In the Shadow of Sherlock

Michigan-based The Strand Magazine has announced the winners of its 2008 Strand Magazine Critics Awards in two categories.

Best Novel: Lush Life, by Richard Price (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Also nominated: When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson (Little, Brown); Master of the Delta, by Thomas H. Cook (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt); The Brass Verdict, by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown); and Hollywood Crows, by Joseph Wambaugh (Little, Brown)

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

Also nominated: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson (Knopf); City of the Sun, by David Levien (Doubleday); A Cure for Night, by Justin Peacock (Doubleday); and A Carrion Death, by Michael Stanley (Harper)

In addition, a Lifetime Achievement Award was given--though posthumously--to English barrister-turned-novelist John Mortimer, creator of series character Horace Rumpole. Mortimer’s widow, Penny, accepted the honor in her husband’s name.

Among the judges of this year’s entries were editor and bookstore proprietor Otto Penzler, Dennis Drabelle of The Washington Post, Lev Grossman of Time magazine, and Maureen Corrigan of National Public Radio. In its write-up about this year’s winners, the Portland Oregonian noted that “The Strand has a distinguished history--it published Arthur Conan Doyle’s “A Scandal in Bohemia” in 1891, the first of 56 Sherlock Holmes stories it published before folding in 1950. It was revived in 1998, and is a nice outlet for crime fiction.”

(Hat tip to The Gumshoe Site.)