On Thursday, Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine announced its nominees for the 2010 Barry Awards. In addition to the usual categories of Best Novel, Best First Novel, Best Short Story, and the rest, the list also included a new group from which to choose: Best Mystery/Crime Novel of the Decade (2000-2009). The contenders for that title are:
• The Guards, by Ken Bruen (Minotaur)
• The Lincoln Lawyer, by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown)
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson (Knopf)
• Mystic River, by Dennis Lehane (Morrow)
• Still Life, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)
• The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón (Penguin Press)
Now, while all of those half-dozen works certainly deserve acclaim, and some of them (particularly Larsson’s first thriller) have become bestsellers, we are left wondering whether they really represent the best crime and mystery novels the first decade of the 21st century had to offer. And if so, which one ought to walk away with the Barry?
We would like to know what you, the extremely well-read members of The Rap Sheet’s readership, think of these selections. So we’ve set up an informal poll near the top of the right-hand column on this page. (See the compact, silver-shaded box.) Feel free to vote for your favorite among the six books the Deadly Pleasures judges think are the best. Or feel free to suggest alternative “best crime novels of the decade” in the Comments section of this post.
Our poll will remain on the page for the next couple of weeks, until midnight on Monday, June 28. After that we’ll tally up the votes. Whether Deadly Pleasures readers and subscribers--the folks who will ultimately name a Barry Award recipient in the Best Mystery/Crime Novel of the Decade category--agree with your preferences is another matter altogether. But at least you will have had your say.
UPDATE: The winners of this poll can be found here.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
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12 comments:
Some very good novels on that list though there are, I abstain. Nowhere near the best of the decade.
Out of the nominees listed, I agree with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. While I loved The Lincoln Lawyer, it felt like more of a legal thriller than mystery in the classic sense but it could squeak in as well. As for alternatives, here's a few that made my list: Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn, The Virgin of Small Plains by Nancy Pickard, Jar City by Arnaldur Indridason, Little Scarlet by Walter Mosley, The Chalk Circle Man by Fred Vargas, The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston and The Girl She Used to Be by David Cristafano.
James Lee Burke´s books,everyone of them, beats cleanly all of these Barry nominees. It´s hard to understand, why he is still so underrated in these circles.
V.O.K, Helsinki, Finland
No Peter Temple? No Arnaldur Indriðason? And I'd say Bruen's best is Priest.
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
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Best of the decade?
As Chairman Mao said, it's far too early to tell...
The list is lacking something with no James Lee Burke novels on there... after being feted during the 1990s with several awards (eg Edgar Awards etc), he seems to have become somewhat overlooked awards-wise during the 2000s, even though he is still producing some fantastic crime novels.
But this is a no-win for the judges - there have been so many good crime novels over the past ten years, that you're never going to come up with a shortlist that receives widespread agreement...
This list leaves out so much: Fred Vargas, Arnaldur Indridason, Kate Atkinson, lots of other Europeans and U.S. writers.
AFTERMATH by Peter Robinson is better than any of the books on your ballot. The Inspector Banks series ranks very highly on my list of series.
RJR
Although I enjoyed several of these books, the mystery in "Girl with a Dragon Tattoo" isn't all that hard to crack for longtime thriller readers & "Mystic River," although a brilliant piece of writing, cheats the readers a bit by using some misleading wording to describe the initial discovery of the crime. I would rank several other Connelly books ahead of "The Lincoln Lawyer," particularly "The Closers" and "The Brass Verdict." I think I would also nominate "The Sweet Forever" by George Pelecanos, "Trip Wire" by Lee Child and "Winter's Bone" by Daniel Woodrell.
Holy cow! I completely forgot about "Queenpin" by Megan Abbott! Must be going senile.
City of Thieves by David Benoit
My personal favorite of the decade would probably be HARD REVOLUTION by George Pelecanos. But, ask me again tomorrow and I'll probably have a different answer.
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