Best Novel
Krueger, William Kent -- Blood Hollow (Simon & Schuster/Atria)
Winner of the Loft-McKnight Fiction Award and the Anthony Award for Best First Novel, William Kent Krueger is a wholly original talent among mystery writers, managing to fuse inspired, fluid storytelling with complex, finely textured characterizations. Now, in a briskly paced novel that outstrips even its predecessors in its ability to ratchet up the suspense, Krueger takes us back to Aurora, Minnesota, where the charismatic Cork O'Connor encounters his most baffling case to date. When the corpse of a beautiful high school student is discovered on a hillside four months after her disappearance on New Year's Eve, all evidence points to her boyfriend, local bad boy Solemn Winter Moon. Despite Solemn's self-incriminating decision to go into hiding, Cork O'Connor, Aurora's former sheriff, isn't about to hang the crime on the kid, whom O'Connor is convinced is innocent. In an uphill battle to clear Solemn's name, Cork encounters no shortage of adversity. Some he knows all too well -- small-town bigotry and bureaucracy foremost among them. What Cork isn't prepared for is the emergence of a long-held resentment hailing from his own childhood. And when Solemn reappears, claiming to have seen a vision of Jesus Christ in Blood Hollow, the mystery becomes thornier than Cork could ever have anticipated. And that's when the miracles start happening....
Praised by critics and peers alike for his bold and insightful writing, William Kent Krueger has become a master of mixing brilliant, evocative prose with stunning, nonstop suspense. Readers are sure to be riveted by his latest foray into the darkest corners of a small-town paradise and the detective who is determined to bring it all to light.
Best First Novel
Kozak, Harley Jane -- Dating Dead Men (Doubleday)
Best Non-Fiction
Collins, Max Allan (et al) -- Men's Adventure Magazines (Taschen)
Best Paperback Original
Starr, Jason -- Twisted City (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)
David Miller is in a funk. He recently slumped down the journalistic food chain from the Wall Street Journal to a finance rag called Manhattan Business. The reason for Miller's fall: his unhealthy obsession with his sister only increased after she died of cancer. In addition, the young reporter lost his friends after rejecting their prescient assessment of his girlfriend as "psychotic"--and she's repaid his loyalty by partying the nights away with another man. So when Miller's lost wallet leads to a shakedown by a junkie hooker, he figures it's just another bad episode in the bleak sitcom of his life. But then the hooker's jealous boyfriend dies, potentially putting Miller on the hook for a murder rap. Flames licking at his heels, Miller grimly soldiers through a squalid story that takes on his flattened affect as it navigates the usual sordid twists and dares readers to give a damn. It's the literary equivalent of a Big Mac or Snickers bar: satisfying to devour but immediately forgotten--save for a familiar pang of guilt about straying from healthier fare. Frank Sennett
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Best Short Story
Viets, Elaine -- "Wedding Knife" (Chesapeake Crimes; Quiet Storm)
Best Cover Art
Brooklyn Noir -- Sohrab Habibion; Tim McLoughlin (Akashic)
http://cafe.naver.com/thrillerworld.cafe?p=apply&email=