Friday night saw the 2009 presentation of the Shamus Awards, the Private Eye Writers of America’s nod to the best in P.I. fiction. Last year’s banquet, held in the converted church shouldering Edgar Allan Poe’s grave in Baltimore, was a stylish affair replete with white tablecloths. But the PWA is not afraid of diversity. This year, PWA members and friends descended upon Indianapolis’ oldest blues club, the Slippery Noodle. In fact, the owner of that club gave us a quick rundown of its varied history: the back area where we had our gathering used to be a stable (yup, that’s us authors) and the front part an inn. It was turned into a bar in 1850, making it the oldest such establishment in Indianapolis; it’s said to be haunted; there are bullet holes in the brick wall that John Dillinger put there; it was a whorehouse, finally closed down as late as 1953; and it was a stop on the Underground Railroad during America’s Civil War.
There were no white tablecloths to be had.
All of this as the backdrop to honor P.I. fiction. Not only was your intrepid reporter a judge for the Best Hardcover Novel category, but she was knocked off her feet to actually be nominated for the Best First P.I. Novel award for Veil of Lies (2008).
With drinks and food aplenty and a blues duo playing on the stage, the crowd of about 120 people got in the mood. Authors on hand were Kaye Barley, S.J. Rozan, and my fellow nominees, Julie Kramer and Jason Pinter--plus a roomful of others.
The awards presentation started off with the joint PWA and St. Martin’s Minotaur contest winner, Michael Ayoob--who was one of the few victors actually present tonight! Whether because of the economy, deadlines, or the flu, there were a lot of no-shows.
With hapless members pulled from the audience to read off the names of this year’s nominees, the show got started. Linda Landrigan from Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine accepted the award going to Mitch Alderman for his short story “Family Values.” Judy Bobalick was on the phone with Paperback Original winner Lori Armstrong, who was being honored for her 2008 book, Snow Blind. Even Ian Vasquez wasn’t on hand to accept his award for Best First P.I. Novel for In the Heat. (No worries, Ian, I was there to pick it up. Maybe I can deliver it to you? Of course, adding insult to injury, not only was my name mispronounced when the nominations were read, but the title of my book was also misread as Veil of Lisa! Shamus Awards chair Ted Fitzgerald later corrected that. Thank you, Ted!)
(Right) Shamus Award winner Reed Farrel Coleman with first-time nominee Jeri Westerson.The Hammer Award that goes to a long-lived character was delivered this year to Lawrence Block’s Matthew Scudder (both no-shows). S.J. Rozan accepted for Mr. Block. PWA honcho Robert J. Randisi was on hand in standard Hawaiian shirt and baseball cap to receive his surprise Lifetime Achievement award. He even serenaded us with his rendition of “Unforgettable.” That was pretty damned good, Bob. And unforgettable, to be sure.
The only winner actually present turned out to be Reed Farrel Coleman, who was being honored for Empty Ever After in the Best Hardcover category. And the win was no surprise to me, because I had served as a judge in that category.
Ted Fitzgerald thanked the judges and then made the statement that the P.I. novel has been declared dead by some voices in publishing. But he--and I--know better than that. As a judge, I read some 85 novels for this competition. Eighty-five! That’s a lot of death and violence. That’s also a lot of memorable prose on the subject of criminal detection for hire. I enjoyed my time pounding through that stack of prose. Historical, contemporary, cozy, hard-boiled, thriller--the entire gamut of P.I. yarns in every conceivable combination. And then we had the difficult and often heart-breaking task of sharpening our scythes and mowing the piles of books down to reap five nominees. Enviable? Yes. That could be my quota for the year if I didn’t like reading mysteries so much. And there are more out there to conquer.
As for myself and my own nomination ... well, I am grateful to the judges for wending their way through the many books tendered to them and putting me and my newfangled subgenre of “medieval noir” on the list. Even without a win, I was extremely happy to be nominated. After all, I am now in exceptional company. And to prove it, here’s a brief list of those authors who were also nominated but didn’t win for Best First P.I. Novel: Dick Lochte, Carl Hiassen, Bill Crider, Don Winslow, Janet Evanovich, and Laura Lippman. That is still not a bad place to be!
It was a night of surprises, some disappointments, some great music, and good company. Did I say good? When you are surrounded by mystery authors, you are in the BEST company.
1 comment:
Oops. Let me make a correction here. Bob Randisi is not in the habit of appearing at the Shamus Awards in a Hawaiian shirt and baseball cap. Last year he was duded up in a suit. I seems to my cracked brain I had seen numerous picures of Bob in Hawaiian shirt and cap, but it could be I am mistaken. Or drunk. So, my apologies to Bob for the error.
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