CWA Dagger Shortlists Announced

The Crime Writers’ Association, in partnership with Specsavers, Cactus TV and ITV3, is pleased to announce the shortlists for the Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards 2009, celebrating the crème de la crème of Crime and Thriller fiction, and including the three remaining CWA Daggers. This follows hard on the news of the groundbreaking TV deal that will see the awards ceremony televised as the culmination of a six-week season of ITV3 crime and drama programming

CWA GOLD DAGGER 2009
for the best crime novel of the year
Kate Atkinson -When Will There Be Good News? (Black Swan)
Mark Billingham - In the Dark (Little, Brown)
Lawrence Block - Hit and Run (Orion)
William Brodrick - A Whispered Name (Little, Brown)
M R Hall - The Coroner (Pan Macmilan)
Gene Kerrigan - Dark Times In The City (Harvill Secker)

CWA JOHN CREASEY 2009
for first books by previously unpublished writers
David Fuller Sweetsmoke (Abacus)
James Green - Bad Catholics (Luath Press)
Rod Madocks - No Way To Say Goodbye (Five Leaves)
Robert Rotenberg - Old City Hall (John Murray)
Johan Theorin - Echoes from The Dead (Doubleday)
Dan Waddell - The Blood Detective (Penguin)

THE CWA IAN FLEMING STEEL DAGGER 2009
for the year's best thriller
Michael Connelly - The Brass Verdict (Orion)
Gillian Flynn - Dark Places (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
John Hart - The Last Child (John Murray)
Charlie Newton - Calumet Cit' (Bantam)
Daniel Silva - Moscow Rules (Michael Joseph)
Olen Steinhauer - The Tourist (HarperCollins)
Andrew Williams - The Interrogator (John Murray)

Hat Tip to Adrian Muller of CrimeFest for the news!

Holidays Can Be Murder: Labor Day II

Only one mystery novel for Labor Day, and I blogged about it last year. Lee Harris' Labor Day Murder. Let me know if I've missed another one out there. On the web: The Labor Day Mysteries by Nicole Williams (short story)

And, two more mysteries to add to my Endless Summer Mystery List:

Dead Days of Summer by Carolyn Hart
Five Days in Summer by Kate Pepper

Have a great holiday weekend, but as this is Labor Day, remember those who are no longer part of the work force. Here's hoping things will turn around.

The Lord God Bird by Russell Hill

It's rare that I finish reading a book in one sitting, and it's even rarer that I need a few weeks before I can write about it.

A few weeks ago I met Russell Hill, the author of The Lord God Bird. Some things are serendipitous, and my meeting Russell Hill was one of those things. At the urging of his publisher Jack Estes of Pleasure Boat Studio, he attended one of our literary salons for another author. We got to chatting, and I decided to read his book that very evening. I became so caught up in the book that I couldn't put it down. It's not a long book, even so I was savoring every word.

The Lord God Bird is a story of obsession, the South and the 1940s, told in a very poetic way. Hill captures the period and the people, but more than that I felt like I was reading a book about another time, a primeval time in the swamps of the South, in the 'Big Woods', with decomposing cypress and slithery creatures, a place where time stood still: a time of The Lord God Bird, the huge ivory-billed woodpecker.

This is a haunting book about obsession. Hill paints a very vivid picture of the South, and he peoples this setting with strong characters that will reverberate within you long after you finish.

Read The Lord God Bird. It's one of my favorites of the year. I look forward to reading more books by Russell Hill.

I wrote awhile ago about swamps and orchids and The Ghost Orchid, an orchid that seemed to be extinct has now surfaced (or at least can be seen) in the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary. Many novels and non-fiction have been written about the obsession of finding this orchid.

Is the Lord God Bird really extinct? Have humans developed and encroached so much on the natural habitat that they are no longer there? Two years ago Sixty Minutes had a segment on the Lord God Bird when two bird watchers reported seeing one. The Ivory-billed woodpecker was presumed extinct and had not been seen for over 40 years. No photos--just a 4 second video of a bird in flight, sort of. Other non-fiction books about The Bird: The Race to Save the Lord God Bird by Phil Hoose. It's all a great mystery!

New Zealand Crime/Thriller Contest

Craig Sisterson, Sub Editor & Staff Writer for NZLawyer Magazine sent news of a Crime Watch Giveaway: win a New Zealand Crime or Thriller Novel. As the introduction states, New Zealand crime and fiction novels are hard to find outside Australasia. Few Kiwi authors are published in Europe, and even less in the U.S. Crime Watch to the rescue! So Crime Watch has set up a contest. The winner can choose any Kiwi crime novel currently in print (possibly signed).

How do you win? It's easy, go to the Crime Watch Giveaway page and make a comment on the post that includes: your name and location (not address), a small review of your favorite Kiwi crime/thriller novel (title, author, why you like it OR if you've never read any Kiwi crime fiction, write a short comment on why you'd like to give Kiwi crime fiction a go 3) number of Kiwi authors you've read (alternate choice here, too) and 4) the title and author of the Kiwi crime/thriller book you would like. Winners will be chosen at random.

This contest is great, but what's really terrific is that if you go to this site, you'll be introduced to a whole lot of writers and titles you might have missed otherwise. I'm adding Crime Watch to my RSS feed.

Interested in more info on Murder Down Under? Mystery Readers Journal still has copies of our Murder Down Under issue. To order, go here and scroll down to Volume 20:4.

Fall Reading List: Mystery Readers NorCal Berkeley

My Mystery Reading Group has been meeting every Tuesday night from September through June for more than 30 years. We're a dedicated group. We read a book a week, and usually we have assignments for about 10 weeks at a time. Sometimes we have themes such as Art Mysteries or Thrillers or Award Nominees. Sometimes I just put together a list of good books or controversial books. Let's face it, the reason we have so many different types of mysteries is that people like different kinds of books.

Recently I saw a great list from Nancy Pearl on NPR entitled Mysteries You Might Have Missed Along the Way. It definitely struck my fancy. We've read and discussed some of the books on the list, so I either chose another by the same author or substituted a different book entirely. We had already agreed to discuss The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo for the first book. Nice variety of contemporary and older mysteries. I've added a few links with websites, interviews and other internet media.

Our reading group meets at my home in the Berkeley Hills (CA). Let me know if you're interested in joining us. The books may change. Check back after the first session.

9/15 The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
9/22 The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley
9/29 The Juror by George Dawes Green
10/6 The Case of the Gilded Fly by Edmund Crispin
10/13 No class
10/20 A Darker Domain by Val McDermid
10/27 Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey
11/10 The Skull Mantra by Eliot Pattison
11/17 Too Close to Home by Linwood Barclay
11/24 The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry

Celia Fremlin: R.I.P.

I was sad to learn today that Celia Fremlin, an Edgar Award winner for The Hours Before Dawn, died June 16, just a few days shy of her 95th birthday. I saw the notice on Sarah Weinman's blog Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind who read about it in Martin Edwards' blog. Her death went relatively unreported until now. Check out Jan Burke's Tribute.

I've used The Hours Before Dawn several times in my classes and in my bookgroup, always to overwhelming positive response. I even gave it to my psychoanalyst/mystery loving father. Found out he read it when it came out--and thought it was a fine mystery.

Fremlin had a way of capturing the reader in a very chilling way. Louise Henderson in this novel is sleep deprived after the birth of her child. She is so tired that she "sees" things that may or may not have happened. I feel that really good books have scenes that stick with you, and this book is filled with them. Positively haunting. Read it! This book is still in print from Academy Chicago.

Obit added in the Guardian in September by Margaret Kettlewell, Fremlin's niece. Go here.