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I’m not often in the room when awards are announced, but I was there this time. On Saturday, at the Love Is Murder conference in Chicago, the winners of the Lovey Award received their very substantial (weapons-grade?), green marble columns. Shortly before the banquet, I had picked up a copy of the Best First Novel winner based on a back-cover blurb alone (“This book does for the pot trade what Melville did for whaling”)–but the award win, and Bill Ott’s review, provide even better reasons for the purchase.

Accepting for Best Series, Rhys Bowen, who seems perfectly pleasant, nonetheless offered an inadvertent slight by saying she’d never even heard of the Lovey before winning one. Whoops. Seems like the perfect moment to craft a little more award-winning fiction and say that it’s the culmination of a lifelong dream.

I had a perfectly lovely time.

Best First Novel

Stein, Stoned, by Hal Ackerman

Best Traditional/Amateur Sleuth

Grace Under Pressure, by Julie Hyzy

Best PI/Police Procedural

Hostile Takeovers, by Michael Black

Best Historical

Dangerous to Know, by Tasha Alexander

Best Thriller

Running Dark, by Jamie Freveletti

Best Romantic Suspense

Red, White, and Dead, by Laura Caldwell

Best Series

Royal Spyness, by Rhys Bowen (see Royal Blood, 2010)

Best Short Story

“The Sugar Cure,” by Carolyn Haines (from Delta Blues, 2010)

This entry was posted on Monday, February 7th, 2011 at 11:48 am and is filed under Awards, Crime Fiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.