Each year I make the same promise to myself — this year I have to attend Thrillerfest, sponsored by the International Thriller Writers conference. And each year, something comes up to prevent me from getting to New York City.

  As I contemplate my travel plans, here are the nominees for the 2010 Thriller Awards. These will be given during Thrillerfest July 7 to 10 in New York City.

All nominees are already winners.

2010 Thriller Awards

Best Hard Cover Novel:
VANISHED by Joseph Finder
LONG LOST by Harlan Coben
FEAR THE WORST by Linwood Barclay
THE NEIGHBOR by Lisa Gardner
THE RENEGADES by T. Jefferson Parker

Best Paperback Original:
SHADOW SEASON by Tom Piccirilli
URGE TO KILL by John Lutz
VENGEANCE ROAD by Rick Mofina
THE COLDEST MILE by Tom Piccirilli
NO MERCY by John Gilstrap

Best First Novel:
FRAGMENT by Warren Fahy
DEAD MEN’S DUST by Matt Hilton
COLLISION OF EVIL by John J. Le Beau
DRACULA: THE UN-DEAD by Dacre Stoker
RUNNING FROM THE DEVIL by Jamie Freveletti

Best Short Story:
THE DESERT HERE AND THE DESERT FAR AWAY by Marcus Sakey
A STAB IN THE HEART by Twist Phelan
AFTERSHOCK & OTHERS by F. Paul Wilson
ICED by Harry Hunsicker
BOLDT’S BROKEN ANGEL by Ridley Pearson

LEFT COAST CRIME

 One day I also plan to attend Left Coast Crime conference. The panels always look interesting and I constantly hear about what fun the conference is.
  Next year, Left Coast is in Santa Fe, one of my favorite cities.
  Meanwhile, here are the winners from the 2010 Left Coast Crime, which was held in Los Angeles: 

  THE LEFTY
 (The Lefty is an award for the most humorous mystery published in a particular year)
 2010 Winner:  GETTING OLD IS A DISASTER by RITA LAKIN

THE BRUCE ALEXANDER MEMORIAL HISTORICAL MYSTERY
(A historical mystery, covering events before 1950)
  2010 Winner:  A TRACE OF SMOKE by REBECCA CANTRELL  

  THE PANIK
(The Panik award given in honor of the late Paul Anik, Chairman of Left Coast Crime 2010 for the best Los Angeles Noir book published in 2009.)
    2010 Winner:  DEATH WAS IN THE PICTURE by LINDA RICHARDS

 LAMBDA AWARDS And since this is the season for awards in the mystery genre, here are the nominees for the Lambda Literary Awards for gay and lesbian novels. Winners will be announced at the 22^nd Annual Awards, May 27 in New York at the School of Visual Arts Theater, 333 W. 23^rd St.   

Lesbian Mystery
Command of Silence, by Paulette Callen (Spinsters Ink)
Death of a Dying Man, by J.M. Redmann (Bold Strokes Books)
From Hell to Breakfast, by Joan Opyr (Blue Feather Books)
The Mirror and the Mask, by Ellen Hart (St. Martin’s/Minotaur)
Toasted, by Josie Gordon (Bella Books)

Gay Mystery
All Lost Things, by Josh Aterovis (P.D. Publishing)
The Killer of Orchids, by Ralph Ashworth (State Street Press)
Murder in the Garden District, by Greg Herren (Alyson Books)
Straight Lies, by Rob Byrnes (Kensington Books)
What We Remember, by Michael Thomas Ford (Kensington Books)

Nominations have been announced for the Edgars, the Agatha, the L.A. Times Book Prize (all of which you can read about on this blog). Anyone attending the Indianapolis Bouchercon probably has already received a nomination ballot.

Left Coast Crime recently announced its winners.

And we – well I — certainly can’t let these winners just take their prize and leave.

 Comments must be made.

First, I want to commend the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association (IMBA) for choosing Sean Chercover’s Trigger City  as the winner of its 2009 Dilys Award.

To be truthful, I am happy for any author who wins this prize.

Independent mystery bookstore owners are the unsung heroes of the genre.

They, more so than chain stores or online sites, know their customers. They are well versed in the genre and keep their customers buying books and coming back for more.

 Every author owes these stores a ton of gratitude. Especially when it seems that there are fewer of these wonderful stores each year.

So back to Sean.

  I interviewed him for Mystery Scene’s Holiday Issue. (That’s the one with Donna Andrews on the cover; No. 107, 2008 if you want to order it.)

 Sean is one of the genre’s up and coming authors. His 2007 debut Big City, Bad Blood has won the Shamus and the Gumshoe Award, was nominated for a slew of other awards and made several best of the year lists. (That includes the annual list I do for the Sun-Sentinel.)

Trigger City was named a Killer Book by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association, an alternate selection by several book clubs and earned just as many positive reviews as his first. It also made several best of the year lists, again, mine included.

  During our interview, Sean discussed the private eye novel.

Here is an excerpt from the article that ran in Mystery Scene:

  “In his novels, Chercover took the hard-boiled route with a nod to the old-fashioned gumshoe but with a modern spin. Series character Ray Dudgeon is a disillusioned newspaper reporter-turned-private detective. Nearing 40, Dudgeon keeps a gun and a bottle in his bottom drawer with his name etched in gold on the frosted window outside his seedy office.
  “Ray is cynical, but he also is a wounded idealist. He wants officials to be honest but he’s not surprised when they turn out to be corrupt,” said Chercover.
   While Chercover pays homage to the clichéd p.i., the author avoids stereotypes by slowing revealing Dudgeon’s backstory that includes his mother’s suicide.
 “The p.i. novels I love are those in which each of the characters all seem very different from each other. Ray isn’t as self-destructive as [Ken Bruen’s] Jack Taylor. Ray doesn’t understand himself as well as [Lawrence Block’s] Scudder does himself but it took a long time for Scudder to get where he is. Characters who change and grow are appealing. I wanted my character to be affected by the changes he goes through.”

 Sean has good company with the Dilys Award.

Previous winners include William Kent Kruger, Thunder Bay; Louise Penny, Still Life; Colin Cotterill, Thirty-Three Teeth; Jeffrey Lindsay, Darkly Dreaming Dexter;  Jasper Fforde, Lost in a Good Book; Julia Spencer-Fleming, In the Bleak Midwinter; Dennis Lehane, Mystic River; Val McDermid, A Place of Execution; Robert Crais, L.A. Requiem.

THE BRUCE ALEXANDER MEMORIAL HISTORICAL MYSTERY
A historical mystery, covering events before 1950

**Kelli Stanley: Nox Dormienda, A Long Night For Sleeping (Five Star)

Nominees:

Tasha Alexander: A Fatal Waltz (HarperCollins)
Rhys Bowen: A Royal Pain (Berkley Prime Crime)
Rhys Bowen: Tell Me Pretty Maiden (St. Martin’s)
Laurie R. King: Touchstone (Bantam)

HAWAII FIVE-O

Beset law enforcement, police procedural

**Neil S. Plakcy: Mahu Fire (Alyson Books)

Nominees:

Baron Birtcher: Angels Fall (Iota)
Kate Flora: The Angel of Knowlton Park (Five Star)
Asa Larsson: The Black Path (Delta)
G.M. Malliet: Death of a Cozy Writer (Midnight Ink)

Karin Slaughter: Fractured (Delacorte)

THE LEFTY

Best humorous mystery

**Tim Maleeny: Greasing the Pinata (Poisoned Pen Press)

Nominees:

Donna Andrews: Six Geese a-Slaying (St. Martin’s)
Jeffrey Cohen: It Happened One Knife (Berkley Prime Crime)
Sue Ann Jaffarian: Thugs and Kisses (Midnight Ink)
N.M. Kelby: Murder at the Bad Girl’s Bar and Grill (Shaye Areheart Books/Random House Group)
Rita Lakin: Getting Old is To Die For (Dell/Bantam)

Brian and I are in Hawaii at Left Coast Crime. The awards banquet just ended and we’re posting the winners.

First up — because the extremely efficient Independent Mystery Booksellers Association had a press release prepared –  the Dilys Award. Congrats Sean!

Best,

Kate

Sean Chercover’s Trigger City  Wins the IMBA 2009 Dilys Award

Honolulu, Hawaii – March 11, 2009 – The Independent Mystery Booksellers Association (IMBA) announced Sean Chercover’s Trigger City as the winner of the annual Dilys award for 2009.  The announcement was made by member store owner, Barbara Peters, on Wednesday afternoon at an awards presentation at the Left Coast Crime 2009 conference in Honolulu, Hawaii.  Mr. Chercover will receive a specially-made sculpture in recognition of this achievement.

Mr. Chercover has been a favorite recommendation of the mystery booksellers association since the arrival of his first novel, Big City, Bad Blood.   Mr. Chercover, though not present at Left Coast Crime, when contacted said “To know that you enjoyed selling Trigger City is an incredible honor.  I am completely floored by your generosity, and I only wish I could be there in person.  You have made me very happy.”

The Dilys Award has been given annually since 1993 by the IMBA to the mystery titles of the year which the member booksellers have most enjoyed selling.  The Dilys Award is named in honor of Dilys Winn, the founder of the first specialty bookseller of mystery books in the United States.  Previous winners of the Dilys Award include William Kent Krueger, Louise Penny, Colin Cotterill and Julia Spencer-Fleming.

The Independent Mystery Booksellers Association is comprised of a network of independently owned retail bookstores across North America and the United Kingdom, devoted to the sale of mystery books.