pocket)
• The Mark, by Jason Pinter (Mira)
• Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand, by Fred Vargas (Penguin)
• Who Is Conrad Hirst?, by Kevin Wignall (Simon & Schuster)

Best Thriller:
• No Time for Goodbye, by Linwood Barclay (Bantam)
• The Cleaner, by Brett Battles (Delacorte)
• The Watchman, by Robert Crais (Simon & Schuster)
• Volk’s Game, by Brent Ghelfi (Henry Holt)
• Silence, by Thomas Perry (Harcourt)
• Midnight Rambler, by Jim Swain (Ballantine)

The winners will be announced during Bouchercon in Baltimore, to be held from October 9 to 12.