The Cat’s Out of the Bag

Janet Rudolph today released the names of nominees for this year’s Macavity Awards. The winners will be chosen by members of Mystery Readers International and announced during this coming September’s Bouchercon in St. Louis. As Rudolph notes, “This award is named for the ‘mystery cat’ of T.S. Eliot (Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats).”

Now on to the names of this year’s contenders ...

Best Mystery Novel:
• The Glass Rainbow, by James Lee Burke (Simon & Schuster)
• Faithful Place, by Tana French (Viking)
• The Queen of Patpong, by Timothy Hallinan (Morrow)
• Thirteen Hours, by Deon Meyer (Grove Atlantic)
• Bury Your Dead, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)
• The Scent of Rain and Lightning, by Nancy Pickard (Ballantine)

Best First Mystery Novel:
• The Damage Done, by Hilary Davidson (Forge)
• Rogue Island, by Bruce DeSilva (Forge)
• The Poacher’s Son, by Paul Doiron (Minotaur)
• Full Mortality, by Sasscer Hill (Wildside)
• A Thousand Cuts, by Simon Lelic (Viking)

Best Mystery-Related Non-fiction:
• The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York, by Deborah Blum (Penguin)
• Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks: Fifty Years of Mysteries in the Making, by John Curran (HarperCollins)
• Following the Detectives: Real Locations in Crime Fiction, edited by Maxim Jakubowski (New Holland)
• Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History, by Yunte Huang (Norton)
• Thrillers: 100 Must Reads, edited by David Morrell and Hank W. Wagner (Oceanview Publishing)

Best Mystery Short Story:
• “The Scent of Lilacs,” by Doug Allyn (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine [EQMM], September/October 2010)
• “Swing Shift,” by Dana Cameron (from Crimes by Moonlight, edited by Charlaine Harris; Berkley)
• “Devil’s Pocket,” by Keith Gilman (from Philadelphia Noir, edited by Carlin Romano; Akashic)
• “The Gods for Vengeance Cry,” by Richard Helms (EQMM,
November 2010)
• “Bookworm,” by G.M. Malliet (from Chesapeake Crimes: They Had It Comin’, edited by Donna Andrews, Barb Goffman, and Marcia Talley; Wildside)

Sue Feder Memorial Historical Mystery:
• A Marked Man, by Barbara Hamilton (Berkley)
• The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, by David Mitchell
(Random House)
• City of Dragons, by Kelli Stanley (Minotaur)
• The Red Door, by Charles Todd (Morrow)
• The Fifth Servant, by Kenneth Wishnia (HarperCollins)