I don’t play a detective on TV or in book trailers, but I think Lacey #2 might be an impostor.

Here’s a brain teaser for you: in the far-flung future, a human detective teams up withan android to solve a homicide. Is this a mystery novel, or is it science fiction? The great thing about Isaac Asimov’s The Caves of Steel (1954) is, no matter how many times you read it, and no matter how many angles you look at it from, it’s very difficult to assign it definitively to either genre.

Same goes for Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon (2002), which is also set in the future, although Morgan doesn’t fling it quite as far as Asimov did. The book’s got all the trappings of SF—marvelous new technologies, new societies, and so forth—but at its heart it’s a noir. A man is hired to solve a murder, gets mixed up with the victim’s seductive wife, and risks his own life in some of the darkest, seediest corners of the city. Is the book SF or is it a mystery?

Tell you what: Why don’t you check out this list of SF mysteries and let me know which genre you’d put them in, if you had to choose only one. And let me know which titles you’d add to the list, too.

Once you figure this whole thing out, let’s do something for that ring around the collar.

Samson is, of course, the British SIS operative who starred in three related trilogies: Berlin Game (1983), Mexico Set  (’84), London Match (’85); Spy Hook (’88), Spy Line (’89), Spy Sinker (’90); and Faith (’94), Hope (’95) and Charity (’96).

This won’t be the first small-screen appearance for Bernard; Ian Holm played him, and pretty well too if memory serves, in the 1988 miniseries based on the Game, Set and Match trilogy.

Who would you like to see play him this time?

“Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Burt Bacharach.”

When Austin Powers (Mike Myers) looks directly at the audience and introduces the famed composer in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, you know this isn’t your typical mystery spoof. As silly as it is, it’s also sly and daring: as much as it’s done on television these days, you don’t find characters in lot of movies breaking the fourth wall and talking directly to the viewer. Could easily have backfired and pulled us right out of the story.

There are a lot of mystery spoofs: literary spoofs, television shows, movies. Many of them aren’t so good, but there are some very clever ones, like the Austin Powers movies or Jasper Fforde’s The Big Over Easy. Check out my little ditty on the subject and let me know what you think. Have I left out any of your favorites?

BEST NOVEL

Live by Night, by Dennis Lehane

BEST FIRST NOVEL BY AN AMERICAN AUTHOR

The Expats, by Chris Pavone

BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL

The Last Policeman, by Ben H. Winters

BEST FACT CRIME

Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China, by Paul French

BEST CRITICAL/BIOGRAPHICAL

The Scientific Sherlock Holmes: Cracking the Case with Science and Forensics, by James O’Brien

BEST SHORT STORY

“The Unremarkable Heart” – Mystery Writers of America Presents: Vengeance, by Karin Slaughter

BEST JUVENILE

The Quick Fix, by Jack D. Ferraiolo

BEST YOUNG ADULT

Code Name Verity, by Elizabeth Wein

Check back all month for more!

As everyone in the law-abiding world knows, May is the time when we celebrate the publication of Booklist‘s annual Mystery Showcase issue with a little celebration we like to call Mystery Month. We kicked things off yesterday with a webinar, “Thrilling Mysteries: Can’t Miss Crime Fiction for Spring,” and, as of this morning, our May 1 print issue is now live on Booklist Online.

Crime-fiction fans are in for a feast. We’re sharing some highlights in today’s issue of REaD ALERT, and magazine subscribers who have set up an online profile will enjoy free and unfettered access to nearly 150 reviews and a dozen awesome features, including “The Year’s Best Crime Novels,” “A Hard-Boiled Gazetteer to the Best Mystery Settings in the World,” an interview with Lawrence Block, and much, much more.

On Booklist Online, we’ll be complementing all this seriously good stuff with irreverent and entertaining lists every day of the month. To give you a taste, today’s list is “Hard-Boiled Eggheads: 16 Novels by Literary Authors Who Really Want to Play Detective.” We’ll also be publishing extra mystery reviews online and rounding them up in issues of Booklist Online Exclusives mailing May 9 and May 30. And we’ll share the best of the best on May 31 in a special “Best of Mystery Month” issue of REaD ALERT.

Our blogs will be chock-full of crime-fiction posts, too, and we’ll be sharing gems from our mystery vault on Twitter and Facebook. Speaking of Twitter, we’ll be tweeting each and every one of our 38 starred reviews before the end of the month. If you want to make sure you don’t miss a thing, follow me at @Booklist_Keir, and Booklist at @ALA_Booklist, and keep an eye on the hashtag #mysterymonth. I hope you’ll spread the word—and join the conversation.

Are you sure you wanna go down there, little Laszlo?

Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction:

The Mansion of Happiness: A History of Life and Death, by Jill Lepore. Published by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.
From board games, including one called The Mansion of Happiness, to public-library children’s rooms to cryogenics, historian Lepore’s episodic inquiry into our evolving perceptions of life and death is full of surprises, irreverent wit, and arresting perceptions.

Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis, by Timothy Egan. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Popular historian Egan turns the life and work of master photographer Edward Curtis into a gripping and heroic story of one man’s commitment to the three-decade project that ultimately resulted in The North American Indian, a 20-volume collection of words and pictures documenting the Native American peoples of the American West.

Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic, by David Quammen. Published by W. W. Norton & Company.
Science writer Quammen schools readers in the fascinating if alarming facts about zoonotic diseases—animal infections that sicken humans, such as rabies and Ebola. Drawing on the dramatic history of virology, he profiles brave viral sleuths and recounts his own hair-raising field adventures. A vital, in-depth account offered in the hope that knowledge will engender preparedness.

Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction:

Canada, by Richard Ford. Published by Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
“First, I’ll tell you about the robbery our parents committed.” So begins Ford’s riveting novel, an atmospheric and haunting tale of family, folly, exile, and endurance told in the precise and searching voice of Dell Parsons, a young man forced to navigate a harsh world.

The Round House, by Louise Erdrich. Published by Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
In her fourteenth novel, Erdrich writes in the voice of a man reliving the fateful summer of his thirteenth year. Erdrich’s intimacy with her characters energizes this tale of hate crimes and vengeance, her latest immersion in the Ojibwe and white community she has been writing about for more than two decades.

This Is How You Lose Her, by Junot Díaz. Published by Riverhead Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA), Inc.
Fast paced and street-talking tough, Díaz’s stories unveil lives shadowed by prejudice and poverty and bereft of reliable love and trust. These are precarious, unappreciated lives in which intimacy is a lost art, masculinity a parody, and kindness, reason, and hope struggle to survive like seedlings in a war zone.

Biography

The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, by Robert Caro

Current Interest

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, by Katherine Boo

Fiction

Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, by Ben Fountain

Graphic Novel/Comics

Everything Together: Collected Stories, by Sammy Harkham

History

America’s Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the Compromise That Preserved the Union, by Fergus M. Bordewich

Mystery / Thriller

Broken Harbor, by Tana French

Science & Technology

Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History, by Florence Williams

Young Adult Literature

Ask the Passengers, by A.S. King

What, you were expecting the Gone series? Gimme a break. Sure, I suppose the Gone books have sold a gazillion copies and inspired dozens of imitators. But those thousands of riveting, action-packed pages are but trifles when placed alongside the effervescent brilliance of BARF-O-RAMA.

           Grant and his morning cup o’ barf.

Who could forget some of the profound, transcendent volumes? The Great Puke-Off. The Legend of Big Fart. Mucus Mansion. Dog Doo Afternoon. It’s no wonder Grant used a pseudonym to publish them — how could he continue to work in the shadow of such spectacular literary success?

Just who do you think you are?

Oh, I’ll tell you who I am: I’m the author of best YA series without the word “Harry” in the title, that’s who I am. GONE. Six books, 3,000 pages, and now that Light is out and it’s all done you know what the fans are saying? Thank you. That’s what they’re saying. Thank you. And occasionally using the “G” word — genius. Of course I humbly decline to accept that label. Unless they absolutely insist. I insist they insist.

Where do you get off?

Where I get off is a much better question than “how.” I congratulate you on your maturity and delicacy. I get off the 101 at the Tiburon exit. Just look for a shopping center with a Safeway. You can’t miss it. If you do then you’ll have to turn around at Corte Madera and pull a U because there’s only one road to Tiburon. One way in, one way out. I’ve actually war-gamed how to defend the Tiburon peninsula in the event of a zombie outbreak. It can be done with as few as two tanks.

What’s the big idea?

My big idea has been to frighten, disturb, even nauseate young readers. I blame my childhood. It’s rather a long, involved story really, but I’m going to lay it all out right now and I forbid you to cut it in any way. It all began–

What is your problem, man?

I care too much. That’s my problem, I just care so darned much.

Haven’t you done enough?

No. I’ve written or co-authored 150 books, give or take, but it’s never enough. It’s not enough that I succeed, everyone else must fail. By this I mean that all other YA authors must be reduced to penury (which is not a way to get off, despite how it sounds) and I alone must rule the YA world. Ah hah hah hah! Say what? Mad? Did you use the word “Mad”? At least follow it with “Genius.”

Photo ops and tilt-a-whirl FX.

Adult Fiction (tie)
When Captain Flint Was Still A Good Man, By Nick Dybeck

The World of a Few Minutes Ago, by Jack Driscoll

Adult Nonfiction
You Were Never in Chicago, by Neil Steinberg

Biography
Rise to Greatness: Abraham Lincoln and America’s Most Perilous Year, by David Von Drehle

Children’s fiction
Jump Into the Sky, by Shelley Pearsall

Children’s Nonfiction
The Fairy Ring: Or Elsie and Frances Fool the World, by Mary Losure

Poetry
Sailing Through Cassiopeia, by Dan Gerber