Get Your Thriller Awards Here

British writer Tom Rob Smith picked up his second big-name prize of the week last night, during the gala conclusion to the 2009 ThrillerFest, held this weekend in New York City. His debut work, Child 44, won the Thriller Award for Best First Novel. It had already just walked away with a Strand Magazine Critics Award.

Here’s the complete list of this year’s Thriller Award winners:

Best Thriller of the Year: The Bodies Left Behind, by Jeffery
Deaver (Simon & Schuster)

Also nominated: Hold Tight, by Harlan Coben (Dutton); The Broken Window, by Jeffery Deaver (Simon & Schuster); The Dark Tide, by Andrew Gross (Morrow); and The Last Patriot, by Brad Thor
(Atria Books)

Best First Novel: Child 44, by Tom Rob Smith (Grand
Central Publishing)

Also nominated: Calumet City, by Charlie Newton (Touchstone); Criminal Paradise, by Steven Thomas (Ballantine); Sacrifice, by S. J. Bolton (St. Martin’s Minotaur); and The Killer’s Wife, by Bill Floyd (St. Martin’s Minotaur)

Best Short Story: “The Edge of Seventeen,” by Alexandra Sokoloff (from The Darker Mask, edited by Gary Phillips and Christopher Chambers; Tor Books)

Also nominated: “Between the Dark and the Daylight,” by Tom Piccirilli (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine [EQMM]); “Last Island South,” by John C. Boland (EQMM); “The Point Guard,” by Jason Pinter (from the Killer Year anthology, edited by Lee Child; St. Martin’s Minotaur); and “Time of the Green,” by Ken Bruen (from the Killer Year anthology)

In addition to those commendations, David Morrell was given the ThrillerMaster Award in honor of “his influential body of work.” Brad Meltzer took home the Silver Bullet Award “for his outstanding achievement in the encouragement of literacy and the love of reading.” And the Dollar General Literacy Foundation, a major discount retailer, received the Silver Bullet Corporate Award “for longstanding support of literacy and education.”

READ MORE: “ThrillerFest Report,” by Keith Raffel (InkSpot).