I was reading Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind when I discovered that I’d missed the announcement of the Shamus nominees. And here they are:

2007 SHAMUS AWARDS - NOMINEES

(For works published in 2006.)

Best P.I. Novel

The Dramatist, by Ken Bruen (St. Martin’s/Minotaur)
The Darkest Place, by Daniel Judson (St. Martin’s/Minotaur)
The Do-Re-Me, by Ken Kuhlken (Poisoned Pen)
Vanishing Point, by Marcia Muller (Mysterious)
Days of Rage, by Kris Nelscott (St. Martin’s/Minotaur)

Best Paperback Original

Hallowed Ground, by Lori G. Armstrong (Julie Collins)
The Prop, by Pete Hautman (Simon & Schuster)
An Unquiet Grave, by P.J. Parrish (Pinnacle)
The Uncomfortable Dead, by Paco Ignacio Taibo II and Subcomandante Marcos (Akashic)
Crooked, by Brian M. Wiprud (Dell)

Best First Novel

Lost Angel, by Mike Doogan (Putnam)
A Safe Place for Dying, by Jack Fredrickson (St. Martin’s/Minotaur)
Holmes on the Range, by Steve Hockensmith (St. Martin’s/Minotaur)
The Wrong Kind of Blood, by Declan Hughes (Morrow)
18 Seconds, by George D. Shuman  (Simon & Schuster)

Best Short Story

"Sudden Stop," by Mitch Alderman (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, November 2006)
“The Heart Has Reasons,” by O’Neil De Noux (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, September 2006)
"Square One," by Loren D. Estleman (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, November 2006)
"Devil’s Brew," by Bill Pronzini (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, December 2006)
“Smoke Got In My Eyes,” by Bruce Rubenstein (Twin Cities Noir, Akashic, 2006)

Interestingly, Booklist only starred one of the Best P.I. Novel nominees: Kris Nelscott’s Days of Rage. It’s always interesting when someone else’s list is so different from one you’d compile. It makes you wonder whether you’re missing something — or whether the other guy is just plain wrong. (We liked the First Novel nominees a lot more.)

The Shamus Awards are given by the Private Eye Writers of America (PWA) and will be presented this year on September 28, 2007, at the PWA banquet in Anchorage, Alaska, at Bouchercon.

Ever since I signed up for the artsJournal newsletter, I’ve been reading more books coverage from Canada. (Confusingly, they spell “out” the same way we do.) In the Globe and Mail (”Books still win“), Rick Groen declares:

I’ve done the math and here’s the bottom line. If you want consistent artistic bang for your buck, skip the movies, forget the theatre and turn off your TV set. Instead, read a book. More specifically, read a novel. More specifically still, read the kind of novel that publishers call "trade fiction."

It’s a good essay, but I was waiting until the very end for a cost-benefit analysis that would consider financial outlay on said artistic commodities against the time spent consuming them. But Groen’s a little more highfalutin than that. Still, I’ve always defended the rising purchase price of books by comparing them to movie ticket prices. Even the fastest readers are likely to get more value from books unless, say, they’re speed readers who bought the latest Ken Bruen in hardcover.

(I’m not saying anything about the quality of Bruen here: his books are short and there’s a generous amount of white space on the page.)

The second annual Thriller Awards have been announced. The winners?

Best Novel
Killer Instinct, by Joseph Finder (St. Martin’s)

Best First Novel
Mr. Clarinet, by Nick Stone (HarperCollins)

Best Paperback Original
An Unquiet Grave, by P.J. Parrish (Pinnacle)

(I left out the screenplays — we’re a book site.)

The other nominees?

Best Novel
False Impression, by Jeffrey Archer (St. Martin’s)
Cold Kill, by Stephen Leather (Hodder & Stoughton)
The Messenger, by Daniel Silva (Putnam)
Beautiful Lies, by Lisa Unger (Crown/Shaye Areheart)

Best First Novel
Shadow of Death, by Patricia Gussin (Oceanview)
Switchback, by Matthew Klein (Orion)
A Thousand Suns, by Alex Scarrow (Orion)
18 Seconds, by George D. Shuman (Simon & Schuster)

Best Paperback Original
Skeleton Coast, by Clive Cussler with Jack DuBrul (Berkley)
The Deep Blue Alibi, by Paul Levine (Bantam) 
Headstone City, by Tom Piccirilli (Bantam/Spectra)
Mortal Faults, by Michael Prescott (Onyx)

Just FYI, Booklist doesn’t review too many paperback originals (that’s changing gradually, but because our core audience is librarians we focus on hardcovers) — hence the paucity of links. And first novelists have to fight it out with a bazillion books by people we’ve heard of already.

The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps, edited by Otto Penzler (Vintage), landed on my desk last Friday. And when they say “big,” they’re not kidding. At over 1,000 pages, this sucker weighs in at 3 lbs., 15oz. There are dogs smaller than that. But now I’m set for summer reading, anyway. Wish I could find a link to the cover art — or wish I had my camera with me at work. It’s a good one.

A quick link before I go. In the Los Angeles Times (”Mystery writer John Shannon prowls L.A.’s dark streets“), Josh Getlin does a nice profile of mystery writer John Shannon. (Oh, wait, the headline explained that, didn’t it?)

In John Shannon’s literary world, the neo-noir thriller is more than a lazy weekend read. He charges into Los Angeles neighborhoods where few mystery writers venture, shining a light on the city’s sprawling, multicultural enclaves. And unlike many of his brethren, he has a political chip on his shoulder, telling taut, fast-paced stories about underdogs and big shots through the eyes of an aging, disillusioned ’60s lefty.

The result is a body of work that has earned Shannon rich critical praise. But he may be one of the best L.A. mystery writers you’ve never heard of. After 35 years in the literary trenches, he’s still struggling for a visibility that other writers take for granted.

Shannon’s Jack Liffey series has been reviewed quite warmly in Booklist — lately by yours truly — so if Shannon hasn’t gotten the visibility he deserves, you can’t blame us (as Getlin notes).

At a time when noir fiction is thriving, it’s tempting to believe Shannon’s moment has arrived. Yet in one review after another, critics lament that he has not found his true audience. Booklist, for example, said Shannon’s series, “despite earning more than its share of critical raves, has yet to achieve the popular acclaim it deserves.”

A nice way to take a quick break without leaving your desk: The Cover Art Gallery (found via Edward Champion and Kitabkhana):

I love books. I love the smell of ‘em, the feel of ‘em, and I love the look of ‘em. In fact, I even like to read them, but that’s another story. The main preoccupation of this site is the covers of books. Mainly books I’ve picked up in charity shops, or at carboot sales or jumble sales, even some that I’ve found on the ground. Here you will find hard-boiled detectives, scantily-clad floozies, unlikely space-ships, grotesque aliens, bizarre religious images, beatnik shockers, hell’s angels, skinheads, barbarian heroes, and horrifying monsters… among others.

…and Finnish pulp fiction, natch.

I wish this were a little bit easier to browse, but what’s a few mouse clicks between bad-cover-art aficianados?

The winners of the 2007 Edgar Awards have been announced. Not only that, statuettes have been given to the winners.

Best Novel

The Janissary Tree, by Jason Goodwin (Farrar)

Best First Novel by an American Author

The Faithful Spy, by Alex Berenson (Random)

Best Paperback Original

Snakeskin Shamisen, by Naomi Hirahara (Bantam/Delta)

Best Fact Crime

Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer, by James L. Swanson (Morrow)

Best Critical/Biographical

The Science of Sherlock Holmes: From Baskerville Hall to the Valley of Fear, by E. J. Wagner (Wiley)

Best Short Story

“The Home Front,” from Death Do Us Part, by Charles Ardai (Little, Brown)

Best Juvenile

Room One: A Mystery or Two, by Andrew Clements (Simon & Schuster)

Best Young Adult

Buried, by Robin Merrow MacCready (Dutton)

Best Play

Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure, by Steven Dietz (Arizona Theatre Company)

Best Television Episode Teleplay

Life on Mars, Episode 1, by Matthew Graham (BBC America)

Best Television Feature/Mini-Series Teleplay

The Wire, Season 4, by Ed Burns, Kia Corthron, Dennis Lehane, David Mills, Eric Overmyer, George Pelecanos, Richard Price, David Simon & William F. Zorzi (Home Box Office)

Best Motion Picture Screenplay

The Departed, by William Monahan (Warner Bros.)

And Stephen King, natch, was inducted as a Grand Master. Publishers Weekly (”Edgar Salutes the King,” by Dick Donahue) has the, ahem, “deets.”

My only quibble? I was rooting for Patrick Neate’s City of Tiny Lights in the Paperback Original category. But, ahem, “anywho,” wish I’d been there.

It’s been an interesting few of weeks of book reviewing. First, I did a bunch of stuff for the May 1 Mystery Gazetteer: The Museum of Dr. Moses, by Joyce Carol Oates (Harcourt); Mr. Dixon Disappears, by Ian Sansom (Harper); The Follower, by Jason Starr (St. Martin’s); Chain of Evidence, by Gary Disher (Soho), and three freshly reprinted novels by David Goodis. The Oates was awfully good, the Sansom a bit of a letdown, the Starr was hard to finish, and the Disher was hard to put down. The Goodis books, which I incorporated into a feature called “The Dark World of David Goodis,” were a treat.

Then, I read Kurt Wenzel’s Exposure (Little, Brown), which, although it has trace elements of crime fiction–think of a private dick in a Philip K. Dick novel–has more in common with Chuck Palahniuk, Michael Tolkin, and J. G. Ballard. Actually, it had so many elements in it that it was one of the hardest reviews I’ve written. All I needed was twice as many words as we’re usually allowed (175) and it would have been a breeze. Very imaginative, very fun, but ultimately a little bit lightweight.

Then I read Maradona (Skyhorse, dist. by Sterling), the as-told-to autobiography of soccer’s most exciting and most mercurial star. If you think sports biographies are mostly full of cliches and platitudes about good sportsmanship, trust me, this one ain’t. This is more like getting cornered in a bar by a cokehead. But despite that analogy, I liked it a lot.

And now I’m reading Deirdre McNamer’s Red Rover (Viking), a poetic, layered work, half historical fiction, set in Montana. I usually hate comparing books to movies, but in the spirit of the Michael Tolkin reference above, I’m going to go ahead and say that Red Rover is Altmanesque. I’m torn between loving the beauty of the writing and longing for a bit more linear plotting, but it’s really a fine book. If you like impressionism and Ivan Doig, you’ll probably like this, too.

Next up? Robert Walser’s The Assistant (New Directions), first published in 1908 and now available in English for the very first time.

In his Hard Case Crime newsletter, Charles Ardai writes that Donald Hamilton, author of the Matt Helm series, is dead.

In the last decade of his life, Don moved back to Sweden, where he’d been born, and lived there with his son, Gordon.  He died peacefully, in his sleep, this past November.  Gordon kept the fact of his death private until today, when he confirmed it in a phone conversation with me.

We’ve lost a number of giants of the mystery field over the past few years — Mickey Spillane, Ed McBain, and Richard S. Prather, among others — and Donald Hamilton is very much of that caliber.  He sold more than 20 million books during his lifetime.  But unlike Spillane, McBain and Prather, all of whom were widely remembered at the time of their death, Don’s passing has sadly gone unremarked.

Back in 2002, Matt Helm fan Frank Sennett wrote a piece for Booklist called The Death of Matt Helm? examining the fate of the final, unpublished Helm book. It’s also a great overview for those unfamiliar with Hamilton.

Charles is right — we’ve lost a lot of the great ones lately.

The culprit? A self-published author. Who claims he’s a lawyer. From Publishers Weekly (”Mystery Bookstores Solve Scam,” by Kevin Howell):

Dickey swallowed the feeling of being duped and launched a warning on the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association listserv, saying, “I hate like hell committing my buffoonery to the world-at-large, but if it stops someone else from making my mistake, good. If it can expose the mean-spirited jackasses behind this scam, all the better.”

I like this story, but it would be even better if it ended with a shootout that takes place at the top of an under-construction skyscraper.