Posted by Webmaven Maggie on January 23, 2007 at 11:55:58:
In Reply to: Re: Mystery Writers of America Edgar Nominations for 2007 posted by us202 on January 19, 2007 at 21:27:41:
Recommendations? Oh yah... ;-)
I'm with y'all. The best novel category has a number of us stumped. Which is good, actually. Booksellers all agree the names on the list are those of very reputable, talented writers. They aren't, for the most part, too well read. So, thanks to the nominations, that could change. That's what award nominations are for, one hopes, so hurrah! Okay, I've read the Mina (great) and the Steinhauer (also wonderful). I haven't yet read any of the others so I'm looking forward to hearing what you think of them.
As for the other categories - I'm a big fan of the best first novel list. Cornelia Read's A Field of Darkness appears, at first glance, to be a standard novel about a quirky upstate NY reporter who investigates an old murder case. While that's a fair assessment, it misses the point entirely. A few pages in, you discover a host of characters that are definitely worth spending time on. The mystery will keep you guessing, too. Having already heard how good this book was, I was still reluctant to read another "feisty woman reporter" book but as soon as I started it, I was hooked. Shove your preconceived notions aside and give this a try. Read's wry sense of humor is worth the investment.
Holmes on the Range by Steve Hockensmith. Don't assume this is a Sherlock Holmes pastiche no matter what you hear. It's 1893, and two cowboy brothers are traveling from ranch to ranch picking up whatever work they can. The elder brother, Otto "Old Red" Amblingmeyer" is illiterate but savvy. His younger brother, "Big Red," reads aloud the Conan Doyle stories from Harpers for Otto. Otto thinks Sherlock Holmes is a real person, solving real crimes. End of pastiche. Now comes the great part: Everyone in this book is an indelibly etched character, there's a coming-of-age epiphany, and a flat-out yippee-the-bad-guy-gets-his-comeuppance ending. And all because Otto decides to be more than what the world expects of an itinerant cowhand...he "deducifies". :) Only if you've been to my bookstore could you understand that when I write, "I've sold this to everybody!", I mean everybody. A customer who loves Ken Bruen, Denise Mina, Ian Rankin, Michael Connelly, Charlie Huston, etc, came into the bookstore yesterday just to thank me for forcing (yikes!) him to buy Holmes on the Range.
John Hart's The King of Lies hardly needs any introduction given how much buzz there was earlier this year. Janet Maslin raved about it in the NYTimes, on CBS as of of her summer picks, and propelled it to the New York Times bestsellers list. It's the story of a Southern lawyer whose murdered father's corpse shows up to cause trouble (oh, those darn corpses!) and he's the prime suspect. This guy can write!
Gillian Flynn's Sharp Objects (fyi, she's tv critic for Entertainment Weekly) is a small-town American Gothic - very dark, and very good. Again, like the Cornelia Read, it's a woman journalist, but this time she's going home to research a serial killer and revisit her creepy family. The killer removes his victim's teeth after death...that should give you some idea of how dark this one is. I've got this on my TBR pile and am dying to read it after not one but two good friends (with great taste :) said it wasn't to be missed.
As for The Faithful Spy by Alex Berenson...I haven't a clue! Has anyone else read it yet?
Sorry it took me a few days to reply but I knew I'd want to reply at length.
As for catching up, perhaps it's over-rated? I mean, if we really caught up on everything to read there's a chance we'd actually be OUT of something new to read just when we needed it most....
Maggie
webmaven@gregrucka.com