Friday, January 16, 2009

Edgar, Show Your Stuff

Oh, great. I knew today was going to be a busy one, but I didn’t expect that among its offerings would be the hefty list of Edgar Award nominees for 2009. Here’s the list:

Best Novel
Missing, by Karin Alvtegen (Felony & Mayhem Press)
Blue Heaven, by C.J. Box (St. Martin’s Minotaur)
Sins of the Assassin, by Robert Ferrigno (Scribner)
The Price of Blood, by Declan Hughes (Morrow)
The Night Following, by Morag Joss (Delacorte Press)
Curse of the Spellmans, by Lisa Lutz (Simon & Schuster)

Best First Novel by an American Author
The Kind One, by Tom Epperson (Five Star)
Sweetsmoke, by David Fuller (Hyperion)
The Foreigner, by Francie Lin (Picador)
Calumet City, by Charlie Newton (Touchstone)
A Cure for Night, by Justin Peacock (Doubleday)

Best Paperback Original
The Prince of Bagram Prison, by Alex Carr (Random House Trade)
Money Shot, by Christa Faust (Hard Case Crime)
Enemy Combatant, by Ed Gaffney (Dell)
China Lake, by Meg Gardiner (Obsidian Mysteries)
The Cold Spot, by Tom Piccirilli (Bantam)

Best Fact Crime
For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder that Shocked Chicago, by Simon Baatz (HarperCollins)
American Lightning: Terror, Mystery, the Birth of Hollywood, and the Crime of the Century, by Howard Blum (Crown)--one of January Magazine’s favorite books of 2008
Havana Nocturne: How the Mob Owned Cuba and Then Lost It to the Revolution, by T.J. English (Morrow)
The Man Who Made Vermeers: Unvarnishing the Legend of Master Forger Hans van Meegeren, by Jonathan Lopez (Harcourt)
The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, by Kate Summerscale (Walker & Company)

Best Critical/Biographical
African American Mystery Writers: A Historical and Thematic Study, by Frankie Y. Bailey (McFarland & Company)
Hard-boiled Sentimentality: The Secret History of American Crime Stories, by Leonard Cassuto (Columbia University Press)
Scene of the Crime: The Importance of Place in Crime and Mystery Fiction, by David Geherin (McFarland & Company)
The Rise of True Crime, by Jean Murley (Praeger)
Edgar Allan Poe: An Illustrated Companion to His Tell-Tale Stories, by Dr. Harry Lee Poe (Metro Books)

Best Short Story
“A Sleep Not Unlike Death,” by Sean Chercover (from Hardcore Hardboiled, edited by Todd Robinson; Kensington Publishing)
“Skin and Bones,” by David Edgerley Gate (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, October 2008)
“Scratch of a Woman,” by Laura Lippman (from Hardly Knew Her; Morrow)
“La Vie en Rose,” by Dominique Mainard (from Paris Noir; edited by Aurelien Masson; Akashic Books)
“Skinhead Central,” by T. Jefferson Parker (from The Blue Religion, edited by Michael Connelly; Little, Brown)

Best Juvenile
The Postcard, by Tony Abbott (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
Enigma: A Magical Mystery, by Graeme Base (Abrams Books for Young Readers)
Eleven, by Patricia Reilly Giff (Random House/Wendy Lamb Books)
The Witches of Dredmoore Hollow, by Riford McKenzie (Marshall Cavendish Children’s Books)
Cemetery Street, by Brenda Seabrooke (Holiday House)

Best Young Adult
Bog Child, by Siobhan Dowd (Random House/David Fickling Books)
The Big Splash, by Jack D. Ferraiolo (Amulet Books)
Paper Towns, by John Green (Dutton Children’s Books)
Getting the Girl, by Susan Juby (HarperTeen)
Torn to Pieces, by Margo McDonnell (Delacorte Books for Young Readers)

Best Play
The Ballad of Emmett Till, by Ifa Bayeza (Goodman Theatre, Chicago)
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher, based on the story by Robert Lewis Stevenson (Arizona Theatre Company)
Cell, by Judy Klass (International Mystery Writers’ Festival)

Best Television Episode Teleplay
“Streetwise,” Law & Order: SVU, teleplay by Paul Grellong (Wolf Films/NBC Universal)
“Prayer of the Bone,” Wire in the Blood, teleplay by Patrick Harbinson (BBC America)
“Signature,” Law & Order: SVU, teleplay by Judith McCreary (Wolf Films/NBC Universal)
“You May Now Kill the Bride,” CSI: Miami, teleplay by Barry O'Brien (CBS)
“Burn Card,” Law & Order, teleplay by David Wilcox (Wolf Films/NBC Universal)

Best Motion Picture Screenplay
The Bank Job, screenplay by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais (Lionsgate)
Burn After Reading, screenplay by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen (Focus Features)
In Bruges, screenplay by Martin McDonagh (Focus Features)
Tell No One, screenplay by Guillaume Canet, based on the book by Harlan Coben (Music Box Films)
Transsiberian, screenplay by Brad Anderson and Will Conroy (First Look International)

Robert L. Fish Memorial Award
“Buckner’s Error,” Joseph Guglielmelli (from Queens Noir, edited by Robert Knightly; Akashic Books)

Raven Awards
Edgar Allan Poe Society, Baltimore, Maryland
Poe House, Baltimore, Maryland

The Simon & Schuster/Mary Higgins Clark Award
Sacrifice, by S.J. Bolton (St. Martin’s Minotaur)
The Killer’s Wife, by Bill Floyd (St. Martin’s Minotaur)
Stalking Susan, by Julie Kramer (Doubleday)
A Song for You, by Betsy Thornton (St. Martin’s Minotaur)
The Fault Tree, by Louise Ure (St. Martin’s Minotaur)

In addition, James Lee Burke and Sue Grafton have already been designated to receive 2009 Grand Master Awards from the Mystery Writers of America.

This year’s winners will be announced during a banquet at New York City’s Grand Hyatt Hotel on April 30.

6 comments:

Nathan Cain said...

Not as interesting as last year's nominees, at least from my perspective. Did Zeltserman's Small Crimes come out too late for a nomination? If not, someone dropped the ball because I'm gonna have to say it's the best PBO of the year by a long shot.

Bill Cameron said...

With a few notable exceptions, such as Christa Faust, Declan Hughes, Charlie Newton, and Tom Piccirilli the adult novel lists are a bad joke.

Sandra Ruttan said...

Nathan, SMALL CRIMES was submitted for consideration - the full submission list can be found here:
http://www.mysterywriters.org/?q=Edgars-Submissions

As is always the case with nominations, we'll never all agree. There are a lot of surprises that have been named in most of the novel categories.

Michael Carlson said...

Interesting to see China Lake nominated as a paperback original. Isn't it a reprint of a hardcover published in the UK about 5 years ago? Or don't UK publications count?

J. Kingston Pierce said...

You're correct, Michael. Gardiner's China Lake was originally published in the UK earlier this decade. But that apparently doesn't count on this side of the Atlantic. If it's new in the States, it is new, period.

Cheers,
Jeff

Michael Carlson said...

It's kinda like the Bush attitude toward torture: if it didnt happen in America, it didn't happen.....