News: June 2010 Archives

During a gala banquet and celebration held on Saturday, July 10 at the Grand Hyatt in New York City, the International Thriller Writers announced the winners of the 2010 Thriller Awards.

They are:

Best Hard Cover Novel:
THE NEIGHBOR, Lisa Gardner

Best Paperback Original Novel:
THE COLDEST MILE, Tom Piccirilli

Best First Novel:
RUNNING FROM THE DEVIL, Jamie Freveletti

Best Short Story:
A STAB IN THE HEART, Twist Phelan

Also receiving special recognition during the ThrillerFest V Awards Banquet:

Ken Follett, ThrillerMaster
in recognition of his legendary career and outstanding contributions to the thriller genre

Mark Bowden, True Thriller Award

Linda Fairstein, Silver Bullet Award

US Airways, Silver Bullet Award (Corporate)

The board of directors and members of the International Thriller Writers wish to congratulates all the winners and nominees of the 2010 Thriller Awards.

The Macavity Award is named for the "mystery cat" of T.S. Eliot (Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats). Each year the members of Mystery Readers International nominate and vote for their favorite mysteries in four categories. The 2010 nominees are:

Best Novel

Bury Me Deep by Megan Abbott (Simon & Schuster)
Tower by Ken Bruen and Reed Farrel Coleman (Busted Flush Press)
Necessary as Blood by Deborah Crombie (Wm. Morrow)
Nemesis by Jo Nesbo, translated by Don Bartlett (HarperCollins)
The Brutal Telling by Louise Penny (Minotaur)
The Shanghai Moon by S.J. Rozan (Minotaur)

Best First Novel

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley (Delacorte)
Running from the Devil by Jamie Freveletti (Wm. Morrow)
A Bad Day for Sorry by Sophie Littlefield (Minotaur)
The Ghosts of Belfast by Stuart Neville (Soho Crime)
A Beautiful Place to Die by Malla Nunn (Picador)

Best Nonfiction

L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America's Most Seductive City by John Buntin (Random House: Harmony Books)
Talking about Detective Fiction by P.D. James (Alfred A. Knopf) Rogue Males: Conversations & Confrontations About the Writing Life by Craig McDonald (Bleak House Books)
The Line Up: The World's Greatest Crime Writers Tell the Inside Story of Their Greatest Detectives, edited by Otto Penzler (Little, Brown & Co)
Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art by Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo (Penguin Press)
Dame Agatha's Shorts: An Agatha Christie Short Story Companion by Elena Santangelo (Bella Rosa Books)

Sue Feder Historical

A Trace of Smoke by Rebecca Cantrell (Forge)
In the Shadow of Gotham by Stefanie Pintoff (Minotaur)
A Duty to the Dead by Charles Todd (Wm. Morrow)
Serpent in the Thorns by Jeri Westerson (Minotaur)
Among the Mad by Jacqueline Winspear (Henry Holt)

Best Short Story

"Last Fair Deal Gone Down" by Ace Atkins in Crossroad Blues (Busted Flush Press)
"Femme Sole" by Dana Cameron in Boston Noir (Akashic Books)
"Digby, Attorney at Law" by Jim Fusilli, (AHMM, May 2009)
"Your Turn" by Carolyn Hart in Two of the Deadliest (Harper)
"On the House" by Hank Phillippi Ryan in Quarry: Crime Stories by New England Writers (Level Best Books)
"The Desert Here and the Desert Far Away" by Marcus Sakey in Thriller 2: Stories You Just Can't Put Down (Mira)
"Amapola" by Luis Alberto Urrea in Phoenix Noir (Akashic Books)

Bestselling crime and thriller novelist Peter James's, new Roy Grace novel, Dead Like You has gone straight to No. 1 in the UK Sunday Times bestseller list on its first week of publication.  In a double celebration this week, Peter James's The Perfect Murder, the winner of last week's Quick Reads Award, is this week at No. 2 in the iBooks chart.

Geoff Duffield, Group Sales & Marketing Director, Pan Macmillan, said: "In Roy Grace, Peter has created one the great characters of crime fiction. Peter is probably the most connected author I've ever worked with, and there'll be many people in the media, retail and across the industry that will be totally thrilled for him."

Dead Like You  is the sixth in the Roy Grace series, which follows the investigations of Detective Superintendent Grace.  The books are all set in the buzzing city of Brighton, with Dead Like You  set in The Metropole Hotel.  After a heady New Year's Eve ball, a woman is brutally raped as she returns to her room.  A week later, another woman is attacked. Both victims' shoes are taken by the offender and Detective Superintendent Grace soon realises that these new cases bear remarkable similarities to an unsolved series of crimes in the city back in 1997. The perpetrator had been dubbed 'Shoe Man' and was believed to have raped five women before murdering his sixth victim and vanishing.  Could this be a copycat, or has Shoe Man resurfaced?

Peter James based Dead Like You on a real-life case that became known as 'The Rotherham Shoe Man'.   Between 1983-1986 over twenty women reported that they had been violently raped and their shoes taken.  It turned out that the rapist was a 49 year old man, a pillar of the community, happily married with a good job and two children. When investigated, police found 100 pairs of women's high quality shoes in his basement.  He is now serving a life sentence.

You can read more about the novel and Peter's other books on his website.