Annal:1990 Shamus Award for Best P.I. Novel

Extenuating Circumstances

Jonathan Valin

• 1990 Shamus-Novel winner
• Score: 10.4

 

Out on the Cutting Edge: A Matthew Scudder Crime Novel

Lawrence Block

• 1990 Shamus-Novel nominee
• Score: 6.4

This is a city that seduces dreamers…then eats their dreams.

Matthew Scudder understands the futility of his search for a longtime missing Midwestern innocent who wanted to be an actress in the vast meat-grinder called New York City. But her frantic father heard that Schudder is the best—and now the ex-cop-turned-p.i. is scouring the hell called Hell’s Kitchen looking for anything that might resemble a lead. And in this neighborhood of the lost, he’s finding love—and death—in the worst possible places.

The Skintight Shroud

Wayne D. Dundee

• 1990 Shamus-Novel nominee
• Score: 6.4

 

The Shape of Dread: A Sharon McCone Mystery

Marcia Muller

• 1990 Shamus-Novel nominee
• Score: 6.4

Bobby Foster, car-hop at the chic Cafe Comedie, is going to the gas chamber. He’s already confessed to the murder of Tracy Kostakos, the club’s rising star. But two years after the crime, Tracy’s body is still missing and Bobby’s confession is full of holes. All Souls Legal Cooperative’s final appeal sends San Francisco’s #1 P.I. Sharon McCone behind the footlights into the super-charged arena of anxious club owners and aspiring young hopefuls…into the fractured world of Tracy’s privileged family and the mind of a young comedienne who was not the good little girl they thought they knew…into a labyrinth of death and deception where someone will kill to laugh last and get away with murder.

The Killing Man

Mickey Spillane

• 1990 Shamus-Novel nominee
• Score: 6.4

Hammer finds his secretary severely beaten and a mutilated corpse in his desk chair—the victim of a vicious killer who is clearly after Hammer.