Annal:1993 Hammett Prize for Crime-Writing
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Hammett Prize in the year 1993. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
- 1993 Hammett winner
- Score: 10.43
It seems that no one can find Sarita Cisneros Pines—not her well-connected Republican husband, not the FBI, not even a group of violence-prone guys with vaguely South American accents. And when Sughrue starts searching, working his way from Montana to Aspen, to the Mexican border, he comes up empty too. Empty but for a woman and infant who become Sughrue’s responsibility and obsession…the small, strange, hollowed-out sculpture of a duck that means more than he can imagine—and the blood that keeps getting spilled on his shoes. Sughrue, along with a ragged band of…
The Black Echo: A Harry Bosch Novel
- 1993 Edgar-1st Novel winner
- 1993 Hammett nominee
- Score: 16.43
For LAPD homicide cop Harry Bosch—hero, maverick, nighthawk—the body in the drainpipe at Mulholland Dam is more than another anonymous statistic. This one is personal.
The dead man, Billy Meadows, was a fellow Vietnam “tunnel rat” who fought side by side with him in a nightmare underground war that brought them to the depths of hell. Now, Bosch is about to relive the horror of Nam. From a dangerous maze of blind alleys to a daring criminal heist beneath the city to the tortuous link that must be uncovered, his survival instincts will once again be tested to…
By Evil Means: A Phoebe Siegel Mystery
- 1994 Shamus-1st Novel nominee
- 1993 Hammett nominee
- Score: 12.44
Phoebe Siegel has a brother who’s a priest; her other brother was a cop and everyone thinks he killed himself. Her sister is a recovering drug addict. And Fee, as the folks in Billings, Montana, call her, is a divorced ex-cop with a private investigator’s license. Things could be worse…and they’re about to get that way.
Just north of Billings, there’s a place called Whispering Pines. It’s a nice, gentle name, a fitting name for a rehab center. But what happens there is anything but gentle, and the things Phoebe finds out about the people who run it, about her…
Catilina's Riddle: A Novel of Ancient Rome
- 1993 Hammett nominee
- Score: 6.43
Using scholarly historical insight and evocative storytelling that brings to life the glories of ancient Rome, Steven Saylor takes the reader from the bloody lines of clashing Roman armies to the backrooms of the Senate floor, where power-hungry politicians wrestle the Fates for control of Rome’s destiny.
With the consular election drawing near, Rome is fiercely divided between the conservative Cicero and the tempestuous Catilina, whose followers are rumored to be plotting a blood-thirsty siege for power if their leader fails to win office.
Gordianus…
- 1993 Hammett nominee
- Score: 6.43
P.I. Ernest DeWalt snooped on two-timing spouses for twenty years until a hail of bullets knocked him out of the game. Whoever heard of a sleuth with bum kidneys? Denied such staples of gumshoe life as booze, salty food, and sex, Ernest DeWalt winds up teaching literature courses in a nearly comatose college town.
It’s a life that the reclusive DeWalt has nevertheless snuggled into with reasonable comfort. Too bad fate won’t just let this disillusioned sleeping dog lie. Too bad a fellow faculty member—in the throes of a fling with the sexy waitress wife of a…
