“Cold” Is Hot

“The ever-radiant Alex Barclay,” as our friend Declan Burke describes her, has won the inaugural Ireland AM Irish Crime Fiction Book of the Year prize for her 2008 suspense novel, Blood Runs Cold. That commendation was given out on Wednesday night as part of this year’s Irish Book Awards ceremony in Dublin. In what The Irish Times calls “an extremely competitive category,” Barclay’s third novel triumphed over the works of Arlene Hunt (Undertow), Tana French (The Likeness), and Brian McGilloway (Gallows Lane).

I guess this means I’m finally going to have to break down and read one of Barclay’s books. Lord knows that Burke has been pushing them long enough for me to become curious.

READ MORE: “If You’re Good at It, It Will Show,” by Mick Halpin (Critical Mick); “‘Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?’: Alex Barclay,” by Declan Burke (Crime Always Pays).

Between a Rock and a Hard Case

We all knew that Charles Ardai, the man who invented Hard Case Crime, was a helluva writer: His books penned as “Richard Aleas” (Songs of Innocence and Little Girl Lost) proved that. Now come two more examples of Ardai’s talent and taste.

In a new paperback series that calls on the talents of such Hard Case veterans as Christa Faust and David J. Schow, plus other well-practiced authors like James Reasoner, Ardai introduces a pulp-fiction-style adventurer by the name of Gabriel Hunt. And at the end of the just-released first installment of that series, Ardai adds a chapter that introduces his own second outing for the armed and able Hunt, Hunt Through the Cradle of Fear (due out in August).

Meanwhile, in another first for Hard Case, Casino Moon, by Peter Blauner, shows off Ardai’s willingness to bend the rules. It’s 100,000 words long, exceeding HC’s usual limit of 50,000 to 60, 000 words. Casino Moon was also published originally in 1994, rather than HC’s sweet spot of the 1940s and ’50s. And it gave Ardai the chance to commission a new cover for the book, this one by former boxer Ricky Mujica, which captures the spirit and sex of Blauner’s tale with as much zest as those covers Glen Orbik does for the Hunt series.

And the story inside? I’d say it’s one of the best boxing novels I’ve ever read--a cross between The Sopranos and The Set-Up, with two perfect parts for James Gandolfini in the movie version.

Is That a Tingle I Feel Up My Spine?

Well, my day just got a little brighter. Spinetingler Magazine editor Sandra Ruttan has posted the winners of the 2009 Spinetingler Awards, and The Rap Sheet--along with Peter Rozovsky’s Detectives Beyond Borders--has won in the category of Special Services to the Industry. I want to extend my appreciation to all of the Web readers who filled out award ballots this year, and especially to all those brilliant folks who cast their votes for The Rap Sheet (although every one of the nominees in that category deserves acclaim).

The full rundown of winners looks like this:

New Voice: Sharp Teeth, by Toby Barlow (Harper)

Also nominated: The Price of Blood, by Declan Hughes (Morrow); Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, by John McFetridge (Harcourt); Borderlands, by Brian McGilloway (Minotaur Books); Go With Me, by Castle Freeman Jr. (Steerforth Press); The Crazy School, by Cornelia Read (Grand Central Publishing); Who Is Conrad Hirst?, by Kevin Wignall; and Crimson Orgy, by Austin Williams (Borderlands Press)

Rising Star: Money Shot, by Christa Faust (Hard Case Crime)

Also nominated: When Will There Be Good News?, by Kate Atkinson (Black Swan); No More Heroes, by Ray Banks (Polygon); The Shadow Year, by Jeffrey Ford (Morrow); Savage Night, by Allan Guthrie (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt); A Nail Through the Heart, by Timothy Hallinan (Morrow); Empire of Lies, by Andrew Klavan (Harcourt), and Victory Square, by Olen Steinhauer (Minotaur Books)

Legend: Hit and Run, by Lawrence Block (Morrow)

Also nominated: Nothing to Lose, by Lee Child (Delacorte Press); Chasing Darkness, by Robert Crais (Simon & Schuster); Leather Maiden, by Joe R. Lansdale (Knopf); The Given Day, by Dennis Lehane (Morrow); Dooley Takes the Fall, by Norah McClintock (Red Deer Press); A Darker Domain, by Val McDermid (Harper); and Salt River, by James Sallis (Walker & Company)

Graphic Novel: Femme Noir, by Christopher Mills and Joe Staton

Also nominated: 100 Bullets, by Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso; Criminal, by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips; Hawaiian Dick, by B. Clay Moore and Steven Griffin; Incognegro, by Mat Johnson and Warren Pleece; and Scalped, by Jason Aaron and R.M. Guera

Best Editor: Charles Ardai, Hard Case Crime

Also nominated: Ben LeRoy, Bleak House; Neil Nyren, Putnam; and John Schoenfelder, Thomas Dunne

Best Reviewer: Lesa Holstine from Lesa’s Book Critiques

Also nominated: Ali Karim, Larry Gandle, Karen Chisholm, and
Glenn Harper

Best Publisher: Hard Case Crime

Also nominated: Bleak House and Soho Press

Special Services to the Industry: (tie) J. Kingston Pierce, The Rap Sheet; and Peter Rozovsky, Detectives Beyond Borders

Also nominated: Declan Burke, Crime Always Pays; Barbara Franchi, Reviewing the Evidence; John and Ruth Jordan, Crimespree Magazine; and Ruth Jordan and Judy Bobolik, Bouchercon 2008

Best Cover: Sharp Teeth, by Toby Barlow (Harper)--cover design: Suzanne Dean

Also nominated: At the City’s Edge, by Marcus Sakey (St. Martin’s Minotaur)--cover design: The DesignWorks Group; Death Was the Other Woman, by Linda L Richards (St. Martin’s Minotaur)--cover design:
David Baldeosignh Rotstein; Empty Ever After, by Reed Farrel Coleman (Bleak House)--cover design: 2Faced Designs; Fifty to One, by Charles Ardai (Hard Case Crime)--cover design: Cooley Design Lab; and Mad Dogs, by Brian Hodge (Cemetery Dance Publications)--cover design: Jill Bauman

Best Short Story on the Web: “Hard Bite,” by Anonymous-9
(from Beat to a Pulp)

Also nominated: “Cold Rift,” by Sandra Seamans (from Crooked); “Fruits,” by Steve Mosby (from Spinetingler); “Lenny and Earl Go Shooting Off Their Mouths,” by Ray Morrison (from Word Riot); “Random Acts of Fatherhood,” by Robert Pesa (from Darkest Before the Dawn); “Red Hair and Black Leather,” by Jordan Harper (from ThugLit); “She Watches Him Swim,” by Claude Lalumière (from The Back Alley); “Sisters Under the Skin,” by Naomi Johnson (from A Twist of Noir); “They Take You,” by Kyle Minor (from Plots With Guns); and “Wishing on Whores,” by John Weagly (from
Thieves Jargon).

Again, congratulations to all of the nominees.

Thanks, too, to all of the contributors who add their insights and comments to The Rap Sheet. It may sound like a line, but I seriously could not keep this blog going without them.

Happy Birthday, Eiffel Tower

Paris’ most famous landmark turns 120 years old today.

Heating Up the Cold War Again

(Editor’s note: Today we introduce a new contributor to The Rap Sheet. He’s British features writer and freelance critic Gordon Harries, who also writes the blog Needle Scratch Static. His opening piece--an interview with first-time novelist Jeremy Duns--is posted below, but you’ll see more of Harries’ work in the coming months.)

Weeks ago, I found this book synopsis in my e-mail inbox:

In July 1945, MI6 agent Paul Dark took part in a clandestine mission to hunt down and execute Nazi war criminals. He will discover that everything he understood about that mission, about its consequences, and about the woman he once loved, has been built on false foundations.

Now it’s 1969, and a KGB colonel has walked into the British High Commission in Lagos, Nigeria, and announced he wants to defect. His credentials as a defector are good: he has information indicating that there is yet another double agent within MI6, which would be a devastating blow to an organization still coming to terms with its betrayal by Kim Philby and the rest of the Cambridge Ring.

Dark has largely been above suspicion during MI6’s years of self-recrimination--but this time he’s in the frame. For some it would be flight or fight time. But when your arrest may be only moments away, sometimes the only option is flight AND flight ... whatever the consequences.

That note was alerting me to the publication of Free Agent, by Jeremy Duns (shown above), an espionage novel that’s due out today in British bookstores and is scheduled for publication in the States in late June. The work has already won no small amount of pre-publication acclaim from the likes of William Boyd, Charles Cumming, David Morrell, and Jeff Abbott. If you are interested, you can read the novel’s first chapter here.

According to his bio, Duns was reared principally in Africa and Asia, read English at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford, and eventually became a journalist, publishing in the London Times, The Guardian, and assorted other UK periodicals. Free Agent is his first novel. He brings a well-researched clarity to the real world back story that enriches his fiction, and matches it with a true fan’s affection for the tropes of the espionage genre.

I had the chance recently to address a few questions to Duns on behalf of The Rap Sheet. We talked about his efforts to re-create the 1940s and ’60s in Free Agent, his spy-novel influences, and how he conceived this debut book as part of a trilogy.

Gordon Harries: Jeremy, the period novel is a notoriously research-intensive beast. What possessed you to focus on two historical strands, and why 1945 and 1969 respectively?

Jeremy Duns: I did sometimes wonder that myself! I’ve been a fan of spy novels for years, but I’m most drawn to those set during the Cold War, which I think was a fascinating period. When the [Berlin] Wall fell a lot of people said the spy novel was dead, but I didn’t see why--not only would there be new arenas of espionage to tell stories about, as of course there have been, but the march of time (and declassified files) would also mean new aspects of the Cold War would be revealed. In the ’60s and ’70s, thriller writers like Alistair MacLean and Jack Higgins set their books during the Second World War, so it struck me that perhaps I could revisit the Cold War from a fresh perspective, from what we know of it now. Once I had decided to set it during the Biafran War, I had to figure out precisely when. I spent a while researching 1967, in fact, before discovering a particular event that took place in 1969 that I wanted to build my plot around. The chapter in 1945 came about because I wanted to show how Paul Dark finds himself in the position he is in at the start of the novel, and I felt that it was probably initiated when he was an idealistic and confused young man. I was also interested in the way the Soviets went from being our allies in the war to our enemies straight after it--that was something I thought Soviet intelligence might have exploited.

GH: I think that the non-genre reader has a tendency to regard the espionage novel as a somewhat insular narrative wherein the protagonists are removed from the culture at large. (For example, in John le Carré’s early works, the only culture experienced tends to be “high culture.”) By contrast, Paul Dark is very much of his time and place. Was this an attempt to add a “social history” component (with references to Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club, the culture of paranoia enabled by the Cambridge Five, and of course the Biafran War) to the novel, or simply an indication that your models were other than those found in Le Carré’s tales?

JD: I love John le Carré’s work, but I was probably more influenced by Len Deighton: a guidebook to London that he edited in the late ’60s was very helpful for contemporary details. I also enjoy a lot of rather obscure spy thrillers from the ’60s like James Leasor’s Jason Love and Adam Diment’s Philip McAlpine series, and they are filled with this sort of stuff. I did want to get across something of the atmosphere of the time--it would seem a shame to write a spy thriller set in the ’60s and not!

GH: Given that Free Agent is set in the period when the ’60s ebbed into the ’70s, do you think the fact that you currently live at a remove--in Sweden--aided you in period re-creation? I was struck by the fact that, for all of the pop-cultural baggage the ’60s possess, the narrative voice of your story is so unsentimental.

JD: Well, I was living in Belgium while I wrote most of it, in fact, but that’s also at a remove from Britain, of course. I’m not sure if it helped me in re-creating the period so much, because it was sometimes harder to find out certain things. Very early on I considered setting the book in the Congo, and if I had done that the research side of things would probably have been a lot easier, because the second-hand bookshops of Brussels are swimming in first-hand material from that time: memoirs and guidebooks and bizarre technical documents. I would sometimes come across them and feel a bit forlorn! But I grew up as an expatriate, and after university in England I became one again. That has certainly given me a different perspective on “home,” and part of what I want to do with my trilogy is look at Britain’s place in the world in the Cold War, perhaps with a little less sentimentality than was done at the time.

GH: It’s good that you brought up the fact that Free Agent is being marketed as the start of a trilogy (in fact, there’s even a “Paul Dark will return in …” notation at the end of the novel, the way there used to be at the close of James Bond movies). Was it always conceived as such? And to what extent are all three of the novels intended to be informed by one another?

JD: I’m glad you spotted that tribute to the early Bond films. Yes, I conceived it as a trilogy. I’ve just finished writing Free Country, which is set in Italy and begins three days after the end of Free Agent. The third book will be called Free World, and I’m researching it now. The three novels tell one complete story, but will also, I hope, be readable as standalones …

GH: In your interview with the blog Permission to Kill, you mentioned having used Derek Marlowe’s A Dandy in Aspic, Graham Greene’s The Human Factor, and the Jason Bourne movies as case studies. In what ways did they help to inform your story? I’m particularly interested in the influence of the Bourne films, I suppose, considering your earlier comment about giving the Cold War “a fresh perspective.”

JD: I read A Dandy in Aspic a long time ago, and while it has its flaws I think the premise is brilliant: a British diplomat is sent by MI6 to Berlin to kill a notorious Soviet assassin-- but the diplomat is that assassin. Reading that and The Human Factor had me wondering why there weren’t more spy novels in which the double agent was the protagonist, because there seemed to be so much inbuilt suspense there. There’s one obvious reason for that: it’s very hard to make readers care for a traitor.

The Bourne films didn’t inform Free Agent’s plot, but I felt that they had a very similar tone to Cold War thrillers. If you read, say, the Quiller novels by Adam Hall (aka Elleston Trevor), you’ll find a lot of action that seems straight out of a Bourne film. But what I was interested in with them was that they are extremely exciting but also very well-scripted stories. And although Bourne isn’t a traitor, he is a conflicted hero, but you root for him nonetheless. I was looking at a lot of different things, in fact, and they all seemed to coalesce and point to this story.

GH: Obviously, when writing about any kind of spy, identity politics are going to play a role. To what extent is this novel meant as a critique of Dark’s character? I was struck by how, even though Free Agent employs first-person narration, the reader doesn’t necessarily feel close to Dark.

JD: Well, he’s not a hero, but I don’t think he’s quite an anti-hero, either. I don’t necessarily want you to like him, or feel close to him for that matter, but I wanted readers to be compelled to follow him. This is a character who, in some ways, seems a good man--or at least someone who wants to be a good man. But he’s also totally ruthless. I didn’t want to sugar-coat what it would mean to be in his shoes, and as the trilogy progresses you find out just what the last 24 years have meant in terms of the human damage. But I also wanted to get away from simply demonizing him--he’s made a horrendous mistake and he knows it. I hope that he’s believable, and that readers will be interested in how he develops.

GH: On the subject of the damage the past inflicts upon the present, to what extent did you want to write about inherited conflict? Dark isn’t entirely responsible for his predicament, nor was 1969 the start of the Cold War …

JD: You asked earlier why I chose to set part of the novel in 1945. It’s hard to date the beginning of the Cold War, of course--some would say it predates the Second World War. I think for Britain, you could date it to Operation Unthinkable, which was a report by the Joint Planning Staff on [Prime Minister Winston] Churchill’s instructions for a war against the USSR--it was drawn up in May 1945. The plan never went ahead, of course. So yes, by having Dark Senior pull his son into hunting war criminals just as the hot war turned cold, I want to show how difficult it was to choose a “right” side at that point in time. Paul Dark chooses the wrong side, unfortunately, or has the wrong side chosen for him. Two decades later, as the Soviet Union and Britain are battling to gain a foothold in Africa, the events of 1945 return to haunt him.

GH: Finally, you obviously read in-genre. Which novelists do you gravitate towards?

JD: I mostly read non-fiction now, but I tend to go for spy novels with a strong element of suspense. I love the greats like [Eric] Ambler, Greene, Deighton, and le Carré, but I think there were a lot of brilliant writers who got left behind a bit, some of whom I’ve mentioned already, like Adam Hall. I think Joseph Hone was one of the great spy novelists of the 20th century, but sadly very few know of him now. His prose was beautiful, but he combined it with tremendously exciting plots. Outside the spy genre, my favorite novelist is probably Lawrence Durrell, although he did dip his toe into espionage every now and again. I can’t read too much of him now, though: he’s so good that I start thinking about giving up!

Free Copies of “Free Agent”

Thanks to those fine folks at the British division of publisher Simon & Schuster, The Rap Sheet has five free copies of Jeremy Duns’ brand-new novel, Free Agent, to give away to lucky readers of this blog. All you have to do to enter our competition is correctly answer one simple question:

Which real-life double agent was appointed head of MI6’s anti-Soviet department Section IX in 1944?

Send your response, along with your mailing address, to: jpwrites@wordcuts.org. And write “Free Agent Contest” in the subject line. Submissions will be accepted between now and midnight on this coming Saturday, May 9. Winners will be chosen at random from among those who submit correct entries, and their names will be announced on this page the following day.

By the way, our contest is open to readers living anywhere in the world. Since the U.S. edition of Free Agent isn’t due out till late June, this is a chance for Americans to enjoy Duns’ spy novel early.

Bullet Points: Cinco de Mayo Edition

• It was 50 years ago tomorrow, May 6, that Raymond Burr won the first of two Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, given to him for his role in CBS-TV’s Perry Mason.

• I’m a bit late in mentioning this, but the latest short-story offering in Beat to a Pulp is Jay Stringer’s “The Hard Sell.”

• A couple of months back I noticed that publisher Crippen & Landru had added to its roster of coming attractions The Columbo Stories, a collection by William Link, who with Richard Levinson created the NBC Mystery Movie’s most popular series, Columbo. Checking this week, I find that the C&L Web site says Link’s book is “now being typeset.” As a longtime Columbo fan, I’m hoping to have a copy in my hands ASAP.

• Patti Abbott has mounted a new flash-fiction contest, this one built around the concept of “a wedding cake in the middle of the road.” Go here for details. Contest results to be posted on June 4.

• Barry Eisler is guest-blogging today at Bill Crider’s Pop Culture Magazine, talking about his new high-tech thriller, Fault Line. You will find his contribution here.

• The perpetually elusive “James Church” (the pseudonym of a 60-something intelligence agent turned author) talks with the Los Angeles Times about how he started writing contemporary mystery novels set in North Korea.

• In the Busted Flush Press blog, Reed Farrel Coleman recalls how he came to collaborate with Ken Bruen on the forthcoming (in September) novel Tower. Read all about it here.

• Spinetingler Magazine launches a tie-in blog, but there’s still no word on the winners of this year’s Spinetingler Awards.

• Here’s a book jacket I wish I’d discovered first for Killer Covers.

• Is Ruth Rendell really done with Inspector Wexford, the protagonist about whom she’s written 22 books, the newest being October’s The Monster in the Box, which recounts Reginald Wexford’s roots as an investigator?

• Mark Coggins points me to a quite thorough profile of author Joe Gores (Spade & Archer), which appears in the current issue of Stanford Magazine. Click here to read the whole article.

• Dick Adler endorses Brian D’Amato’s “amazing new thriller about the end of the world,” In the Courts of the Sun.

• I should learn never to become too fond of network TV shows. Every time I do, it seems, those shows are canceled (e.g., Life on Mars, Crossing Jordan, Raines, etc.). The latest casualty is NBC’s satisfyingly quirky Life, which isn’t going to be renewed for a third season. There will come a time, I suspect, when the U.S. networks no longer have anything I consider worth tuning in to every week. Already, more than half of the decreasing time I spend in front of the boob tube is devoted to watching either DVDs or cable series such as Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Burn Notice, and In Plain Sight. All that’s left on the nets, it seems, are insipid game shows and tedious “reality” programs. Too bad ...

• Disgraced former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich has now gone searching through spy novels for ways to scare the American public. Is this part of the Republican’t’s nascent bid for a presidential nomination in 2010, or just another example of how Gingrich and his shrinking party live in an alternative reality?

• Anyone for the “new traditionalist” crime fiction?

• Mike Ripley’s May “Getting Away with Murder” column in Shots focuses on new fiction from Lee Child and Deryn Lake, the reissuing of old works by Antony Trew, and an unusual Brittany mystery, Tom Macauley’s The Warning Bell. Oh, and check out that photograph of Dutch writer Saskia Noort. Whoa! Read the whole lot here.

• Bill Crider caught sight of this copycat cover.

• And of course, this being Cinco de Mayo, Janet Rudolph celebrates with a list of associated mystery tales.

Two for the Price of One

After some confusion over the eligibility of the original winner of this year’s Derringer Award for Best Flash Story (it seems the publication date of that tale’s hosting periodical extended from 2008 into 2009), the Short Mystery Fiction Society has now declared two victors in this category of yarns running up to 1,000 words long. Those winners are:

“No Place Like Home,” by Dee Stuart (from Mysterical-E, Winter 2008-2009)--the original winner

“No Flowers for Stacey,” by Ruth McCarty (from Deadfall: Crime Stories by New England Writers, edited by Kate Flora, Ruth McCarty, and Susan Oleksiw; Level Best Books)

To see the rest of this year’s Derringers, click here.

The Cat’s Out of the Bag

Mystery Readers International today announced its nominees for the 2009 Macavity Awards. They are as follows:

Best Mystery Novel:
• Trigger City, by Sean Chercover (Morrow)
• Where Memories Lie, by Deborah Crombie (Morrow)
• The Price of Blood, by Declan Hughes (Morrow)
• The Draining Lake, by Arnaldur Indridason (Minotaur)
• Curse of the Spellmans, by Lisa Lutz (Simon & Schuster)
• The Cruelest Month, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)
• The Fault Tree, by Louise Ure (Minotaur)

Best First Mystery:
• Finding Nouf, by Zoë Ferraris (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson (Knopf)
• Death of a Cozy Writer, by G.M. Malliet (Midnight Ink)
• Calumet City, by Charlie Newton (Simon & Schuster)
• An Innocent Client, by Scott Pratt (Onyx)
• A Carrion Death, by Michael Stanley (Harper; Headline)
• The Blood Detective, by Dan Waddell (Minotaur)

Best Nonfiction/Critical:
• 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)
• How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries, by Kathy Lynn Emerson (Perseverance Press)
• Scene of the Crime: The Importance of Place in Crime and Mystery Fiction, by David Geherin (McFarland & Company)
• Edgar Allan Poe: An Illustrated Companion to His Tell-Tale Stories, by Dr. Harry Lee Poe (Metro Books)
• The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective, by Kate Summerscale (Walker)

Best Mystery Short Story:
• “The Night Things Changed,” by Dana Cameron (from Wolfsbane and Mistletoe, edited by Charlaine Harris and Toni L.P. Kelner; Ace)
• “A Sleep Not Unlike Death,” by Sean Chercover (from Hardcore Hardboiled, edited by Todd Robinson; Kensington Publishing)
• “Keeping Watch Over His Flock,” by Toni L.P. Kelner (from Wolfsbane and Mistletoe)
• “Scratch a Woman,” by Laura Lippman (from Hardly Knew Her; Morrow)
• “Between the Dark and the Daylight,” by Tom Piccirilli (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, September/October 2008)

Sue Feder Memorial Historical Mystery:
• A Royal Pain, by Rhys Bowen (Berkley)
• Stealing Trinity, by Ward Larsen (Oceanview)
• The Whiskey Rebels, by David Liss (Random House)
• Veil of Lies, by Jeri Westerson (Minotaur)
• Company of Liars, by Karen Maitland (Michael Joseph/ Delacorte)
• Nox Dormienda, by Kelli Stanley (Five Star)

Nominees for the Macavity Awards are chosen and voted on by members of Mystery Readers International. This year’s winners will be announced in October during Bouchercon in Indianapolis, Indiana.

READ MORE: “Poirot Award to Mystery Scene,” by Kate Stine (Mystery Scene Blog).

Go Ask Malice

During tonight’s banquet at its convention in Arlington, Virginia, the traditional mysteries fan organization Malice Domestic announced the winners of its 2009 Agatha Awards. They are as follows:

Best Novel: The Cruelest Month, by Louise Penny (Minotaur Books)

Also nominated: Six Geese A-Slaying, by Donna Andrews (Minotaur Books); A Royal Pain, by Rhys Bowen (Penguin Group); Buckingham Palace Gardens, by Anne Perry (Random House); and I Shall Not Want, by Julia Spencer-Fleming (Minotaur Books)

Best First Novel: Death of a Cozy Writer, by G.M. Malliet
(Midnight Ink)

Also nominated: Through a Glass, Deadly, by Sarah Atwell (Berkley Trade); The Diva Runs Out of Thyme, by Krista Davis (Penguin Group); Pushing Up Daisies, by Rosemary Harris (Minotaur Books); and Paper, Scissors, Death, by Joanna Campbell Slan (Midnight Ink)

Best Non-fiction: How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries, by Kathy Lynn Emerson (Perseverance Press)

Also nominated: African American Mystery Writers: A Historical and Thematic Study, by Frankie Y. Bailey (McFarland & Company); Anthony Boucher, A Bibliography, by Jeff Marks (McFarland & Company); Edgar Allan Poe: An Illustrated Companion to His Tell-Tale Stories, by Dr. Harry Lee Poe (Metro Books); and The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, by Kate Summerscale (Walker)

Best Short Story: “The Night Things Changed,” by Dana Cameron (from Wolfsbane and Mistletoe, edited by Charlaine Harris
and Toni L.P. Kelner; Ace)

Also nominated: “Killing Time,” by Jane Cleland (Alfred Hitchock Mystery Magazine, November 2008); “Dangerous Crossing,” by Carla Coupe (from Chesapeake Crimes 3, edited by Donna Andrews and Marcia Talley; Wildside Press); “Skull and Cross Examination,” by Toni L.P. Kelner (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine [EQMM], February 2008); and “A Nice Old Guy,” by Nancy Pickard (EQMM, August 2008)

Best Children’s/Young Adult: The Crossroads, by Chris Grabenstein (Random HouseChildren’s Books)

Also nominated: Into the Dark, by Peter Abrahams (HarperCollins); A Thief in the Theater, by Sarah Masters Buckey (American Girl); and The Great Circus Train Robbery, by Nancy Means Wright
(Hilliard and Harris)

Quebec novelist Penny ought to be dancing a jig about now. This marks the second year in a row that she’s walked away with the Agatha Award for Best Novel.

(Hat tip to Mystery Fanfare.)

“I Always Have that Fear that Somebody’s Going to Give Me a Lifetime Achievement Award Because They Can Hear My Liver Rotting”

GalleyCat has posted a new video that shows James Lee Burke, one of two prominent authors who this week received Grand Master Awards from the Mystery Writers of America (the other one being Sue Grafton, of course), talking about the ascendancy of crime fiction to the status of “literature,” the artistry of James M. Cain, and how his daughter, Alafair Burke, was actually the first mystery writer in their family. Click here to watch.

Pass It On

As you presumably know, for the last week The Rap Sheet has been conducting a contest to give away three free passes to Britain’s CrimeFest 2009, which begins on May 14. Participants had to answer four questions relating to this year’s guests of honor.

Well, we now have the names of those free pass winners, chosen at random from among the people submitting correct entries. They are: Risto Raitio of Helsinki, Finland; Martyn Lewis of Wednesfield, England; and Karen Meek of Redditch, England.

Congratulations to all three. And our thanks go to the organizers of CrimeFest, Adrian Muller and Myles Allfrey, who made this competition possible.

To learn more about what CrimeFest offers this year, click here.

And for anybody who didn’t enter this competition because they were unsure of the answers to our questions, here are the correct responses, courtesy of Muller:

(1) Simon Brett
Which one of Brett’s non-series novels was made into a film
starring Michael Caine?
ANSWER: A Shock to the System.

(2) Michael Connelly
What connects Connelly to The Garden of Earthly Delights?
ANSWER: Hieronymus Bosch. Michael’s protagonist, Harry Bosch, was named after the painter of The Garden of Earthly Delights.

(3) Håkan Nesser
What’s the name of the first title in the Inspector Van
Veeteren series?
ANSWER: The Minds Eye--not Borkmann’s Point, which was the first title published in the English language.

(4) Andrew Taylor
What is Caroline Minuscule?
ANSWER: Andrew’s first book is named after a Carolingian script developed as a writing standard in Europe so that the Roman alphabet could be easily recognized.

Better luck next time.

Declaration of Independents

The genesis is lost in the mists of April. The best stories, though, place the idea at the feet of American thriller writer Joseph Finder (Killer Instinct, Power Play) who started the ball rolling with a tweet on Twitter. And, once that roll had begun, there was no holding it back. By early this week, the call had reached a strident, high-pitched command: “Buy Indie” came the shouts and, by all accounts and as I write this, they did. They are. And they will.

The idea, of course, is that no one understands booklovers the way independent booksellers do. From the outset, this seems only logical. It’s not possible for a huge chain store to respond to the needs of individual clients the way an indie can. And a big, faceless online bookseller? Clearly, it can’t give customers the level of care and service that your neighborhood bookseller dishes out daily.

And here’s the thing: the power? It’s all with us. Here’s what I mean:

These days it seems as though we’re losing too many and too much of our newspapers. Cutbacks. Layoffs. Even, in some cases, closed doors. And why? In part, the fault is ours: we’re simply not reading--and paying for--them enough. Advertisers have noticed, and they’re staying home. The result? A bloodbath that’s making those of us who love newspapers weep every time we hear of another cutback, another stilled press.

It’s not surprising that a lot of the same people who love news and newspapers also value independent booksellers. A lot of us even have our own special, favorite stores. Vendors with whom we have a relationship: who order in new books they figure we’ll like. Who say our name when we walk through the door.

Today, then, becomes the day we symbolically rescue our favorite bookseller. And if everyone makes the same wish, and walks through those doors, that wish will come true.

Times are difficult. We all know that. And a lot of us are making sacrifices of some sort. All the numbers, though, point to the fact that books are not among the sacrifices we’re making. We might skip a vacation this year, but our souls and hearts still need to travel. Books will take you there.

We have learned--or perhaps, are learning--that our actions as individuals really do have impact. We’re learning, as a generation and in so many ways, to walk the walk. So buy indie today: As with all the best deals and decisions, everybody wins.

Finishing Touches

French blogger Xavier Lechard finishes off his weeklong series of posts about the Edgar Allan Poe Awards with a two-fer, writing today about both the 1990s and the 2000s. Summarizing his findings in regard to Edgar’s history, and looking ahead a bit, he remarks:

The Eighties and the Nineties were marked on one hand by older laureates with no pressing need for an(other) award, and better showings of female writers (especially in the latter decade) on the other. The 2000s see a relative rejuvenating and renewal of the average winner, which is welcome, and an almost complete eradication of women, which is much less so. S.J. Rozan (Winter and Night) is the sole female winner of the decade, taking us back to the jolly good days of the Sixties and Seventies. Let us hope the next decade will be kinder to the better half of mankind, though I wouldn’t bet on this.

Nor would I bet that Edgar in the 2010s will make a greater place to foreign offerings. Ian Rankin (Resurrection Men) and Jason Goodwin (The Janissary Tree) are the only non-American, continuing the trend towards insularization in the Eighties. A repeat of the 60’s British Invasion is unlikely to occur any time, though Karin Alvtegen’s nomination (and Stieg Larsson’s much-talked[-about] snubbing) might indicate a Scandinavian invasion is possible.

Lechard’s analysis of Edgar’s history is well worth reading. If you’ve missed any installments, here are links to all of those pieces: introduction; the 1950s; the 1960s; the 1970s; the 1980s; the 1990s and the 2000s.

Short Orders

Just a day after the announcement of this year’s Edgar Award winners comes news about the recipients of the 2009 Derringer Awards for short mystery fiction. They are:

Best Short Story (1,001 to 4,000 words):
“The Cost of Doing Business,” by Michael Penncavage
(published in ThugLit)

Best Long Story (4,001 to 8,000 words):
“The Quick Brown Fox,” by Robert S. Levinson (published in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine)

Best Novelette (8,001 to 17,500 words):
“Too Wise,” by O’Neil De Noux (published in Ellery Queen
Mystery Magazine)

2009 Recipient of the Edward D. Hoch Memorial Golden Derringer Award for Lifetime Achievement: Clark Howard

A complete list of the finalists can be found here.

Bring ’Em Back Alive

As usual on Fridays, the crime-fiction blogosphere is filled with write-ups about more-or-less “forgotten books.” Today’s reading rediscoveries include: Fire Lake, by Jonathan Valin; The Criminalist, by Eugene Izzi; Blues for the Prince, by Bart Spicer; 77 Rue Paradis, by Gil Brewer; Watcher in the Shadows, by Geoffrey Household; True Detective, by Max Allan Collins; and The Big Knockover, by Dashiell Hammett. Click over to Patti Abbott’s blog for an exhaustive list of today’s participants, plus a handful of other unjustly overlooked works, including James Ross’ They Don’t Dance Much (1940).

Tonight Is the Deadline

... for entering our contest to win free passes to CrimeFest 2009, scheduled to take place in Bristol, England, from Thursday, May 14, through Sunday, May 17. All you have to do to be in the running for one of three passes is to correctly answer four questions associated with this year’s CrimeFest guests of honor:

(1) Simon Brett
Which one of Brett’s non-series novels was made into a film starring Michael Caine?

(2) Michael Connelly
What connects Connelly to The Garden of Earthly Delights?

(3) Håkan Nesser
What’s the name of the first title in the Inspector Van Veeteren series?

(4) Andrew Taylor
What is Caroline Minuscule?

E-mail your answers, along with your postal address and a contact telephone number, to rapsheet@crimefest.com. Entries must be received by midnight tonight.

This prize--which is valued at £135--does not include travel expenses, accommodations, or admittance to the convention’s Gala Dinner on Saturday evening. (Tickets to that dinner can be purchased separately at £35 apiece.) For more information about next month’s CrimeFest, click here.