Dagger Shortlists Unsheathed

News about the final 2009 Dagger Awards shortlists has finally arrived. The British Crime Writers’ Association (CWA), in partnership with Specsavers, Cactus TV, and ITV3, has announced this year’s contenders for what are now being touted as the Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards, “celebrating the crème de la crème of crime and thriller fiction.” Winners will be declared on October 21 at London’s Grosvenor House Hotel, though the presentations won’t be televised by ITV3 until a later (as yet unannounced) date.

The nominees are ...

CWA Gold Dagger 2009, for the best crime novel of the year:
(Sponsored by Books Direct)

• When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson (Black Swan/Transworld)
• In the Dark, by Mark Billingham (Little, Brown)
• Hit and Run, by Lawrence Block (Orion)
• A Whispered Name, by William Brodrick (Little, Brown)
• The Coroner, by M.R. Hall (Pan Macmillan)
• Dark Times in the City, by Gene Kerrigan (Harvill Secker)

CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger 2009, for first books by previously unpublished writers:
(Sponsored by Louise Penny and Michel Whitehead)

• Sweetsmoke, by David Fuller (Abacus)
• Bad Catholics, by James Green (Luath Press)
• No Way to Say Goodbye, by Rod Madocks (Five Leaves)
• Old City Hall, by Robert Rotenberg (John Murray)
• Echoes from the Dead, by Johan Theorin (Doubleday)
• The Blood Detective, by Dan Waddell (Penguin)

The CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger 2009,
for the year’s best thriller:
(Sponsored by Ian Fleming Publications Ltd.)

• The Brass Verdict, by Michael Connelly (Orion)
• Dark Places, by Gillian Flynn (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
• The Last Child, by John Hart (John Murray)
• Calumet City, by Charlie Newton (Bantam Press)
• Moscow Rules, by Daniel Silva (Michael Joseph)
• The Tourist, by Olen Steinhauer (HarperCollins)
• The Interrogator, by Andrew Williams (John Murray)

The Film Dagger 2009,
for the best big-screen crime thriller story:

• Gran Torino (Warner Bros.)
• Quantum of Solace (Sony Pictures)
• Changeling (Universal)
• Public Enemies (Universal)
• State of Play (Universal)

The TV Dagger 2009,
for the best small-screen crime thriller drama:

• Wallander (Left Bank Pictures; BBC One)
• Red Riding (Channel 4 Films; Channel 4)
• Spooks (Kudos; BBC One)
• Place of Execution (Coastal Productions; ITV1)
• Ashes to Ashes (Kudos; BBC One)

The International TV Dagger, for the best TV crime thriller drama from around the world:

• The Wire (HBO; BBC Two)
• Dexter (Clyde Phillips Production; FX)
• Wallander, Swedish version (Yellow Bird Films; BBC Four)
• The Mentalist (Warner Bros.; FIVE)

The Best Actress Dagger,
for the female star of a crime thriller drama:

• Juliet Stevenson for Place of Execution (Coastal Productions; ITV1)
• Keeley Hawes for Ashes to Ashes (Kudos; BBC One)
• Hermione Norris for Spooks (Kudos; BBC One)
• Emilia Fox for Silent Witness (BBC; BBC One)

The Best Actor Dagger, for the male star of a crime thriller drama:

• Dominic West for The Wire (HBO; BBC Two)
• Kenneth Branagh for Wallander (Left Bank Pictures; BBC One)
• Tom Hardy for The Take (Company; SKY1)
• Philip Glenister for Ashes to Ashes (Kudos; BBC One)
• Paddy Considine for Red Riding (Channel 4 Films; Channel 4)

In addition, ITV3 viewers will be invited to vote for a brand-new award, the ITV3 Bestseller Dagger, sponsored by Specsavers. Dick Francis, Alexander McCall Smith, Nicci French, Harlan Coben, and Martina Cole are in contention for that prize.

And Colin Dexter, Lynda La Plante, Ian Rankin, Ruth Rendell, and Val McDermid will join P.D. James in the Hall of Fame, “which honors the achievements of the genre’s greatest exponents, past and present. Congratulations to all five.

After word spread that this year’s awards ceremony will be a glitzier event than usual, more along the lines of the 2008 ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards presentation, I’ve been waiting impatiently to hear what names would appear on these shortlists. I am also a tad concerned, because this event is scheduled for the day following my return from Bouchercon in Indianapolis. So I’ll be driving up the stats for public consumption of strong coffee as I make my way between the two. But at least my tuxedo will get another night on the town.

An announcement about this year’s recipients of the CWA International Dagger, Short Story Dagger, Dagger in the Library, and Debut Dagger was made in mid-July.

A Corker of a Contest

So, have you already entered The Rap Sheet’s competition to win a complete set of William Kent Krueger’s nine Corcoran “Cork” O’Connor novels, including the brand-new Heaven’s Keep? If not, you have until this coming Friday to get in the running.

As we explained last week, all you need do to enter this latest giveaway contest is answer one simple question:

What famously underwear-averse author did Krueger want to be when he was 19 years old?

If you need a clue, click here.

Send your response to this question, along with your mailing address, to: jpwrites@wordcuts.org. And write “Krueger Contest” in the subject line. Submissions will be accepted between now and midnight on Friday, September 11. One winner will be chosen at random from among those who submit correct entries, and his or her name will be announced on this page the following day.

At the publisher’s request, this competition is open only to readers living in the United States and Canada.

These Are a Few of His Favorite Things

It was in Mike Ripley’s September “Getting Away with Murder” column for Shots that I first read about author Lee Child’s plans to “recommend the top forty books (of any sort) which had an influence on him. Lee has been asked by [British bookstore chain] Waterstone’s,” Ripley explained, “to take part in their ‘Writer’s Table’ promotion where notable authors (Sebastian Faulkes, Nick Hornby, and Philip Pullman have already featured) select forty still-in-print titles which have influenced them; the forty titles then being piled on a table ... in every branch of Waterstone’s …”

Well, Child’s list of must-reads was published a few days ago in The Daily Telegraph. Approximately 50 percent of the 40 titles he mentions belong in the crime fiction/mystery/thriller category, including To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee (#1); Goldfinger, by Ian Fleming (#10), The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler (#12); Gorky Park, by Martin Cruz Smith (#17); Maisie Dobbs, by Jacqueline Winspear (#22); A Place of Execution, by Val McDermid (#27); and The Golden Rendezvous, by Alistair MacLean (#30).

In addition, Child recommends Dreams from My Father, by Barack Obama (“I read this 7 years ago and wanted him for president right then.”); Sophie’s Choice, by William Styron (“If you read only 10 novels in your life, make this one.”); The Day of the Triffids, by John Wyndham (“The best what-if sci-fi ever.”); On the Beach, by Nevil Shute (“The best of 1950s style--with 1950s concerns.”); and The Given Day, by Dennis Lehane (“A big meaty epic, sprawling and inclusive--like novels use to be.”).

I feel somewhat surprised, but pleased to discover that I’ve read probably half of Child’s choices. To look over the whole list and judge your own tastes against his, click here.

World of the Weird, Part II

(The opening post in this series can be found here.)

I first came to Dave Zeltserman’s self-styled “dark crime fiction” through Small Crimes, his 2008 breakthrough novel. I initially thought that the “dark” was a reference to the kind of noir crime fiction associated with Jim Thompson, James M. Cain, and many others. But Zeltserman has a penchant for going beyond conventional crime fiction and introducing supernatural elements (of varying degrees) into much of his writing.

Bad Thoughts (Five Star, 2007) is perhaps the most dramatic example thus far of Zeltserman’s technique. I was quite disappointed when I initially read the novel, which is a slicker, more stylish version of his earlier Fast Lane (Point Blank, 2004). Like Fast Lane, Bad Thoughts uses the device of the detective as a potentially unwitting killer--hunting himself, in effect--a fascinating concept that dates back to Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), Edgar Allan Poe’s The Man of the Crowd (1840), and perhaps beyond. Zeltserman uses his protagonist’s blackouts to create plausibility, but there is a supernatural component in the denouement and I felt that he had “cheated,” though I couldn’t justify my reason.

Then, earlier this year I was trying to improve my understanding of the speculative-fiction genre, and I read Orson Scott Card’s How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy (Writer’s Digest, 2008). Card pointed out that it is essential for any writer in either genre to establish the rules and possibilities of his or her fictional universe as quickly as possible. I realized that this was exactly what had bothered me about Bad Thoughts.

Putting the crime-horror crossover in perspective, however, I remembered William Hjortsberg’s classic--and incredibly underrated--Falling Angel (first published in 1978 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, filmed in 1987 as Angel Heart, and currently out of print). It’s very difficult to write about Hjortsberg’s book without giving away the ending, so please skip the next paragraph if you haven’t read Falling Angel yet, or at least seen the film ...

Stephen King once said of the novel: “Terrific ... One of a kind ... I’ve never read anything remotely like it.” Falling Angel is a hard-boiled detective story set in New York City in 1959, and the plot follows private eye Harry Angel’s attempt to track down a missing wartime crooner named Johnny Favorite for a rather creepy gentleman called Louis Cyphre. There is an eerie and unsettling atmosphere as Angel learns that Favorite wasn’t a very nice chap at all, even if he was a very successful singer. Angel’s investigation soon degenerates into a series of murders, with everyone he interviews ending up dead. As a reader, one forms the impression that Hjortsberg is pushing himself into a corner and that there’s no way he’s going to be able to explain everything without stretching our suspension of disbelief. He does: we learn that Favorite attempted to renege on a deal with the devil, and the conclusion reveals that it is actually the devil (in the form of Cyphre) who has hired Angel to find Favorite. There is a further twist which I won’t give away here in case you’ve read this paragraph by accident ...

So, basically, Falling Angel begins (and arguably even ends) as a mystery; the supernatural elements don’t alter the fact that it is a hard-boiled detective story in the vein of Hammett and Chandler. When I reconsidered its structure and why it worked so well, I thought that maybe Card’s comments weren’t applicable to crime stories with supernatural themes or elements, and returned to Bad Thoughts. The second time around, I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book, which I can recommend to anyone who delights in exploring that murky literary ground where horror and crime meet.

Zeltserman’s sequel to Bad Thoughts, entitled Bad Karma, is due for publication in November, and I’ll be looking at the contrast between the two novels next time.

(To be continued)

Touching All the Bases

• Hurray! I see that S.J. Rozan’s Six Word Stories site has been revived. My favorite submission so far comes from somebody named Kim Donovan: “Obituary: John Williams. Died tomorrow. Sorry.” I’ve reinstalled Six Word Stories in The Rap Sheet’s blogroll (under Flash/Short Fiction) in hopes that more people will discover it.

• Many of the usual contributors to Patti Abbott’s well-known Friday “forgotten books” blog series are taking today off (with the intention of resuming the series on September 11). But Paul Bishop of Bish’s Beat fame carries right on through. He writes this week about Assignment--Mara Tirana, by Edward S. Aarons. Also contributing a forgotten book tribute today: Bill Crider on The McBain Brief, by Ed McBain, and George Kelley on The Anthony Boucher Chronicles: Reviews and Commentary, 1942-1947.

• While we’re on the subject of trying to revive interest in older artistic projects ... Author (and Rap Sheet) blogger Megan Abbott writes about the motion picture Private Hell (1954) for Noir of the Week; the blog Booze Movies has more than a few nice things to say about Paul Newman’s performance in The Verdict (1985), a movie I just rewatched recently myself; and Christine A. Miller of the vintage-radio blog Escape and Suspense! applauds “the first noir directed by a woman,” The Hitch-Hiker (1953).

• Alternative endings to James Bond flicks.

• From the big screen to the small one: Fans of the 1978-1981 Robert Urich crime drama Vega$ will finally be able to enjoy that show’s Season 1 DVD release on October 20; Lee Goldberg has dug up the opening title sequence to The Blue Knight, George Kennedy’s 1975-1976 CBS cop series based on Joseph Wambaugh’s novel of the same name; the lovely Kristin Kreuk, formerly of Smallville, appears set to join the cast of the spy spoof Chuck for its regrettably delayed third season; and it looks as if NBC is “developing a new take on the groundbreaking UK drama series Prime Suspect,” which starred “Helen Mirren as Det. Chief Inspector Jane Tennison, a tough homicide investigator who found herself juggling her difficult job and equally harrowing personal life.”

• My father once owned a red Volvo P1800, the same sort of car Simon Templar (Roger Moore) drove in The Saint. Unfortunately, he sold it sometime in the early 1980s. But it seems that, for the right price I can soon find its replacement--a limited-edition revival of that model designed by Mattias Vöcks.

• David Liss--comic-book writer?

• Dan Waddell has submitted Blood Atonement, his second mystery featuring genealogist Nigel Barnes, to Marshal Zeringue’s notorious Page 69 Test. The results are found here. Meanwhile, Ann Cleaves sends Red Bones, the new third volume in her Shetland Island Quartet, through The Page 99 Test.

Celia Later

Mid-June brought the death of Celia Fremlin, who won the Edgar Award for Best Novel for her 1958 book, The Hours Before Dawn. Sad to say, when I first heard that news, Fremlin’s name didn’t ring a bell. So I want to thank Mystery*File for acquainting me with this truly forgotten novel and its creator. More on Fremlin here and here.

Sometimes You CAN Tell a Book by Its Cover

Charles Ardai, the head honcho at Hard Case Crime, is--as I’ve said more than once or twice before--a brilliant editor and a talented novelist, writing as “Richard Aleas” (Little Girl Lost, Songs of Innocence). But what he really does best is to commission sexy covers from great artists.

It was the cover of The Corpse Wore Pasties that first caught my attention: painter Ricky Mujica has managed to re-create but also improve upon the covers of my youth--paperback fronts that I had to smuggle into our Bronx apartment, past my parents, hidden in my underwear. But after a long look at Mujica’s curvaceous real-life models, I began to read the first chapter of this novel, written by and starring the inimitable Jonny Porkpie, the co-creator and master of ceremonies for New York’s celebrated Pinchbottom burlesque troupe, called “the best burlesque show in town” by The Village Voice and named a “Best of New York” treat by New York magazine.

As it turns out, the titular pasties aren’t of the sort I knew from my first editing job--working for men’s magazines such as Tab, Vue, Zest, and Beauty Parade. Instead, they’re the kind worn at the strip joints where Jonnie Porkpie can be found.

Here’s how the book begins:

The heel of the stiletto caught on the strap of the black lace bra she had dropped a few moments earlier. She kicked it out of the way without looking. It skittered across the stage.

She held the bottle next to her breasts, so the audience could see that the pasties covering her nipples matched the skull-and-crossbones on the label. Then she lifted it to her face, and licked the large yellow letters on the label that spelled out the word POISON. She tilted her hand. Bright green liquid flowed out of the bottle and down across her chest. Green dripped down between her breasts, over her ribcage, around her navel, and soaked into the cloth of her panties.

She threw her head back, and lifted the bottle to her mouth. A strange look crossed her face as the green flowed past her lips. A trickle of green dripped out of the corner of her mouth, down her cheek, and along the sinews of her neck.

Cherries whispered something.

The woman on stage seemed to swallow, then suddenly stopped moving. Her eyes widened. She grabbed her throat, and spit the liquid all over the front row of the audience. The bottle fell from her hand, hit the stage with a dull thunk, and rolled in a lazy circle around her feet, liquid pooling in its wake.

Great. Forget paper towels, I was going to need a mop to clean up after this act.

She made a strangling sound, as if trying to scream, but instead started gagging.

I looked at Cherries Jubilee, who was standing next to me as I watched the act from the wings. She shook her head. “Not this part,” she said. “At least, not exactly. She drinks from the bottle, but ...” The sentence trailed off.

The woman on stage stuck out her tongue and scraped at it with her fingernails, her mouth stretched in a convincing grimace of terror. Judging it purely on the basis of the performance--and I can’t tell you how much I hated to admit it, even to myself--this bit was actually quite good.

The music ended, but the number didn’t end with it. She kept going, flailing about the stage, pounding her chest, reaching out to the audience with a pleading look in her eyes. She jammed a finger into her mouth, two fingers, three fingers, and gagged again. She smeared the green across her face. Then her body went stiff and she fell to the stage, landing with her face in the cup of the brassiere she had just removed for our entertainment.

Great finale.

The audience thought so too. They clapped, cheered, whistled, hooted and hollered. A couple of people were actually standing up.

But she wasn’t done. Throughout the ovation, she stayed where she had fallen on the stage.

Not completely immobile; every few seconds, she would toss in a death spasm, which would set the audience clapping again, even louder.

Finally, having milked the bit for all it was worth, she lay still. The applause died down. She stayed where she was.

It took us all a minute to realize that it wasn’t part of the act.

By the time we did, she was dead.

“Who bumped off the bump-and-grinder?” asks the teaser on the back cover of Porkpie’s slender novel, which is due out in November. To learn more, click here.

Bullet Points: Sleazecore and Stupidity Edition

• Shots columnist Mike Ripley returns with a new month’s load of wisdom and whimsy. Among the topics covered in his latest column: the spy stories of Anthony Price, New Zealand crime fiction, Sam Eastland’s Eye of the Red Tsar, the books that most influenced Lee Child, and the “sort of ‘Continental Op’ approach” Joe Gores takes with his 2009 Maltese Falcon prequel, Spade & Archer.

• Who’d have expected that the subject of New Zealand crime and thriller novels would come up twice in one of these wrap-up posts? But Mystery Fanfare’s Janet Rudolph has the lowdown on a contest whereby readers living outside of that island nation can win “any Kiwi crime novel currently in print.” Act now!

• Well, now he’s gone and done it. Southern California author and freelance writer Michael Hemmingson, who’s already been writing a wonderful blog called Those Sexy Vintage Sleaze Books, has now launched a spin-off that is devoted exclusively to Orrie Hitt--“the noir poet of vintage sleazecore.” Look for it here ... and do look for it, if for no other reason than to swoon over Hemmingson’s amazing collection of paperback artwork.

• Jake Murdock reminds us that it was 60 years ago this week that the TV series Martin Kane, Private Eye debuted on NBC.

• For the site Noir Originals, Nick Stone talks with fellow novelist Tony Black, whose newest book, Gutted, may wind up among my favorite works of this year. Read their conversation here.

• Short-story writers who aren’t already familiar with Corey Wilde’s Watery Grave Invitational competition should jet on over to that link for a rundown of the contest rules. Apparently, it’s a three-stage process, at the end of which a select number of participants will have their work judged by a panel featuring Dave Zeltserman, Aldo Calcagno (of Powder Burn Flash and Darkest Before the Dawn fame), and Wilde himself. The deadline for applying is next Tuesday, September 8.

• Out of power, out of ideas, and obviously out for blood, a minority of U.S. conservatives seem also to have gone out of their minds over President Barack Obama’s planned feel-good address to students bound back to school next week. Reports The Florida Times-Union: “Although the White House says Obama will use the speech to stress ‘the importance of [students] taking responsibility for their success in school,’ Florida GOP Chairman Jim Greer said it would be an attempt to ‘indoctrinate America’s children’ into socialism.” How utterly idiotic. With the country having turned thumbs down on the Republican’t Party after eight years of failures under George W. Bush, GOPers have become unhinged in their attacks upon anything that doesn’t comport with their ideology. Claiming, in the complete absence of evidence, that Obama is trying to indoctrinate young minds in socialism should repulse any moderates who haven’t already abandoned that party. When George H.W. Bush delivered a similar speech to students back in 1991, you didn’t hear Democrats going all loony-tunes on him, did you. Of course not. More on this lunacy here, here, here, and here.

• And speaking of right-wing nutcases ...

Revisiting the Past

If you haven’t already happened upon it, you’ll want to check out a fine new Pulp Serenade interview with Greg Shepard, the head editor and publisher at Stark House Press, which is known for bringing classic crime fiction--by Harry Whittington, Gil Brewer, and others--out of the dusty closets and back into print. One of my favorite parts of the piece is this exchange between blogger Cullen Gallagher and Shepard:

PS: Since you specialize in pulp literature, where do you think its importance lies? Why are they continuing to survive and impact readers, when they were initially thought to be ephemeral, disposable books?

GS: For me the importance begins in the stripped-down simplicity of the story. Within that framework, there are so many marvelously unique voices--[Jim] Thompson, [David] Goodis, [Horace] McCoy, [W.R.] Burnett, [Charles] Williams, [Peter] Rabe, Brewer, Packer, [Charles] Willeford, [James Hadley] Chase, [John D.] MacDonald, [Cornell] Woolrich, etc.--each with their own story to tell. And in revisiting these “disposable” books, we get to relive and experience the mores of another era, which by its very distance seems like a simpler, less complicated time--and that, too, has its appeal. But first and foremost, these are all great writers who continue to impact because of the quality of their work.

Again, the full piece can be found here.

Free Krueger! Free Krueger!

No, we’re not trying to round up an angry mob to break novelist William Kent Krueger out of some pinched jail cell in his home state of Minnesota. Instead, we are inviting readers of The Rap Sheet to take advantage of our latest book giveaway contest. This time, the prize is particularly generous: a complete set of Krueger’s nine Corcoran “Cork” O’Connor novels, the first eight in paperback plus the brand-new series installment, Heaven’s Keep. And these are signed copies, to boot!

Most followers of this blog probably already know about Krueger’s literary output. After laboring at various jobs--ditch digging, logging, construction work, and freelance writing--he finally got around to finishing his first novel, Iron Lake (1998), at age 40. The enthusiastic reception for that debut (Iron Lake won not only the Anthony Award for Best First Novel, but also a Barry Award and Minnesota Book Award), prompted him to develop more wilderness-backdropped mysteries around Cork O’Connor, the part-Irish, part-Ojibwe ex-Chicago cop and onetime sheriff of tiny Aurora, Minnesota. Over the last decade, O’Connor--a man who, as my colleague Ali Karim once put it, “gets by on heavy doses of caffeine, nicotine, and guilt”--has had to deal with backcountry bigots, embittered widows, the brutal slaying of a Windy City businessman, a rogue environmentalist, professional hit men, and the ongoing tensions between northern Minnesota’s Caucasian and Native American populations. Critics have applauded Krueger’s efforts, especially his “dead-on depiction of a rural American town” (Booklist), his “sympathetic characters” (Minneapolis Star Tribune), and the way his novels “capture a sense of place while they deliver a powerful emotional punch” (Tess Gerritsen).

In a note posted at his Web site, the author admits, “I still don’t know exactly what to think” about Heaven’s Keep, his just-released ninth O’Connor adventure. “Often at the heart of my books is an issue. With Copper River, for example, it was a question of what happens to the children in our society that we turn out backs on them. Thunder Bay considered the sacrifices we’re willing to make in the name of love. Red Knife was about our culture of violence. But I’ve [got] to tell you honestly there’s no issue involved in Heaven’s Keep. I just tried to write a damn good story.”

According to his publisher’s description, the plot of Heaven’s Keep puts private detective Cork O’Connor “through the most harrowing mission of his life.”

When a charter plane carrying Cork O’Connor’s wife, Jo, goes missing in a snowstorm over the Wyoming Rockies, Cork must accept the terrible truth that his wife is gone forever. But is she? ...

Months after the tragedy, two women show up on Cork’s doorstep with evidence that the pilot of Jo’s plane was not the man he claimed to be. It may not be definitive proof, but it’s a ray of light in the darkness surrounding Cork’s loss. Agreeing to investigate, he travels to Wyoming, where he battles the interference of local law enforcement who may be on the take, the open hostility of the Northern Arapaho, who have much to lose if the truth is known, and the continuing attempts on his life by assassins who shadow his every move.

At the center of all the danger and deception lies the possibility that Jo’s disappearance was not the end of her, that somewhere along the labyrinthine path of his search, maybe even in the broad shadow of Heaven’s Keep itself, Cork will find her alive and waiting for him.

Whether you’re already a fan of Krueger’s O’Connor novels, or have yet to explore his work, here’s your chance to delve fully into the life and emotional saga of Cork O’Connor. With the sanction of his publisher, Atria, and cooperation from The Book Report Network, which is promoting the trade-paperback release of Krueger’s backlist of titles, The Rap Sheet has been given one set of the nine Cork O’Connor novels to send free of charge to a lucky reader. All you need do to enter this contest is answer one simple question:

What famously underwear-averse author did Krueger want to be when he was 19 years old?

If you need a clue, click here.

Send your response to this question, along with your mailing address, to: jpwrites@wordcuts.org. And write “Krueger Contest” in the subject line. Submissions will be accepted between now and midnight on Friday, September 11. One winner will be chosen at random from among those who submit correct entries, and his or her name will be announced on this page the following day.

At the publisher’s request, this competition is open only to readers living in the United States and Canada.

Good luck!

Take a Deep Breath

There was a time when I presumed that John Burdett’s terrific series (Bangkok 8, Bangkok Tattoo, and Bangkok Haunts) featuring Royal Thai police detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep, the only practicing Buddhist on the local police force rolls, provided all I needed to know about the darker, sadder side of Thailand’s capital city. But then I discovered Timothy Hallinan’s novels about American travel journalist Poke Rafferty, who lives in Bangkok with his Thai wife, Rose, and their adopted daughter, who calls herself Miaow. Last year’s The Fourth Watcher was a standout, to be sure, but his new Rafferty outing, Breathing Water, is even better.

Hallinan’s books are more ferocious than Burdett’s, and he excels at creating frightening villains--in this case, a gross but oddly touching multimillionaire, Khun Pan. Breathing Water begins with a high-stakes poker game, set up as part of a sting operation by Rafferty’s cop friend, Arthit, to nab a couple of rich cheaters. But nobody is expecting the Big Guy, as Pan is called, to show up. “The three millionaires don’t look alike,” Rafferty says, “but they share the glaze that money brings, a sheen as thin and golden as the melted sugar on a doughnut.”

Rafferty beats Pan badly at cards, his prize being the chance to write the multimillionaire’s much-sought-after biography. But many of Pan’s rivals don’t want any such book to come out, especially just before an upcoming election. On the other side are rivals who want to expose Pan’s darker secrets.

Rafferty is in a very dangerous position--as Arthit says, “If it would clarify your situation to think about it visually, then imagine this: You’re at the bottom of the Chao Phraya, wandering around on the riverbed without a map, and breathing water.”

Not an enviable predicament. But it spawns one hell of a story.

POSTSCRIPT: John Burdett has a new Bangkok thriller, called The Godfather of Kathmandu, coming from Alfred A. Knopf in January 2010. And one of his earlier standalones, A Personal History of Thirst, is available very cheaply at BookFinder. Now you know.

The Daggers Go Glitzy

There’s finally some news about what will be done with the remainder of this year’s Dagger Awards, now that the British Crime Writers’ Association has found new sponsors for its annual presentation of prizes. (The previous sponsor was of course the private banking firm Duncan Lawrie Ltd.) A press release on this matter explains:

Specsavers, Cactus TV, and ITV3 in partnership with the Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) are pleased to announce they will join forces to celebrate the Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards 2009. Following the success of last year’s inaugural event on ITV3, the 2009 event will be merged with the Crime Writers’ Association Daggers and the new combined “Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards on ITV3” will take place on Wednesday, 21st October, 2009.

The exciting new partnership is a 3-year deal between the four parties. The initiative has the support of leading publishers and highstreet retailers and will have posters and stickered books in shops and supermarkets and coverage in the press, reinforcing the Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards as a major industry event.

The culmination of a six-week season of ITV3 crime and drama programming, the Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards (“Daggers”) will be a glittering occasion at London’s Grosvenor House Hotel. The awards ceremony will celebrate the crème de la crème of Crime & Thriller fiction with awards focusing on the best of British and International crime thriller novels.

Literary Awards presented will include the CWA Gold Dagger for best crime novel of the year, the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for best thriller, the CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger for a new author of note, and the Hall Of Fame Dagger, which honours the achievements of the genre’s greatest exponents, past and present. In addition, the evening will introduce a brand new award--the ITV3 Bestseller Dagger, sponsored by Specsavers--voted for by ITV3 viewers.

The Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards will also celebrate crime fiction off the page with awards focusing on the greatest crime and thriller films and TV dramas of the year--along with the actors who brought the characters to life. Each award of the evening will be presented by celebrity faces with a connection to the world of crime fiction--last year’s presenters included Dame Helen Mirren and Ricky Gervais.

The full press release can be found here.

Attending this year’s Dagger Awards ceremony may prove challenging for yours truly. I expect to be jet-lagged during the festivities, since I will only have just arrived back in Britain from Bouchercon in Indianapolis. But needs must when the devils drives, I guess.