Deep IMPAC

The longlist--emphasis on the long--of contenders for this year’s International IMPAC Dublin Literary Prize was released yesterday. And although most of the attention given to that rundown of 162 titles has been concentrated around such best-sellers as Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin, Colm Tóibín’s Brooklyn, and (how the hell did this make it onto the same list?) Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol, there are several books in the running for the $160,000-plus prize that can be properly classified as crime fiction or thrillers:

• Red Bones, by Ann Cleeves

• Alone in the Crowd, by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza

• Breaking Lorca, by Giles Blunt

• Ordinary Thunderstorms, by William Boyd

This is not to suggest that any of these books has a better chance than others to win. But it’s nice to know that the genre is at least represented.