Ms. Allen, Meet Mr. Hammett

Atlanta, Georgia, author Samantha Jayne Allen’s first novel, Pay Dirt Road (Minotaur), has been announced as the winner of the 2023 Hammett Award. The Hammett is presented annually by the International Association of Crime Writers, North American Branch to a book, originally published in the English language in either the United States or Canada, “that best represents the conception of literary excellence in crime writing.”

Pay Dirt Road introduced Annie McIntyre, a young private investigator working in an unpromising Texas town. Allen’s author page on the Macmillan Publishers Web site describes the character thusly:

Annie McIntyre never expected she’d return to her hometown after college, nor be drawn into the family business: a private investigation firm founded by her grandfather and his former deputy in the sheriff’s department. Annie finds a knack for crime-solving while searching the winding back roads and neon lit honky-tonks of small-town Texas, uncovering corruption and long held secrets that keep complicating her relationship to the place that holds such a tight grip on her heart.

Prior to its 2022 publication, this novel picked up the 2019 Tony Hillerman Prize for best first mystery set in the American Southwest. Allen has since gone on to pen the Annie McIntyre tale Hard Rain (2023). A third installment in the series, Next of Kin, is due out from Minotaur Books in April 2024.

Competing against Pay Dirt Road for the 2023 Hammett Prize were Copperhead Road, by Brad Smith (At Bay Press); Gangland, by Chuck Hogan (Grand Central); Don’t Know Tough, by Eli Cranor (Soho Crime); and What Happened to the Bennetts, by Lisa Scottoline (Putnam).

We still await word on where and when this year’s Hammett Prize will be presented to author Allen.