Till the Barry End

And now it begins, the announcements of annual award recipients coming from this year’s Bouchercon, being held in Anchorage. First up: the Barry Awards, presented jointly by Mystery News and Deadly Pleasures magazines. The winners are:

Best Novel: The Night Gardener, by George Pelecanos (Little, Brown)

Also nominated: White Shadow, by Ace Atkins (Putnam); Oh Danny Boy, by Rhys Bowen (St. Martin’s Minotaur); The Last Assassin, by Barry Eisler (Putnam); The Prisoner of Guantánamo, by Dan Fesperman (Knopf); and City of Shadows, by Ariana Franklin (Morrow)

Best First Novel: Still Life, by Louise Penny (St. Martin’s Minotaur)

Also nominated: The Faithful Spy, by Alex Berenson (Random House); Sharp Objects, by Gillian Flynn (Shaye Areheart Books); The Berlin Conspiracy, by Tom Gabbay (Morrow); King of Lies, by John Hart (St. Martin’s Minotaur); and A Field of Darkness, by Cornelia Read (Mysterious Press)

Best British Novel: Priest, by Ken Bruen (Bantam Press)

Also nominated: Dying Light, by Stuart MacBride (HarperCollins); Sovereign, by C.J. Sansom (Macmillan); The Case of the Missing Books, by Ian Sansom (Fourth Estate); Mr. Clarinet, by Nick Stone (Michael Joseph Ltd./Penguin); and Red Sky Lament, by Edward Wright (Orion)

Best Thriller: The Messenger, by Daniel Silva (Putnam)

Also nominated: Killer Instinct, by Joseph Finder (St. Martin’s Press); The Foreign Correspondent, by Alan Furst (Random House); Relentless, by Simon Kernick (Bantam Press); Cold Kill, by Stephen Leather (Hodder & Stoughton); and Kill Me, by Stephen White (Dutton)

Best Paperback Original: The Cleanup, by Sean Doolittle (Dell)

Also nominated: Bust, by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr (Hard Case Crime); The Last Quarry, by Max Allan Collins (Hard Case Crime); Live Wire, by Jay MacLarty (Pocket); Deadman’s Poker, by Jim Swain (Fawcett); and Crooked, by Brian Wiprud (Dell)

Best Short Story: “The Right Call,” by Brendan DuBois (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine [EQMM], September/October 2006)

Also nominated: “Cain Was Innocent,” by Simon Brett (from Thou Shalt Not Kill, edited by Anne Perry; Carroll & Graf); “Shaping the Ends,” by Judith Cutler (EQMM, May 2006); “A Man of Taste,” by Kate Ellis (EQMM, March/April 2006); “The Flower Girl,” by Paul Halter (from The Night of the Wolf; Wildside Press); and “A Case for Inspector Ghote,” by June Thomson (from The Verdict of Us All, edited by Peter Lovesey; Crippen & Landru)

All good choices, even if only 50 percent of them actually won my vote. But hey, everyone’s taste is different, right?

In addition, the Don Sandstrom Memorial Award for Lifetime Achievement in Mystery Fandom was presented to Beth Fedyn.