Shamus Award Nominees

The nominees for the Shamus Awards are in! Here they are:

BEST HARDCOVER PI NOVEL
No Mercy, by Lori Armstrong (Touchstone)
The First Rule, by Robert Crais (Putnam)
Voyeur, by Daniel Judson (Minotaur)If the Dead Rise Not, by Philip Kerr (Putnam)
Naked Moon, by Domenic Stansberry (Minotaur)

BEST FIRST PI NOVEL
In Search of Mercy, by Michael Ayoob (Minotaur)
One Man’s Paradise, by Douglas Corleone (Minotaur)
Rogue Island, by Bruce DeSilva (Forge)
Random Violence, by Jassy MacKenzie (Soho)
City of Dragons, by Kelli Stanley (Minotaur)

BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL PI NOVEL
Hostage Zero, by John Gilstrap (Kensington)
Nightshade, by Tom Henighan (Dundurn Press)
Mister X, by John Lutz (Pinnacle)
The Panic Zone, by Rick Mofina (Mira)
Asia Hand, by Christopher G. Moore (Grove/Atlantic)
The Little Death, by P.J. Parrish (Pocket Star)

BEST PI SHORT STORY
“The God of Right and Wrong,” by Steven Gore
(Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, January/February 2010)

“The Lamb Was Sure to Go,” by Gar Anthony Haywood
(Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, November 2010)

“The Girl in the Golden Gown,” by Robert S. Levinson
(Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, March/April 2010)

“Phelan’s First Case.” by Lisa Sandlin
(Lone Star Noir, edited by Bobby Byrd and Johnny Byrd; Akashic Books)

“A Long Time Dead,” by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins
(The Strand Magazine, June-Sept. 2010)


I am especially rooting for Bruce (Hardboiled Collective member), Lori and Max. Good luck!

Hardboiled Collective: Little Elvises (Junior Bender) by Timothy Hallinan

After reading Skin Deep I immediately asked Timothy to join the Hardboiled Collective, the group of hardboiled writers.
Timothy has a new book coming out which is a must-read for all PI fans...

Junior Bender is a San Fernando valley burglar, an unhappily divorced man who still cares for his former wife and adores his 12-year-old daughter, Rina. Junior's a very, very good burglar. Despite plying his trade for most of his late-teen and adult life, he's never been arrested. He also runs a profitable, if dangerous, sideline: he works as a private eye for crooks. When someone does something crooked to a crook, the police are often not an option. The option is Junior.

This moonlighting has not made him popular with some members of the LA underworld, and with the cops also interested in him, Junior lives in a series of motels, in a region that's especially rich in awful motels. The motel of the month is part of each book, in one way or another. (In LITTLE ELVISES, it's Marge 'n Ed's North Pole.)

In LITTLE ELVISES, Junior is forced by a corrupt cop to go to the rescue of an old record producer, a guy who, in the sixties, grabbed handsome boys off of Philadelphia stoops and turned them into little Elvises for six months or a year, until the fans got tired of them. A supermarket-tabloid journalist has been murdered on Hollywood Boulevard and the cops think the music producer did it because -- well, because he was planning to do it. He was even scouting for a hit man, which someone told the cops, but somebody else got to the journalist first. So the story takes Junior into the arena of old-time rock-and-roll, missing persons, the world's oldest still-dangerous gangster, a murderer of young women, and a terrifying if somewhat hapless hit man named Fronts.

Skin Deep (Simeon Grist) by Timothy Hallinan

This was the first Timothy Hallinan novel I read and boy, did I like it. Simeon Grist is a nineties version of Philip Marlowe. I loved his wry, sarcastic voice!
Hired by the men behind actor Toby Vane to keep him out of trouble he ends up in bed with a stripper. Not bad! Toby Vane likes beating up women and a stripper gets murdered. Very bad!
Hallinan paints a great picture of the dark side of Hollywood with exciting, but 'real' characters. The ending is just fantastic! The way Grist deals with the villain in the end seems like something Noah Milano might even shy away from. Inventive and brutal.
This is only one of four reissued Grist novels and I will be sure to read them all.

Hardboiled Collective: Fox Five (Charlie Fox) by Zoe Sharp

In my quest to promote authors of hardboiled stories I've started a group of writers that promote other writers they like. The first our group, The Hardboiled Collective, focuses on is Zoë Sharp and her e-book Fox Five.
If you're a fan of Lee Child, Matt Hilton or love strong women you must read her books!

FOX FIVE is a collection of stories by the highly acclaimed crime
thriller writer, Zoë Sharp. All feature her ex-Special Forces soldier
turned self-defence expert and bodyguard, Charlotte ‘Charlie’ Fox.

In A Bridge Too Far, we meet Charlie before she’s become a professional
in the world of close protection. When she agrees to hang out with the
local Dangerous Sports Club, she has no idea it will soon live up to
its name.

Postcards From Another Country has Charlie guarding the ultra-rich
Dempsey family against attempted assassination – no matter where the
danger lies.

A finalist for the CWA Short Story Dagger, Served Cold puts another
tough woman centre stage – the mysterious Layla, with betrayal in her
past and murder in her heart.

Off Duty finds Charlie taking time away from close protection after
injury. She still finds trouble, even in an out-of-season health spa in
the Catskill Mountains.

And finally, Truth And Lies puts all Charlie’s skills and ingenuity to
the test as she has to single-handedly extract a news team from a
rapidly escalating war zone.

Also included: Excerpt from KILLER INSTINCT: Charlie Fox book one, Meet
Charlie Fox, Meet Zoë Sharp, info on the other books in the Charlie Fox
series.

Praise for Zoë Sharp and Charlie Fox:

‘Ill-tempered, aggressive and borderline psychotic, Fox is also
compassionate, introspective and highly principled: arguably one of the
most enigmatic − and coolest − heroines in contemporary genre fiction.’
Paul Goat Allen, Chicago Tribune

'If you don't like Zoë Sharp there's something wrong with you. Go and
live in a cave and get the hell out of my gene pool! There are few
writers who go right to the top of my TBR pile − Zoë Sharp is one of
them.' Stuart MacBride

'Anyone with a brain wants Charlie Fox for the girl next door. Funny,
compassionate, and with moves that can − and do − kill, Charlie is the
indelible creation of the remarkable Zoë Sharp.’ Gayle Lynds

More comments from the Hardboiled Collective can be found here, here and here and here as well.

Q & A with Jude Hardin

I interviewed Jude Hardin, author of Pocket-47.

Q: What makes Nicholas Colt different from other (unofficial) PIs?
He’s a former rock star and the sole survivor of a plane crash that killed his wife and baby daughter and all the members of his band. That gives him a unique worldview, I think.

Q: How did you come up with the character?
Honestly, I just gave him a name and he sort of evolved from there. He turned out to be a badass with a wry sense of humor and a fat emotional hole.

Q: What's next for you and Colt?
I recently turned the second book in to my agent. I’m sure she’ll have some editorial comments and suggestions and we’ll probably go back and forth on a rewrite or two. Then she’ll start pitching the manuscript around New York.

Q: How do you promote your work?
I've done some guest blogs and some bookstore signings, and I've been active on Kindleboards and Facebook. I've done some giveaways, I frequently leave a link when I comment on other blogs, and I recently posted a guest column for Chuck Sambuchino (one of the editors for Writer's Digest magazine) on his Guide to Literary Agents blog. Pocket-47 received a starred review in Publisher’s Weekly, and I link to that whenever possible as well.

Q: How did you get published?
Pocket-47 started out as a book called The Kill Switch. I landed an agent with it, and he pitched it around New York without success. I did a major overhaul on the plot and the character, and the result was Pocket-47. The same agent tried to sell the new version, but it was 2008 and the economy was collapsing and the market got tighter than ever. I finally decided to go it on my own, and I ended up placing it at a small press.

Q: What are your thoughts on ebooks as a reader AND a writer?
Ebooks are the future of publishing. No doubt about it. I got a Kindle for Christmas last year, and I haven’t bought a dead tree book since.

Q: What's your idea about the psychotic sidekick in PI novels like Hawk and Joe Pike?
They’re fun, and useful, and I guess I could go into a whole Freudian analysis about them, but I’ll leave that to the scholars. I like them, but I think they sometimes steal the show from the main character. Colt does what he does alone, and that’s the way he likes it.

Q: In the last century we've seen new waves of PI writers, first influenced by Hammett, then Chandler, Macdonald, Parker, later Lehane. Who do you think will influence the coming generation?
I think those writers will continue to be huge influences, and also writers like Loren D. Estleman, Andrew Vachss, and Lawrence Block. Who knows? Maybe someone will read one of my books and then decide to write their own private eye novel.

Q: Terry Faherty came up with the following question: Is there a future for the PI subgenre in the face of the current competition from cozy mysteries and police procedurals/crime scene investigation procedurals?
Sure. Like I said, ebooks are the future of publishing. Ebooks come with unlimited shelf space. There’s room for everybody.

Q: What question should we ask every PI writer we interview and what is your answer?
What kind of car does your character drive? You can find my answer in the first chapter of Pocket-47. One person who leaves the correct answer in the comments section here will be selected at random to win his or her choice of the hardcover or ebook. Hardcover winners must have a mailing address in the U.S. or Canada. Good luck!