Revue of Reviewers, 5-17-19

Critiquing some of the most interesting recent crime, mystery, and thriller releases. Click on the individual covers to read more.

Plaudits Across the Pond

I apparently missed noticing that the winners of this year’s British Book Awards (the “Nibbies”) were announced earlier this week. For the record, Louise Cavendish’s Our House (Simon & Schuster UK) won in the Crime and Thriller category, while the prolific Lee Child was named Author of the Year.

(Hat tip to In Reference to Murder.)

Most Deserved Recognition

Congratulations to Rap Sheet correspondent Ali Karim, who has been selected as Fan Guest of Honor for Bouchercon 2021. Like Bouchercon 2016, this forthcoming convention is scheduled to be held in New Orleans, Louisiana, and chaired by author Heather Graham with her colleague, Connie Perry. It will run from August 25 to 29, 2021.

I haven’t yet decided whether to attend this year’s Bouchercon, in Dallas, Texas, or next year’s gathering, in Sacramento, California, so the 2021 event wasn’t even on my radar. But the fact that my good friend Ali—a former Bouchercon board member and major crime-fiction enthusiast—will be at the New Orleans gathering convinces me I should take part, too. He and I had a swell time together in the Crescent City three years ago; and while there’s no guarantee that things will be as fun a second time around, I’m pretty optimistic about it.

Oh, and if you’re interested to know who else, besides Ali, is slated for praise at Bouchercon 2021, note that Steve Berry will be the Thriller Guest of Honor, Craig Johnson will be the American Guest of Honor, Jo Nesbø will be the International Guest of Honor, and Sandra Brown is set to receive that year’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

PaperBack: “Juke Box King”

Part of a series honoring the late author and blogger Bill Crider.



Juke Box King, by Frank Kane (Dell, 1959). Cover illustration by Chicago-born painter Freeman Elliott, who is perhaps best remembered for his many pin-up art magazine fronts, but was also responsible for various vintage paperback covers.

Grappling for Garlands in D-Town

This is certainly shaping up as crime-fiction awards season. Nominations for the 2019 Dagger Awards and the 2019 Strand Critics Awards were announced within the last week, and now comes the catalogue of contenders for this year’s Anthony Awards. The winners of those last commendations will be named during an event at Bouchercon in Dallas, Texas (October 31-November 3).

Best Novel:
• Give Me Your Hand. by Megan Abbott (Little, Brown)
• November Road, by Lou Berney (Morrow)
• Jar of Hearts, by Jennifer Hillier (Minotaur)
• Sunburn, by Laura Lippman (Morrow)
• Blackout, by Alex Segura (Polis)

Best First Novel:
• My Sister, the Serial Killer, by Oyinkan Braithwaite (Doubleday)
• Broken Places, by Tracy Clark (Kensington)
• Dodging and Burning, by John Copenhaver (Pegasus)
• What Doesn’t Kill You, by Aimee Hix (Midnight Ink)
• Bearskin, by James A. McLaughlin (Ecco)

Best Paperback Original Novel:
• Hollywood Ending, by Kellye Garrett (Midnight Ink)
• If I Die Tonight, by Alison Gaylin (Morrow)
• Hiroshima Boy, by Naomi Hirahara (Prospect Park)
• Under a Dark Sky, by Lori Rader-Day (Morrow)
• A Stone’s Throw, by James W. Ziskin (Seventh Street)

Best Short Story:
• “The Grass Beneath My Feet,” by S.A. Cosby
(Tough, August 20, 2018)
• “Bug Appétit,” by Barb Goffman (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine [EQMM], November/December 2018)
• “Cold Beer No Flies,” by Greg Herren (from Florida Happens:
Tales of Mystery, Mayhem, and Suspense from the Sunshine State, edited by Greg Herren; Three Rooms Press)
• “English 398: Fiction Workshop,” by Art Taylor (EQMM,
July/August 2018)
• “The Best Laid Plans,” by Holly West (from Florida Happens)

Best Critical or Non-fiction Work:
• Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession,
by Alice Bolin (Morrow)
• Mastering Plot Twists: How to Use Suspense, Targeted Storytelling Strategies, and Structure to Captivate Your Readers,
by Jane K. Cleland (Writer’s Digest)
• Pulp According to David Goodis, by Jay A. Gertzman (Down & Out)
• Classic American Crime Fiction of the 1920s, annotated by Leslie S. Klinger (Pegasus)
• I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer, by Michelle McNamara (HarperCollins)
• The Real Lolita: The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel that Scandalized the World, by Sarah Weinman (Ecco)

As is traditional, the winners of this year’s Anthony Awards will be chosen by Bouchercon attendees.

Speeding Through Reading

I take a brief break with my veteran “Champion Challenge” partner and book-loving niece, Amie-June Brumble (right), to snap a selfie in front of Ada’s Technical Books, on Capitol Hill.

Yes, I know, it’s been more than two weeks since I celebrated Seattle Independent Bookstore Day (April 27). But what with a busy work schedule and various family commitments, it’s been hard until now to find enough free hours to compose a recap of my experiences.

As I mentioned in a previous post on this page, I had arranged to participate that day in the IBD’s annual “Champion Challenge” alongside my favorite niece, Amie-June Brumble, with whom I undertook this same venture two years ago. The goal of the Champion Challenge is for readers to visit a designated number of bookshops over the course of a business day, at each of which the contestant is supposed to collect a unique stamp on his or her official Passport Map. Everyone who finishes with a completed passport wins a 25 percent discount at all of those stores for the following year—a pretty favorable deal, if you go through a lot of books annually (as I do).

When I first joined in this frenzied competition, back in 2016—the second year it took place—the goal was to stop by at least 17 of the 21 participating indie stores. (For shops with more than one location on the map, you only needed to accumulate a single stamp.) That number jumped to 19 of 23 in 2017, and this year, Champion Challenge players had to pay calls on 21 out of the 26 stores taking part. People who didn’t want to engage in the full bookstore crawl could still be involved: those who visited three or more stores could turn in their passports for a 30-percent-off coupon, good for a onetime use at any of the shops joining in this adventure.

(Left) Cover of the IBD Passport Map.

Having undertaken the Champion Challenge before, Amie-June and I determined to follow our customary and successful route. This took us in a spiraling, clockwise path through the Seattle suburbs first, then north across downtown and the city’s northern neighborhoods, and had us finishing in the Capitol Hill district, east of downtown. Just as I have done before, I offer—below—my brief account of Seattle’s 2019 Independent Bookstore Day, recalled in statistics and incidents.

Time we started out: Amie-June picked me up in front of my house at the ungodly hour of 5:30 a.m. Since we had two additional bookstores to reach by day’s end, she wanted to catch the first (6:10) ferry departing downtown Seattle for Bainbridge Island, on the west side of Puget Sound, where a couple of shops—Eagle Harbor Book Company and The Traveler—sit across from one another on the main street of Winslow, Bainbridge’s town center. A coterie of women also embarking on this Champion Challenge boarded the ferry with us, and passed out fresh doughnuts to anyone who wished one, for as long as they lasted (not long enough)—a very friendly touch. We reached Winslow just before the two bookshops opened, at the unusual hour of 7 a.m. I was impressed by Eagle Harbor’s arrangements, which had visitors entering through one of its doors (where pre-stamped Passport Maps were available) and then exiting another, thus maintaining a comfortable flow. As would be our pattern throughout the day, Amie-June and I collected our necessary passport stamps and then spent a bit of time perusing the offerings at each business before moving on.

First books purchased: As might have been predicted, Amie-June began to satisfy her book hunger much earlier than yours truly. While at Liberty Bay Books in Poulsbo, on the west side of Puget Sound, she snapped up We Are the Gardeners, a children’s work by Joanna Gaines, as well as an adult novel titled Palisades Park, by Alan Brennert. I waited three more stops—until Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park—before purchasing Nature’s Mutiny: How the Little Ice Age of the Long Seventeenth Century Transformed the West and Shaped the Present, by Philipp Blom (Liveright).

Number of books purchased along the way: For myself, I picked up three: the aforementioned Nature’s Mutiny; Making Monte Carlo: A History of Speculation and Spectacle, by Mark Braude; and a 1974 novelization of the Paul Newman/Robert Redford film The Sting, by “Robert Weverka,” aka Robert McMahon. I didn’t know the last of those existed, nor was I looking for it; but BookTree in Kirkland, on the east side of Lake Washington, had a copy and I couldn’t resist, after having enjoyed other of Weverka’s TV and movie tie-in novels.

Number of books I really wanted to buy: A conservative estimate would be eight … or maybe 10 … OK, perhaps a dozen, or more. Among those I passed up (at least temporarily) were Tom Clavin’s latest biography, Wild Bill: The True Story of the American Frontier's First Gunfighter (St. Martin’s Press); journalist-historian Jack Kelly’s The Edge of Anarchy: The Railroad Barons, the Gilded Age, and the Greatest Labor Uprising in America (St. Martin’s Press); and the recent re-release of Erle Stanley Gardner’s 1942 Perry Mason novel, The Case of the Careless Kitten (American Mystery Classics).

Number of books Amie-June purchased: Twelve—which she says was “fewer than I expected.” The last time we ran this Champion Challenge together, she acquired more than 30 books along the way. Back then, though, she was still stocking the Little Free Library outside her house. Now, several years into that project, she has teetering stacks of paperbacks still waiting to cycle in and out of her streetside athenaeum. The works she picked up this year were only for herself and her sweet, book-loving (of course) 3-year-old son.

Number of bookstores visited this year that I had never popped in to before: Only two—Arundel Books, a rather beautiful establishment in the historic Pioneer Square district, and Page 2 Books, a used-book-lovers’ mecca in Burien, a southern ’burb of Seattle.

Food ingested during our travels: With our too-early start, I found no time for breakfast. It wasn’t until we reached the small town of Kingston (no relation) and the terminal for our ferry ride back east across Puget Sound, that we stopped at a McDonald’s for Egg McMuffins—not my favorite repast, but when hunger strikes hard, high-minded disinclinations toward junk food go right out the window. Fortunately, we found finer fare around lunchtime at a sandwich shop called Homegrown, located right next to Island Books, on Mercer Island, just east of downtown Seattle. There were surprisingly fewer cookies and other quick treats available along our path this year, but we did pick up a few Oreo-style sweets at Magnolia’s Bookstore, in the Magnolia neighborhood, and some Jordan almonds at Phinney Books, in Greenwood. Oh, and let’s not forget the Starbucks mocha I bought about halfway through this trip.

First frustrating event of the day: We just barely missed catching the 8:40 a.m. ferry we’d hoped to take from Kingston back to Edmonds, north of Seattle. This meant we had to wait another hour for the next sailing. Oh, well, at least this gave us a chance to peacefully eat those Egg McMuffins.

(Right) The Passport Map’s checklist of participating stores. Click to enlarge.

Second frustrating event of the day: We finally found our way to Page 2 Books at about 2 p.m., only to encounter a small group of people who were already handing in their completed passports. What the hell? By then, we had accumulated only nine stamps! The only way to have finished this course so quickly, we surmised, was to have a designated driver along—one who wasn’t participating in the Challenge, and who could wait immediately outside each shop (perhaps in a loading zone) and then speed everyone on to the next destination—and to spend no more time in the bookstores than was absolutely required to have the passports stamped. Of course, that defeats one of the principal incentives the bookstores have in participating in this event, which is to introduce new customers to their bookshelf selections, invite them to buy a volume or two, and entice them to return again later. Those folks who finished the course so early missed out on the fun of browsing. And, really, why the rush? The first-place finisher in this event receives no more points or plaudits than the last-place finisher.

Stores in which we’d like to have spent some more time: Amie-June was quite impressed by the children’s reading selection at Island Books, so she’d have been happy to while away the afternoon there. I was sad that we had to dash in and out of Arundel Books so quickly (due to downtown parking shortages); I’ll have to go back sometime in the future to see more of what it calls its “eclectic stock” of previously owned and collectible editions. Another place I didn’t loiter long enough this year was Queen Anne Book Company, immediately north of downtown, which always boasts a thoughtfully curated selection of general works, and since our last visit has witnessed a major remodel of its next-door coffee shop. It would have been nice to spend some time in there reading from my new purchases.

Stores with the noticeably nicest salespeople: Liberty Bay Books; Edmonds Bookshop; Ada’s Technical Books, on Capitol Hill; and Phinney Books, in the Greenwood neighborhood.

Store I would like to have visited, but didn’t: Madison Books, which I recently had a small hand in launching in the Madison Park neighborhood. Because it’s owned by the same folks behind Phinney Books, it wasn’t necessary that we pay a call at Madison, and it would’ve been a bit out of our way. Yet Independent Bookstore Day was also that establishment’s opening day, so I’d like to have joined in the celebration, if only fleetingly.

Number of Jell-O shots ingested: Two, one for each of us at the Elliott Bay Book Company, the final stop on our daylong odyssey. In recent years, Elliott Bay (formerly located in Pioneer Square, but now on Capitol Hill) has served tequila shots to the many people who finish their Champion Challenge there. For some reason, however, the decision was made this time around to switch to Jell-O shots in various fruit flavors. I had the alcoholic variety, spiked with vodka; Amie-June, since she is currently pregnant with her second son, opted instead for the non-alcoholic version. In both cases, we had trouble sucking our finish-line treats out of their small plastic cups. Not quite as cheerful a conclusion to our journey as tequila shots would’ve been.

Lesson I learned successfully from the last two years: Take along a full water bottle. You might be surprised to discover how easily one can become dehydrated, speeding around town with the singular goal of gawking at more books than you can afford.

Number of hours spent on this year’s Champion Challenge: 14, which was an hour and a half longer than the last time Amie-June and I undertook the venture. But then, we did have two more stops to make.

Number of miles traveled: 13.4, not including the two ferry rides across Puget Sound. No wonder this endeavor is so time-consuming!

Despite the arduousness of this enterprise, I’m told that 636 people were as successful as Amie-June and I in finishing the Champion Challenge (up from 500 in 2018). Another 1,034 people are said to have visited at least three shops on Independent Bookstore Day. I’ll be able to see and meet many of them this coming Saturday, May 18, when Queen Anne Book Company hosts an all day (10 a.m.-5 p.m.) celebration for the finishers, during which they will receive either their Champion Cards or their discount coupons.

Strand Commends Old Hands and Newbies

The Strand Magazine today broadcast its nominee selections for the 2019 Strand Critics Awards, in two separate categories.

Best Mystery Novel:
• Lullaby Road, by James Anderson (Crown)
• Transcription, by Kate Atkinson (Little, Brown)
• November Road, by Lou Berney (Morrow)
• Dark Sacred Night, by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown)
• The Witch Elm, by Tana French (Viking)
• Sunburn, by Laura Lippman (HarperCollins)

Best Debut Mystery Novel:
• Dodging and Burning, by John Copenhaver (Pegasus)
• The Other Side of Everything, by Lauren Doyle Owens (Touchstone)
• The Chalk Man, by C.J. Tudor (Crown)
• The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, by Stuart Turton
(Sourcebooks Landmark)
• Beautiful Bad, by Annie Ward (Park Row)

The Strand’s news release regarding these commendations doesn’t say when the winners will be announced, but recent history suggests it should be sometime this coming summer.

In addition, the Strand has chosen two well-known authors as recipients of its latest Lifetime Achievement Awards: Heather Graham and Donna Leon. And it’s named Dominique Raccah, the publisher/CEO of Sourcebooks, as its Publisher of the Year Award winner.

Crowning the Victors at CrimeFest

Following on yesterday’s announcement about the British Crime Writers’ Association’s 2019 Dagger Award nominees, we now bring you (thanks to on-the-spot reporting by our own Ali Karim) tonight’s winners of seven separate prizes at CrimeFest. These commendations were given out during a celebratory dinner held in Bristol, England. You can watch Ali’s video of the announcements here.

Audible Sounds of Crime Award (for the best unabridged crime audiobook): Lethal White, by “Robert Galbraith,” aka J.K. Rowling; read by Robert Glenister (Hachette Audio)

Also nominated: Lies Sleeping, by Ben Aaronovitch, read by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith (Orion); Our House, by Louise Candlish, read by Deni Francis and Paul Panting (Whole Story Audiobooks); The President Is Missing, by Bill Clinton and James Patterson, read by Dennis Quaid, January LaVoy, Peter Ganim, Jeremy Davidson, Mozhan Marnò, and Bill Clinton (Random House Audiobooks); The Wife Between Us, by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen, read by Julia Whelan (Pan Macmillan); The Outsider, by Stephen King, read by Will Patton (Hodder & Stoughton); Let Me Lie, by Clare Mackintosh, read by Gemma Whelan and Clare Mackintosh (Little, Brown); I’ll Keep You Safe, by Peter May, read by Anna Murray and Peter Forbes (Riverrun); In a House of Lies, by Ian Rankin, read by James MacPherson (Orion); and Anatomy of a Scandal, by Sarah Vaughan, read by Julie Teal, Luke Thompson, Esther Wane, and Sarah Feathers (Simon & Schuster Audio UK)

eDunnit Award (“for the best crime fiction e-book first published in both hardcopy and in electronic format”): Sunburn, by Laura Lippman (Faber and Faber)

Also nominated: When Trouble Sleeps, by Leye Adenle (Cassava Republic Press); Thirteen, by Steve Cavanagh (Orion); Gallows Court, by Martin Edwards (Head of Zeus); Homegrown Hero, by Khurrum Rahman (HQ); The Fire Court, by Andrew Taylor (HarperCollins); and The Shrouded Path, by Sarah Ward (Faber and Faber)

Last Laugh Award (for the best humorous crime novel): A Shot in the Dark, by Lynne Truss (Bloomsbury)

Also nominated: A Deadly Habit, by Simon Brett (Crème de la Crime); Bryant & May: Hall of Mirrors, by Christopher Fowler (Transworld); Auntie Poldi and the Fruits of the Lord, by Mario Giordano (John Murray); London Rules, by Mick Herron (John Murray); Homegrown Hero, by Khurrum Rahman (HQ); Palm Beach Finland, by Antti Tuomainen (Orenda); and Miss Blaine’s Prefect and the Golden Samovar, by Olga Wojtas (Contraband)

H.R.F. Keating Award (for the best biographical or critical book related to crime fiction): Difficult Lives–Hitching Rides, by James Sallis (No Exit Press)

Also nominated: Arthur Conan Doyle’s Art of Fiction, by Nils Clausson (Cambridge Scholars); Irish Crime Fiction, by Brian Cliff (Palgrave Macmillan); Female Corpses in Crime Fiction, by Glen S. Close (Palgrave Macmillan); Domestic Noir, by Laura Joyce and Henry Sutton (Palgrave Macmillan); Historical Noir, by Barry Forshaw (No Exit Press); and The Big Somewhere: Essays on James Ellroy’s Noir World, by Steven Powell (Bloomsbury)

Best Crime Novel for Children (aged 8-12): Kat Wolfe Investigates, by Lauren St. John (Macmillan Children’s Books)

Also nominated: The Train to Impossible Places, by P.G. Bell (Usborne); Murder At Twilight, by Fleur Hitchcock (Nosy Crow); A Darkness of Dragons, by S.A. Patrick (Usborne); The Book Case, by Dave Shelton (David Fickling); and The Last Chance Hotel, by Nicki Thornton (Chicken House)

Best Crime Novel for Young Adults (aged 12-16): Run, Riot, by Nikesh Shukla (Hodder Children’s Books)

Also nominated: The Colour of the Sun, by David Almond (Hodder Children’s Books); Rosie Loves Jack, by Mel Darbon (Usborne); Little Liar, by Julia Gray (Andersen Press); White Rabbit, Red Wolf, by Tom Pollock (Walker); and Dry, by Neal and Jarrod Shusterman (Walker)

Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year:
The Katharina Code, by Jørn Lier Horst, translated by Anne Bruce (Michael Joseph; Norway)

Also nominated: The Ice Swimmer, by Kjell Ola Dahl, translated by Don Bartlett (Orenda Books; Norway); The Whisperer, by Karin Fossum, translated by Kari Dickson (Harvill Secker; Norway); The Darkness, by Ragnar Jónasson, translated by Victoria Cribb (Penguin Random House; Iceland); Resin, by Ane Riel, translated by Charlotte Barslund (Doubleday; Denmark); and Big Sister, by Gunnar Staalesen, translated by Don Bartlett (Orenda Books; Norway).

Congratulations to all of this year’s nominees!

Going Long for the Daggers

Thanks to Ayo Onatade and Shotsmag Confidential, we now have the longlists of nominees for the British Crime Writers’ Association’s 2019 Dagger Awards. These books and authors were announced earlier this evening during CrimeFest (May 9-12), in Bristol, England.

CWA Gold Dagger:
• All the Hidden Truths, by Claire Askew (Hodder & Stoughton)
• Snap, by Belinda Bauer (Bantam Press)
• The Mobster’s Lament, by Ray Celestin (Mantle)
• The Puppet Show, by M.W. Craven (Constable)
• Body & Soul, by John Harvey (Heinemann)
• What We Did, by Christobel Kent (Sphere)
• Unto Us a Son Is Given, by Donna Leon (Heinemann)
• Fade to Grey, by John Lincoln (No Exit Press)
• Cold Bones, by David Mark (Mulholland)
• American by Day, by Derek B. Miller (Doubleday)
• Smoke and Ashes, by Abir Mukherjee (Harvill Secker)
• Salt Lane, by William Shaw (Riverrun)
• Before She Knew Him, by Peter Swanson (Faber and Faber)
• The Fire Court, by Andrew Taylor (Harper)
• A Station on the Path to Somewhere Better, by Benjamin Wood (Scribner)

CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger:
• Give Me Your Hand, by Megan Abbott (Picador)
• Thirteen, by Steve Cavanagh (Orion)
• Safe Houses, by Dan Fesperman (Head of Zeus)
• The Stranger Diaries, by Elly Griffiths (Quercus)
• No Tomorrow, by Luke Jennings (John Murray)
• Lives Laid Away, by Stephen Mack Jones (Soho Crime)
• The Wolf and the Watchman, by Niklas Natt och Dag (John Murray)
• Homegrown Hero, by Khurrum Rahman (HQ)
• To the Lions, by Holly Watt (Raven)
• Memo from Turner, by Tim Willocks (Jonathan Cape)

CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger:
• Motherland, by G.D. Abson (Mirror)
• All the Hidden Truths, by Claire Askew (Hodder & Stoughton)
• The Boy at the Door, by Alex Dahl (Head of Zeus)
• When Darkness Calls, by Mark Griffin (Piatkus)
• Scrublands, by Chris Hammer (Wildfire)
• Turn a Blind Eye, by Vicky Newham (HQ)
• Blood & Sugar, by Laura Shepherd-Robinson (Mantle)
• Something in the Water, by Catherine Steadman (Simon & Schuster)
• The Chestnut Man, by Søren Sveistrup (Michael Joseph)
• Overkill, by Vanda Symon (Orenda)

CWA ALCS Gold Dagger for Non-fiction:
• All That Remains: A Life in Death, by Sue Black (Doubleday)
• An Unexplained Death: The True Story of a Body at the Belvedere,
by Mikita Brottman (Canongate)
• Trace: Who Killed Maria James?, by Rachael Brown (Scribe UK)
• Murder by the Book: A Sensational Chapter in Victorian Crime,
by Claire Harman (Viking)
• The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century, by Kirk Wallace Johnson (Hutchinson)
• Eve Was Shamed: How British Justice Is Failing Women, by Helena Kennedy (Chatto & Windus)
• In Your Defence: Stories of Life and Law, by Sarah Longford (Doubleday)
• The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War, by Ben Macintyre (Viking)
• The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper, by Hallie Rubenhold (Doubleday)
• My Life with Murderers: Behind Bars with the World’s Most
Violent Men, by David Wilson (Sphere)

CWA International Dagger:
• A Long Night in Paris, by Dov Alfon,
translated by Daniella Zamir (Maclehose Press)
• Weeping Waters, by Karin Brynard,
translated by Maya Fowler and Isobel Dixon (World Noir)
• The Cold Summer, by Gianrico Carofiglio,
translated by Howard Curtis (Bitter Lemon Press)
• Newcomer, by Keigo Higashino,
translated by Giles Murray (Little, Brown)
• The Root of Evil, by Håkan Nesser,
translated by Sarah Death (Mantle)
• The Forger, by Cay Rademacher,
translated by Peter Millar (Arcadia)
• The Overnight Kidnapper, by Andrea Camilleri,
translated by Stephen Sartarelli (Mantle)
• The Courier, by Kjell Ola Dahl,
translated by Don Bartlett (Orenda)
• Slugger, by Martin Holmén,
translated by A.A. Prime (Pushkin Vertigo)
• The Katherina Code, by Jørn Lier Horst,
translated by Anne Bruce (Michael Joseph)

CWA Sapere Historical Dagger:
• Blood & Sugar, by Laura Shepherd-Robinson (Mantle)
• Destroying Angel, by S.G. Maclean (Quercus)
• Gallows Court, by Martin Edwards (Head of Zeus)
• Smoke and Ashes, by Abir Mukherjee (Harvill Secker)
• Tombland, by C.J. Sansom (Mantle)
• The Angel’s Mark, by S.W. Perry (Corvus)
• The House on Half Moon Street, by Alex Reeve (Raven)
• The Mathematical Bridge, by Jim Kelly (Allison & Busby)
• The Mobster’s Lament, by Ray Celestin (Mantle)
• The Quaker, by Liam McIlvanney (Harper)

CWA Short Story Dagger:
• “Room Number Two,” by Andrea Camilleri (from Death at Sea,
by Andrea Camilleri; Mantle)
• “Strangers in a Pub,” by Martin Edwards (from Ten Year Stretch, edited by Martin Edwards and Adrian Muller; No Exit Press)
• “How Many Cats Have You Killed?,” by Mick Herron
(from Ten Year Stretch)
• “Death Becomes Her,” by Syd Moore (from The Strange Casebook,
by Syd Moore; Point Blank)
• “The Dummies’ Guide to Serial Killing,” by Danuta Reah (from The Dummies’ Guide to Serial Killing and Other Fantastic Female Fables, by Danuta Reah; Fantastic)
• “I Detest Mozart,” by Teresa Solana (from The First Historic Serial Killers, by Teresa Solana; Bitter Lemon Press)
• “Paradise Gained,” by Teresa Solana (from The First Historic
Serial Killers)
• “Bag Man,” by Lavie Tidhar (from The Outcast Hours, edited by Mahvesh Murad and Jared Shurin; Solaris)

CWA Dagger in the Library:
(Honoring “a body of work by an established crime writer that has long been popular with borrowers from libraries.”)
• M.C. Beaton
• Simon Beckett
• Mark Billingham
• Christopher Brookmyre
• John Connolly
• Kate Ellis
• Sophie Hannah
• Graham Masterton
• Denise Mina
• C.J. Sansom
• Cath Staincliffe
• Jacqueline Winspear

CWA Debut Dagger (for unpublished writers):
• WAKE, by Shelley Burr
• Self-Help for Serial Killers: Let Your Creativity Bloom, by Mairi Campbell-Jack
• The Mourning Light, by Jerry Crause
• The Fruits of Rashness, by Michael Fleming
• Down the Well, by Carol Glaser
• Hardways, by Catherine Hendricks
• The Right Man, by Anna Maloney
• The Firefly, by David Smith
• A Thin Sharp Blade, by Fran Smith
• A Wolf’s Clothing, by Matthew Smith

I’m particularly pleased to see among these numerous contenders Andrew Taylor’s Fire Court, John Harvey’s Body & Soul, Laura Shepherd-Robinson’s Blood & Sugar, Niklas Natt och Dag’s The Wolf and the Watchman, Martin Edwards’ Gallows Court, and Hallie Rubenhold’s The Five, all of which I have read and enjoyed in recent months. But since I’m not a member of any Dagger judging committee, my opinion doesn’t exactly carry much weight.

Shortlists of this year’s Dagger contestants are supposed to be broadcast later this summer, with the winners set to be declared during a special dinner in London on October 24. That is also the occasion on which the CWA will honor Robert Goddard with its 2019 Diamond Dagger. The Diamond Dagger recognizes “authors whose crime writing careers have been marked by sustained excellence, and who have made a significant contribution to the genre.”

For more information, visit the CWA Web site or e-mail admin@thecwa.co.uk. Rap Sheet correspondent Ali Karim’s video of last night’s Dagger Award announcements can be viewed here.

* * *

One final note: During tonight’s Dagger Awards ceremony at CrimeFest, it was also announced that Ray Bazowski’s “A Perfect Murderer” has won the 2019 Margery Allingham Short Story Competition (for an unpublished work), while Rosie de Vekey has been named as the runner-up in this contest for her story “Decluttering.” The Allingham prize is presented annually thanks to a joint initiative by the Margery Allingham Society and the CWA.

Revue of Reviewers, 5-9-19

Critiquing some of the most interesting recent crime, mystery, and thriller releases. Click on the individual covers to read more.

Independents’ Day

While I mentioned last weekend’s announcement of the latest Agatha Awards, it seems I missed the contemporaneous news about which books and authors won the 2019 Independent Book Publisher Awards. There were more than 100 categories of books judged in that worldwide competition, but as In Reference to Murder points out, two were of particular interest to crime-fiction fans.

Best Mystery:
• Gold: Tie — The Moving Blade, by Michael Pronko (Raked Gravel Press), and Shadowed by Death, by Mary Adler (Dancing Dog Books)
• Silver: Full Service Blonde, by Megan Edwards (Imbrifex Books)
• Bronze: The Sleeping Lady, by Bonnie C. Monte (She Writes Press)

Best Suspense/Thriller:
• Gold: High Crimes, by Libby Fischer Hellmann (Red Herrings Press)
• Silver: Tie — The Maw, by Taylor Zajonc (Skyhorse), and Big Woods, by May Cobb (Llewellyn Worldwide)
• Bronze: Death’s Echoes, by Penny Mickelbury (Bywater)

Lawson Bags Another Spotted Owl

House Witness (Atlantic Monthly Press), the 12th novel in Pacific Northwest author Mike Lawson’s series of thrillers starring U.S. congressional investigator Joe DeMarco, has won the 2019 Spotted Owl Award. That annual accolade is dispensed by the Portland, Oregon-based Friends of Mystery organization, and honors crime and mystery fiction published by residents of Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and the Canadian province of British Columbia.

Also nominated for the 2019 prize were Fistful of Rain, by Baron R. Birtcher (Permanent Press); A Steep Price, by Robert Dugoni (Thomas & Mercer); Moving Targets, by Warren C. Easley (Poisoned Pen Press); Soul Survivor, by G.M. Ford (Thomas & Mercer); The Punishment She Deserves, by Elizabeth George (Viking); Madagascar, by Stephen Holgate (Amphorae); The Line, by Martin Limón (Soho Crime); Baby’s First Felony, by John Straley (Soho Crime); and The Bomb Shelter, by Jon Talton (Poisoned Pen Press).

This latest Spotted Owl win is Lawson’s third. He previously received the commendation in 2014 for House Odds, and in 2013 for House Blood, both other entries in the DeMarco series.

Dead Good Times for All

It’s apparently that time again, when the British crime-fiction Web site Dead Good solicits online nominations for its annual Dead Good Reader Awards. As I recall, this competition began back in 2015, and its categories vary with each twelvemonth. Last year, for instance, we were asked to pick the winners of The Holmes and Watson Award for Best Detective Duo and The Wringer Award for the Character Who’s Been Put Through It All, while in 2017 books vied for The Hidden Depths Award for Most Unreliable Narrator and The Cat Amongst the Pigeons Award for Most Exceptional Debut.

2019 brings us the following half-dozen classifications of contenders, only the last one being a standard for this contest:

• The Nosy Parker Award for Best Amateur Detective
• The Jury's Out Award for Most Gripping Courtroom Drama
• The Dish Served Cold Award for Best Revenge Thriller
• The Cancel All Plans Award for the Book You Can't Put Down
• The Cat and Mouse Award for Most Elusive Villain
• The Dead Good Recommends Award for Most Recommended Book

Click here to recommend crime, mystery, and thriller novels—“published in any format within the past year”—that you think deserve acclaim under these headings. Those scoring the greatest number of nominations will be shortlisted for a final public vote. The victor will be announced on Friday, July 19, during this year’s Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate, England.

Can You Please Just Make Up Your Mind?

Left: Murder Never Knocks, by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins (Titan, 2016). Right: Murder Knocks Twice, by Susanna Calkins (Minotaur, 2019).

Twice Lucky in Maryland

If the many attendees at tonight’s presentation of the annual Agatha Awards, held during the Malice Domestic conference in Bethesda, Maryland, were looking for surprises, they got just what they wanted. Votes in not one, but two out of the six categories of contenders ended in ties. All of the winners and other nominees are listed below.

Best Contemporary Novel:
Mardi Gras Murder, by Ellen Byron (Crooked Lane)

Also nominated: Beyond the Truth, by Bruce Robert Coffin
(Witness Impulse); Cry Wolf, by Annette Dashofy (Henery Press); Kingdom of the Blind, by Louise Penny (Minotaur); and Trust Me, by Hank Phillippi Ryan (Forge)

Best Historical Novel:
The Widows of Malabar Hill, by Sujata Massey (Soho Crime)

Also nominated: Four Funerals and Maybe a Wedding, by Rhys Bowen (Berkley); The Gold Pawn, by L.A. Chandlar (Kensington); Turning the Tide, by Edith Maxwell (Midnight Ink); and Murder on Union Square, by Victoria Thompson (Berkley)

Best First Novel:
Tie — A Lady’s Guide to Etiquette and Murder, by Dianne Freeman (Kensington), and Curses Boiled Again, by Shari Randall
(St. Martin’s Press)

Also nominated: Little Comfort, by Edwin Hill (Kensington); What Doesn’t Kill You, by Aimee Hix (Midnight Ink); and Deadly Solution, by Keenan Powell (Level Best)

Best Short Story:
Tie — “All God’s Sparrows,” by Leslie Budewitz (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine [AHMM], May/June 2018), and “The Case of the Vanishing Professor,” by Tara Laskowski (AHMM, May/June 2018)

Also nominated: “A Postcard for the Dead,” by Susanna Calkins (from Florida Happens, edited by Greg Herren; Three Rooms Press); “Bug Appetit,” by Barb Goffman (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine [EQMM], November/December 2018); and “English 398: Fiction Workshop,” by Art Taylor (EQMM, July/August 2018)

Best Children’s/Young Adult Mystery:
Potion Problems (Just Add Magic), by Cindy Callaghan (Aladdin)

Also nominated: Winterhouse, by Ben Guterson (Henry Holt); and A Side of Sabotage, by C.M. Surrisi (Carolrhoda)

Best Non-fiction:
Mastering Plot Twists: How to Use Suspense, Targeted Storytelling Strategies, and Structure to Captivate Your Readers, by Jane Cleland (Writer’s Digest Books)

Also nominated: Writing the Cozy Mystery, by Nancy J. Cohen (Orange Grove Press); Conan Doyle for the Defense: The True Story of a Sensational British Murder, a Quest for Justice, and the World’s Most Famous Detective Writer, by Margalit Fox (Random House); Agatha Christie: A Mysterious Life, by Laura Thompson (Pegasus Books); and Wicked Women of Ohio, by Jane Ann Turzillo (History Press)

As Classic Msyteries blogger Les Blatt reminds us, “The Agatha Awards are presented to authors who write traditional mysteries, with sex and violence kept off-stage and to a minimum, of the sort written by Agatha Christie and others.”

READ MORE: “Malice Domestic 31 Recap,” by Kristopher Zgorski
(BOLO Books).

Bullet Points: Pre-Cinco de Mayo Edition

Sorry for the recent paucity of posts on this page, and for failing to respond in anything like a timely fashion to e-mail messages, but I’ve been quite busy over the last couple of weeks, helping to open a new independent bookshop in Seattle’s Madison Park neighborhood. I hope that my schedule will settle down soon. In the meantime, though, let me take this opportunity to highlight an assortment of crime fiction-related stories appearing elsewhere on the Web.

• I don’t customarily publish news releases, but this item from the organizers of Bouchercon 2019—which is to be held in Dallas, Texas, from October 31 to November 33—seems worth passing along:

We are concentrating on the history of our first fifty years. If you have and are willing to donate historical programs, bags, buttons, pictures, Anthony Awards, mementos, or other articles for display, please contact Carol Puckett, Bouchercon 2019 Chair and a member of the Bouchercon National History Committee at BCon2019@gmail.com. Note that we are hoping to include some of these articles in an archive that we are planning to establish to continue to honor the history of Bouchercon.

• Among the recipients of this year’s Best of Illinois History Awards, presented late last week by the Illinois State Historical Society, was the non-fiction book Scarface and the Untouchable: Al Capone, Eliot Ness, and the Battle for Chicago, by Max Allan Collins and A. Brad Schwartz (Morrow, 2018). The ISHS credits that book with providing “a new look at an old story. An engaging, well-researched, and informative dual biography of Al Capone and Eliot Ness that may be the best book of this genre to come along in this century. Collins and Schwartz tell a story all Illinoisans know in fragments but few know in its entirety. It is the story of the coming of age of Capone when the most disrespected law of the land—Prohibition—is enacted, told in tandem with the story of Ness, an introspective, timid lawman with a passion for justice. For those who grew up with the Hollywood myths of gangster films, and The Untouchables TV series, this will be the book you remember ...”

• While we’re on the subject of author accolades, yesterday brought word of which books and writers have been nominated for the 2018 Shirley Jackson Awards, honoring “exceptional work in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and dark fantasy.” There are six categories of contenders, so I’m not going to list them all. But here are the rivals for this year’s Best Novel commendation:

— Everything Under, by Daisy Johnson (Jonathan Cape)
— In the Night Wood, by Dale Bailey (John Joseph Adams/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
— Little Eve, by Catriona Ward (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
— Social Creature, by Tara Isabella Burton (Double Day/Raven)
— We Sold Our Souls, by Grady Hendrix (Quirk)

Winners of these awards (for books published in 2018) will be declared on Sunday, July 14, during Readercon 30, set to take place in Quincy, Massachusetts, July 11-14.

• Finally, among the half-dozen shortlisted nominees for this year’s Pushkin House Russian Book Prize is a non-fiction release likely to have drawn the attention of Rap Sheet readers: Ben Macintyre’s dramatic Cold War-era tale, The Spy and the Traitor (Viking).

• It’s hard to believe it is time again for the annual running of the Kentucky Derby. In association with that, Mystery Fanfare’s Janet Rudolph has updated her list of Derby-related mystery fiction.

• How’s this for a bit of irony? People magazine reports that the next role for actress Felicity Huffman, recently implicated in the nationwide college admissions cheating scandal, will find her playing a prosecutor. She’ll portray Manhattan assistant district attorney (and later author) Linda Fairstein in Ava DuVernay’s When They See Us, a Netflix production that People says will focus on the notorious 1989 Central Park Five scandal. (It was the legacy of that brutal rape case, you may recall, which led to the Mystery Writers of America withdrawing Fairstein’s Grand Master Award earlier this year.)

• Comfort TV’s David Hofstede has chosen what he declares are “The 100 Most Memorable Songs Introduced by Classic TV.” There aren’t many crime fiction-related tunes listed, but he does include a “melancholy country ballad” from Charlie’s Angels titled “Trippin’ To the Mornin’” as well as the theme from Moonlighting. Part I of Hofsede’s list can be found here, while Part II is here.

• St. Louis’ Riverfront Times reports on a project by Winnipeg, Canada-based filmmaker Guy Maddin to re-interpret Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 psychological thriller, Vertigo, “not through dialogue or specific actions but through purely visual associations. Drawing heavily on ’70s crime shows, including The Streets of San Francisco and McMillan & Wife, Maddin creates connections to Vertigo by reusing a particular camera angle, a detail in the set decoration or even just the rhythm of an edited sequence. Nearly every aspect of the film—the watered-down colors and sledgehammer editing of TV drama and the sudden, unexpected appearances (and just as sudden disappearances) of Karl Malden, Claude Akins, Meg Ryan and dozens of other familiar faces—flaunts its discontinuity and challenges the viewer to find meaning in the clutter. Yet somehow the themes and spirit of Vertigo creep through, almost eerily.” Until this week, I had never heard of Maddin’s hour-long film, titled The Green Fog, but it apparently debuted at the San Francisco International Film Festival back in 2017. I can only hope to see it sometime. A brief trailer is embedded below.



• In his latest “Getting Away with Murder” column for Shots, Mike Ripley writes about a trio of new novels produced by journalists (including Tom Bradby’s Secret Service), Cuban writer Leonardo Padura’s new Mario Conde story (Grab a Snake by the Tail), a highly irregular book-promotion item (“One has to wonder what sort of idiot promotes his novel by sending out review copies accompanied by a real knife …”), the pending debut of a previously undiscovered Desmond Bagley yarn, and a great deal more.

• And since we’re at the start of a new month, let me remind everyone to take a peek at The Rap Sheet’s wrap-up of fresh spring books, which includes more than 115 tales coming out—on both sides of the Atlantic—between now and June 1.

• For The Writer, thriller scribes Paul Doiron and Lee Child ponder how best to develop “realistic female characters that offer way more than sex appeal.” While this may have seemed like a good idea to Writer editors, the piece has been met with a considerable derogatory blowback. Critic Sarah Weinman complained that it was “presented as if they are saving thrillers from needless chest-thumping,” while others suggested—not unreasonably—that if the magazine wanted to know how to create strong women characters, perhaps it should have asked female authors instead of male ones.

• I already mentioned here the demise, on April 15, of 91-year-old New York author-playwright Warren Adler (The War of the Roses, American Quartet). But now comes blogger-critic Michael Carlson with his own obituary of Adler, prepared for Britain’s Guardian.

• I didn’t know, until reading this piece in Shotsmag Confidential, that Swedish writer David Lagercrantz’s third addition to Stieg Larsson’s Dragon Tattoo series, The Girl Who Lived Twice (due out in August), will also be his last.

• Although I’m not a big podcast follower, I do enjoy the Today I Found Out series, available on YouTube. This last Monday’s installment, for instance, found fast-yakking host Simon Whistler introducing the curious to “10 Detectives More Interesting than Sherlock Holmes,” among his picks being “cowboy detective” Charles Siringo and female Pinkerton operative Kate Warne.

• A trio of CrimeReads stories I have enjoyed recently: Craig Pittman’s profile of Donald J. Sobol, the creator of that literary “‘Sherlock in sneakers,’ boy detective Leroy ‘Encyclopedia’ Brown”; Lisa Levy’s examination of “the hipster mystery, or hipstery”; and Curtis Evans’ look back at poet, essayist, and literary critic T.S. Eliot, “the man who rescued Wilkie Collins from obscurity.”

• And I owe a hearty toast to Dwyer Murphy, the managing editor of CrimeReads, who chose my recent piece about the covers of Ross Macdonald’s The Moving Target as one of the site’s “favorite stories of April.” He writes: “It’s hard to think of a crime author who influenced the aesthetic of modern detective fiction more than Ross Macdonald, so it seems appropriate to undertake a visual history on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of Lew Archer’s first appearance, in The Moving Target. J. Kingston Pierce, expert on all things crime, but especially crime fiction covers, takes on the project in this fantastic survey of Macdonald’s first Archer novel, offering up an engaging mixture of history and critique as he tells the story of one of the century’s most important crime novels, cover-by-cover.”

• The Nick Carter & Carter Brown Blog is currently in the midst of posting a selection of Robert McGinnis paperback covers. Because it can. Because they’re that good.

• The Stiletto Gumshoe applauds the paperback cover artistry of “Cecil Calvert Beall (1892-1970), better known as C.C. Beall.” Among the familiar examples of Beall’s work is his “darkly gorgeous painting” for the 1950 edition of Bruno Fischer’s House of Flesh.”

• Vulture argues that even at age 60 (it was first released in April 1959), Richard Condon’s The Manchurian Candidate remains timely.

• Last month I noted, in my Killer Covers blog, that Britain’s Piccadilly Publishing was reissuing the vintage series of Larry Kent novels in e-book form. It began with just five titles from among the hundreds originally published. But this week, Piccadilly co-founder David Whitehead (aka Ben Bridges) announced on Facebook that an additional five (Go-Go for Broke, Call for a Corpse, Crimson Lady, Terror Below, and The Weirdos) have been scheduled for release by the end of May, all with their original cover art. What’s more, Whitehead says he hopes that paperback versions of these tales will soon become available as well.

• Lee Goldberg has compiled the list of musical numbers he listened to while composing his latest novel, Killer Thriller. These same TV and movie themes could be used as a soundtrack to accompany your reading of that book. But if you’re like me, you might find it difficult to concentrate on the page while listening to, say, Richard Markowitz’s galloping theme for The Wild Wild West.

• I don’t think I had ever before seen a list of which Sherlock Holmes stories were Arthur Conan Doyle’s favorites, but here’s one.

• This trailer for the film Anna, “Luc Besson's latest neo-Eurospy spectacle,” slated to premiere on June 21, has me wanting to view the picture in its action-packed entirety.

• In response to a question about the future of his Ethan Gage historical adventure series, 67-year-old Washington newspaperman-turned-author William Dietrich explained recently on Facebook:

I’m flattered to periodically get inquiries about the next Ethan Gage novel, but I need to update my status (in 2019) to explain that no more books in that series are currently planned.

That wasn’t my original intention. I’d hoped to continue the series through the entire period [of] the Napoleonic Wars, but HarperCollins made a business decision to stop its support because of gradually eroding sales. I followed up with one self-published Ethan, The Trojan Icon, which readers enjoyed. However, I found self-publishing of this and two other books (the young adult novel The Murder of Adam and Eve and the non-fiction Napoleon's Rules) limiting because of the difficulty of getting publicity or shelf display.

So, as I entered my late 60s, I decided to retire! This doesn’t mean I’ve stopped writing—I have several projects that might become completed books someday—but I’m not “working” at being an author as I once was. While my 22 books are well short of the hundreds some authors have turned out (Issac Asimov comes to mind), it’s about 22 more than I expected back when I was starting. The journey has been thrilling.

I still hope to someday have screen adaptations of some of my works, and continue to ponder the peripatetic Ethan Gage. I never say never.

But I’m also enjoying more time in a lovely corner of the world (the San Juan Islands of Washington state) and time to read, write, and travel—especially after a couple health scares. I’m delighted that fans are still reading and I hope new readers will keep discovering Ethan and the other adventures I’ve so enjoyed writing. Happy exploring!

• In a rather wonderful piece for Criminal Element, Susanna Calkins revisits Chicago’s peculiar “Canary Murder” case of 1929.

• From Elizabeth Foxwell’s The Bunburyist: “The Detroit News reported that a lawsuit regarding the sale of Elmore Leonard’s papers to the University of South Carolina had been settled. Christine Leonard, Leonard’s ex-wife, had sued alleging that Leonard’s company, trust, and son had sold the archive in secret (stating that a stipulation in the divorce decree entitled her to a share of the proceeds).”

• Last but not least, since I mentioned Cinco de Mayo in this post’s headline, it’s only right and proper that I should point you to a catalogue of mysteries related to Sunday’s holiday.

Compact But Consequential

With today being May 1, the start of National Short Story Month here in the United States, it’s only logical that the Short Mystery Fiction Society should have taken this occasion to announce the winners of its 2019 Derringer Awards. According to the SMFS, these prizes “recognize outstanding [short] stories published during 2018.” Below are this year’s winners, as well as the other shortlisted tales.

Best Flash Story (up to 1,000 words): “The Bicycle Thief,” by James Blakey (The Norwegian American, September 21, 2018)

Also nominated: “Listen Up,” by Peter DiChellis (Flash Bang Mysteries, Winter 2018); “Sonny the Wonder Beast,” by Nick Kolakowski (Out of the Gutter, September 16, 2018); “Don’t Text and Drive,” by Robert Petyo (Flash Bang Mysteries, Spring 2018); and “A Misunderstanding,” by Travis Richardson (Out of the Gutter, May 27, 2018)

Best Short Story (1,001 to 4,000 words): “Dying in Dokesville,” by Alan Orloff (from Malice Domestic 13: Mystery Most Geographical)

Also nominated: “The Belle Hope,” by Peter DiChellis (from Malice Domestic 13: Mystery Most Geographical, edited by Verena Rose, Rita Owen, and Shawn Reilly Simmons; Wildside Press); “The Crucial Game,” by Janice Law (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, January-February 2018); “If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Murder,” by Josh Pachter (from Malice Domestic 13: Mystery Most Geographical); “The Cabin in the Woods,” by Sylvia Maultash Warsh (from Malice Domestic 13: Mystery Most Geographical)

Best Long Story (4,001 to 8,000 words): “With My Eyes,” by Leslie Budewitz (Suspense Magazine, January/February 2018)

Also nominated: “Mercy Find Me,” by Diana Deverell (from Fiction River: Justice, edited by Kristine Kathryn Rusch; WMG, January 2018); “The Case of the Missing Pot Roast,” by Barb Goffman (from Florida Happens, edited by Greg Herren; Three Rooms Press); “Till Murder Do Us Part,” by Barb Goffman (from Chesapeake Crimes: Fur, Feathers, and Felonies, edited by Donna Andrews, Barb Goffman, and Marcia Talley; Wildside Press); and “The Vanishing Volume,” by Janet Raye Stevens (from Shhhh…Murder!: Cozy Crimes in Libraries, edited by Andrew MacRae; Darkhouse)

Best Novelette (8,001 to 20,000 words): “The Cambodian Curse,” by Gigi Pandian (from The Cambodian Curse & Other Stories, by Gigi Pandian; Henery Press)

Also nominated: “The Adventure of the Manhunting Marshal,” by “Peter Basile,” aka Jim Doherty (from Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective, Volume 11; Airship 27, March 2018); “Three-Star Sushi,” by Barry Lancet (Down & Out: The Magazine, March 2018); “Oil Down,” by Brian Silverman (Mystery Tribune, Winter 2018); and “I’ve Got to Get Me a Gun,” by Vincent Zandri (from The Black Car Business: Vol. 1, edited by Lawrence Kelter; Down & Out Books)

In addition, Michigan author Doug Allyn was given the 2019 Edward D. Hoch Memorial Golden Derringer for Lifetime Achievement, presented annually to “an outstanding living writer of short mysteries.”