Whoo Done It

Oregon attorney-turned-novelist Phillip Margolin has won the 2009 Spotted Owl Award for his most recent novel, Executive Privilege (Harper), a thriller that implicates the president of the United States in more than one homicide. The Spotted Owl is given out annually by the Portland-based crime-fiction fan organization Friends of Mystery to what its members think was the best novel by a Pacific Northwest author published during the previous year.

The runners-up for this award were: Chasing Smoke, by Bill Cameron (Bleak House); House Rules, by Mike Lawson (Atlantic Monthly Press); Nameless Night, by G.M. Ford (Morrow); Cold Plague, by Daniel Kalla (Forge); Skeleton Lake, by Mike Doogan (Putnam); Shanghai Tunnel, by Sharan Newman (Forge); Frozen Sun, by Stan Jones (Bowhead Press); Fixation, by Mark Schorr (St. Martin’s Minotaur); and a tie between Careless in Red, by Elizabeth George (Harper), and Blue Smoke and Murder, by Elizabeth Lowell (Morrow).

Previous recipients of the Spotted Owl include Kate Wilhelm, Kris Nelscott, and Kevin O’Brien.

(Hat tip to The Gumshoe Site.)