The Anthony Award, named for mystery reviewer Anthony Boucher, is bestowed every Summer at the Boucheron World Mystery Convention. Eligible books must be published in the U.S. in English and nominated by a Bouchercon registrant. The final ballot is determined by the number of nominations, and registrants then vote on a winner. Winners will be announced on October 1, 2007.
BEST NOVEL
All Mortal Flesh: A Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne Mystery
Julia Spencer-Fleming
Police Chief Russ Van Alstyne’s first encounter with the priest Clare Fergusson was the beginning of an attraction so fierce, so forbidden, that the only thing that could keep them safe from compromising their every belief was distance. He figures his wife kicking him out of their house is nobody’s business but his own until her body is discovered, gruesomely butchered, on the kitchen floor. To the state police, it’s an open-and-shut case of a disaffected husband, silencing first his wife, then the murder investigation he controls. To the townspeople, it’s proof that the whispered gossip about the police chief and the priest was true. To the powers-that-be in the church hierarchy, it’s a chance to control their wayward cleric once and for all.
The Dead Hour: A Paddy Meehan Novel
Denise Mina
Responding to a late night-call, Paddy Meehan arrives at an elegant villa, where a calm blonde with blood running from her mouth answers the door. She has already convinced the police to leave and soon Paddy realizes how—she slips 50 bucks into Paddy’s hands and begs her to keep the incident, whatever it is, out of the press. The next morning Paddy sees the lead news story: The blonde woman has been murdered, and far from the spoiled trophy wife Paddy assumed her to be, the victim turns out to be a prosecution lawyer with a social conscience. Paddy begins to make connections no one else has seen. When she witnesses the body of a suicide victim being pulled from the river shortly afterward, Paddy suspects links between the two deaths and follows her idea to its shocking—and deadly—conclusion.
Kidnapped: An Irene Kelly Novel
Jan Burke
Not long after the Las Piernas Express publishes Irene Kelly’s articles profiling missing children cases, bones turn up at a California estate—and a notorious murder-kidnapping is churned up once more. When artist Richard Fletcher was found bludgeoned in his studio years ago, his stepson was quickly apprehended with the murder weapon and ultimately convicted. But Richard’s young daughter, Jenny, who went missing at the time of the murder, was never found. Now Irene has joined Richard’s son Caleb, a graduate student of forensic anthropology, in the fight to prove his stepbrother’s innocence and solve Jenny’s disappearance. But digging up the tragedies of the sprawling and powerful Fletcher family isabout to set off a murderous chain reaction—and put Irene’s own life in peril.
No Good Deeds: A Tess Monaghan Novel
Laura Lippman
Working as a consultant for a Baltimore newspaper, p.i. Tess Monaghan seems far removed from the unsolved slaying of a young federal prosecutor—until her well-meaning boyfriend, Crow, brings a street kid into their lives, a juvenile con artist who doesn’t even realize he holds an important key to the sensational homicide. But Tess’s ethical decision to protect the boy’s identity no matter what could have dire consequences—especially when one of his friends is murdered in what appears to be a case of mistaken identity.With federal agents threatening her with felony charges—and a killer threatening far worse—Tess couldn’t deliver the kid to investigators even if she wanted to once Crow goes into hiding with his young protégé. So her only recourse is to get to the heart of the sordid and deadly affair while they’re all still free…and still breathing.
The Virgin of Small Plains: A Novel of Suspense
Nancy Pickard
Small Plains, Kansas, January 23, 1987: In the midst of a deadly blizzard, eighteen-year-old Rex Shellenberger makes a shocking discovery: the naked, frozen body of a teenage girl. Even dead, she is the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen. In the two decades following her death, strange miracles visit those who faithfully tend to her grave.Seventeen years later, three families and three friends, their worlds inexorably altered in the course of one night, must confront the ever-unfolding consequences. Wonderfully written and utterly absorbing, The Virgin of Small Plains is about the loss of faith, trust, and innocence…and the possibility of redemption.
BEST FIRST NOVEL
A Field of Darkness: A Novel
Cornelia Read
Madeline Dare isn’t your average detective. Born into a blue-blood family, she followed her heart to marry ruggedly handsome Dean, a farmboy-genius investor. Now Maddie’s stuck in the post-industrial wasteland of Syracuse, New York, while her husband spends weeks on the road. She can handle churning out lightweight features for the local paper—it’s the Dean-less nights in their dingy, WASP-castoff-crammed apartment that Maddie can’t stomach.Obsession trumps angst when a set of long-buried dog tags link her favorite cousin to the scene of a vicious double homicide. Drawn by the desire to clear her cousin’s name, Maddie uncovers a startling web of intrigue and family secrets that could prove even more deadly.
The Harrowing: A Ghost Story
Alexandra Sokoloff
FBaird College’s Mendenhall echoes with the footsteps of the last home-bound students heading off for Thanksgiving break, and Robin Stone swears she can feel the creepy, hundred-year-old residence hall breathe a sigh of relief for its long-awaited solitude. Robin and four other students are isolated, unlikely companions. They soon become aware of a sixth presence disturbing the ominous silence that pervades the building. Are they the victims of a simple college prank taken way too far, or is the unusual energy evidence of something genuine—and intent on using the five students for its own terrifying ends? They have three long days and dark nights before the rest of the world returns to find out what’s become of them. But for now it’s just the darkness keeping company with five students nobody wants and no one will miss.
Holmes on the Range: A Mystery
Steve Hockensmith
1893 is a tough year in Montana, and any job is a good job. When Big Red and Old Red Amlingmeyer sign on as ranch hands at the secretive Bar-VR cattle spread, they’re not expecting much more than hard work, bad pay, and a comfortable campfire around which they can enjoy their favorite pastime: scouring Harper’s Weekly for stories about the famous Sherlock Holmes. When another ranch hand turns up in an outhouse with a bullet in his brain, Old Red sees the perfect opportunity to put his Holmes-inspired detective talents to work and solve the case. Big Red, like it or not (and mostly he does not), is along for the wild ride in this clever, compelling, and completely one-of-a-kind mystery.
The King of Lies: A Novel
John Hart
John Hart creates a literary thriller that is as suspenseful as it is poignant, a riveting murder mystery layered beneath the southern drawl of a humble North Carolina lawyer. When Work Pickens finds his father murdered, the investigation pushes a repressed family history to the surface and he sees his own carefully constructed façade begin to crack.Work’s troubled sister, her combative girlfriend, his gold digging socialite wife, and an unrequited lifelong love join a cast of small town characters that create no shortage of drama in this extraordinary, fast-paced suspense novel.
Still Life: An Inspector Gamache Mystery
Louise Penny
Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Surêté du Québec and his team of investigators are called in to the scene of a suspicious death in a rural village south of Montreal. Jane Neal, a local fixture in the tiny hamlet of Three Pines, just north of the U.S. border, has been found dead in the woods. The locals are certain it’s a tragic hunting accident and nothing more, but Gamache smells something foul in these remote woods, and is soon certain that Jane Neal died at the hands of someone much more sinister than a careless bowhunter.
Return to see who wins on October 1!
