Edgar Awards 2007 – Die Gewinner

vom Krimiblogger

Gestern wurden in New York die Gewinner der diesjährigen Edgar Awards in den jeweiligen Kategorien bekannt gegeben. Die →“Edgars“ zählen zu den renommiertesten Krimipreisen und werden von den → Mystery Writers of America (MWA) vergeben. Hier die Liste der Preisträger:


Best NovelThe Janissary Tree
Jason Goodwin: The Janissary Tree

Kurzbeschreibung:
When Jason Goodwin explored the Ottoman Empire in Lords of the Horizons, The New York Times Book Review hailed it as “a work of dazzling beauty…the rare coming together of historical scholarship…with luminous writing.” Now he returns to Istanbul, with a delicious mystery—The Janissary Tree.

It is 1836. Europe is modernizing, and the Ottoman Empire must follow suit. But just before the Sultan announces sweeping changes, a wave of murders threatens the fragile balance of power in his court. Who is behind them? Only one intelligence agent can be trusted to find out: Yashim Lastname, a man both brilliant and near-invisible in this world. You see, Yashim is a eunuch.

He leads us into the palace’s luxurious seraglios and Istanbul’s teeming streets, and leans on the wisdom of a dyspeptic Polish ambassador, a transsexual dancer, and a Creole-born queen mother. And he introduces us to the Janissaries. For 400 years, they were the empire’s elite soldiers, but they grew too powerful, and ten years ago, the Sultan had them crushed. Are the Janissaries staging a brutal comeback?

The Janissary Tree is the first in a series featuring the most enchanting detective since Precious Ramotswe of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency. Splendidly paced and illuminating, it belongs beside Caleb Carr’s The Alienist and the historical thrillers of Arturo Perez-Reverte.

Buch bestellen bei:
» amazon.de » libri.de » buch24.de


Best First Novel By An American Author The Faithful Spy
Alex Berenson: The Faithful Spy

Kurzbeschreibung:
A New York Times reporter has drawn upon his experience covering the occupation in Iraq to write the most gripping and chillingly plausible thriller of the post-9/11 era. Alex Berenson’s debut novel of suspense, The Faithful Spy, is a sharp, explosive story that takes readers inside the war on terror as fiction has never done before.

John Wells is the only American CIA agent ever to penetrate al Qaeda. Since before the attacks in 2001, Wells has been hiding in the mountains of Pakistan, biding his time, building his cover.
Now, on the orders of Omar Khadri–the malicious mastermind plotting more al Qaeda strikes on America–Wells is coming home. Neither Khadri nor Jennifer Exley, Wells’s superior at Langley, knows quite what to expect.

For Wells has changed during his years in the mountains. He has become a Muslim. He finds the United States decadent and shallow. Yet he hates al Qaeda and the way it uses Islam to justify its murderous assaults on innocents. He is a man alone, and the CIA–still reeling from its failure to predict 9/11 or find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq–does not know whether to trust him. Among his handlers at Langley, only Exley believes in him, and even she sometimes wonders. And so the agency freezes Wells out, preferring to rely on high-tech means for gathering intelligence.

But as that strategy fails and Khadri moves closer to unleashing the most devastating terrorist attack in history, Wells and Exley must somehow find a way to stop him, with or without the government’s consent.

From secret American military bases where suspects are held and “interrogated” to basement laboratories where al Qaeda’s scientists grow the deadliest of biological weapons, The Faithful Spy is a riveting and cautionary tale, as affecting in its personal stories as it is sophisticated in its political details. The first spy thriller to grapple squarely with the complexities and terrors of today’s world, this is a uniquely exciting and unnerving novel by an author who truly knows his territory.

Buch bestellen bei:
» amazon.de » libri.de » buch24.de


Best Paperback Original Snakeskin Shamisen
Naomi Hirahara: Snakeskin Shamisen

Kurzbeschreibung:
From Summer of the Big Bachi to Gasa-Gasa Girl, Naomi Hirahara’s acclaimed novels have featured one of mystery fiction’s most unique heroes: Mas Arai, a curmudgeonly L.A. gardener, Hiroshima survivor, and inveterate gambler.

Few things get Mas more excited than gambling, so when he hears about a $500,000 win–from a novelty slot machine!–he’s torn between admiration and derision. But the stakes are quickly raised when the winner, a friend of Mas’s pal G. I. Hasuike, is found stabbed to death just days later. The last thing Mas wants to do is stick his nose in someone else’s business, but at G.I.’s prodding he reluctantly agrees to follow the trail of a battered snakeskin shamisen (a traditional Okinawan musical instrument) left at the scene of the crime…and suddenly finds himself caught up in a dark mystery that reaches from the islands of Okinawa to the streets of L.A.–a world of heartbreaking memories, deception, and murder.

Buch bestellen bei:

» amazon.de » libri.de » buch24.de


Best Critical/Biographical The Science of Sherlock Holmes
E. J. Wagner: The Science of Sherlock Holmes : From Baskerville Hall to the Valley of Fear

Kurzbeschreibung:
Everyone loves a mystery, and mystery-lovers are fascinated by Sherlock Holmes and forensic science. The Science of Sherlock Holmes is an objective, comprehensive, and entertaining exploration of Sherlock Holmes’s contributions to forensic science. As described in Wiley’s Winter 2006 catalog – “From autopsies to zoology: how Holmes eliminated the impossible” – this book uses the legendary adventures of Sherlock Holmes as a jumping-off point to discuss the growth of forensic science during the 19th and early 20th century. The book explores the emergence of science from superstition, how forensic autopsies evolved from anatomical dissection, and the huge advances in blood chemistry and poison detection during the Victorian era. Delving into the early use of fingerprints, photography and trace evidence, it demonstrates how fact followed fiction in developing techniques of crime scene investigation. The Science of Sherlock Holmes presents sardonic new insights into landmark criminal cases that influenced the forensic world, including the 1849 Parkman/Webster dismemberment at Harvard Medical College, the slaughter of Jessie M’pherson in 1862 Scotland and the sanguinary cases of Lizzie Borden and Jack the Ripper. The book includes rare period illustrations.

Buch bestellen bei:

» amazon.de » libri.de » buch24.de


Best Fact Crime Manhunt
James L. Swanson: Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer

Kurzbeschreibung:
The murder of Abraham Lincoln set off the greatest manhunt in American history — the pursuit and capture of John Wilkes Booth. From April 14 to April 26, 1865, the assassin led Union cavalry and detectives on a wild twelve-day chase through the streets of Washington, D.C., across the swamps of Maryland, and into the forests of Virginia, while the nation, still reeling from the just-ended Civil War, watched in horror and sadness.

At the very center of this story is John Wilkes Booth, America’s notorious villain. A Confederate sympathizer and a member of a celebrated acting family, Booth threw away his fame and wealth for a chance to avenge the South’s defeat. For almost two weeks, he confounded the manhunters, slipping away from their every move and denying them the justice they sought.

Based on rare archival materials, obscure trial transcripts, and Lincoln’s own blood relics, Manhunt is a fully documented work, but it is also a fascinating tale of murder, intrigue, and betrayal. A gripping hour-by-hour account told through the eyes of the hunted and the hunters, this is history as you’ve never read it before.

Buch bestellen bei:

» amazon.de » libri.de » buch24.de


Best Short Story Death Do Us Part
Charles Ardai: The Home Front
erschienen in Death Do Us Part, hrsg. von Harlan Coben

Anthologie bestellen bei:
» amazon.de » libri.de » buch24.de



Best Young Adult Buried
Robin Merrow MacCready: Buried

Kurzbeschreibung:
Claudine has long buried her own needs and dreams to care for her alcoholic mother. But after Mom suddenly disappears, a much darker truth that lies buried under years of angry denial and enabling behavior is waiting to be uncovered. When Claudine eventually hits rock bottom, she must literally dig to find the secret that waits in a shallow grave behind the family’s trailer. Buried is a suspenseful and mind-twisting psychological thriller that will keep readers turning the pages and help them grasp the drama and destruction of codependency.

Buch bestellen bei:
» amazon.de » libri.de » buch24.de


Best Juvenile room one
Andrew Clements: Room One: A Mystery or Two

Kurzbeschreibung:
Ted Hammond loves a good mystery, and in the spring of his fifth-grade year, he’s working on a big one. How can his school in the little town of Plattsford stay open next year if there are going to be only five students? Out here on the Great Plains in western Nebraska, everyone understands that if you lose the school, you lose the town.

But the mystery that has Ted’s full attention at the moment is about that face, the face he sees in the upper window of the Andersons’ house as he rides past on his paper route. The Andersons moved away two years ago, and their old farmhouse is empty, boarded up tight. At least it’s supposed to be.

A shrinking school in a dying town. A face in the window of an empty house. At first these facts don’t seem to be related. But Ted Hammond learns that in a very small town, there’s no such thing as an isolated event. And the solution of one mystery is often the beginning of another.

Buch bestellen bei:
» amazon.de » libri.de » buch24.de


Best Play
Steven Dietz: Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure (Arizona Theatre Company)


Best Television Episode Teleplay
Life on MarsEpisode 1, Teleplay by Matthew Graham (BBC America)


Best Television Feature/Mini-Series Teleplay
The Wire, Season 4, Teleplays by Ed Burns, Kia Corthron, Dennis Lehane, David Mills, Eric Overmyer, George Pelecanos, Richard Price, David Simon & William F. Zorzi (Home Box Office)


Best Motion Picture Screen Play
The Departed, Screenplay by William Monahan (Warner Bros. Pictures)


Robert L. Fish Memorial Award

William Dylan Powell “Evening Gold”EQMM November 2006 (Dell Magazines)


Grand Master

Stephen King


Raven

  • Books & Books (Mitchell Kaplan, owner)
  • Mystery Loves Company Bookstore (Kathy & Tom Harig, owners)

The Simon & Schuster – Mary Higgins Clark Award –

Bloodline
Fiona Mountain: Bloodline

Kurzbeschreibung:
The anonymous note means nothing to ancestor detective Natasha Blake. Then one of her clients, an enigmatic old man who had commissioned a family tree of his granddaughter’s boyfriend, is shot dead at his isolated farm in the Cotswolds, just as shocking facts about the past are brought to light. Is there a link?

Seemingly unconnected yet haunting stories begin to emerge, like slowly developing photographs: two young soldiers—one German, one British—playing football; two young women—inseparable friends until a fatal mistake tears them apart; and the eerie echo of a child in an English country house.

It is these individual lives that becomes the clues in Natasha’s investigation, ghostly fingerprints that she must use to solve a cold-blooded, blue-blooded crime, hidden for generations in the bluebell woods at Poacher’s Dell.

Buch bestellen bei:
» amazon.de » libri.de » buch24.de