Annal:1994 Shamus Award for Best First P.I. Novel
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Shamus Award in the year 1994. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
Satan's Lambs: A Lena Padget Mystery
- 1994 Shamus-1st Novel winner
- Score: 10.44
Seven years ago, Lena Padget’s brother-in-law, Jeff Hayes, went to jail for the brutal murders of her sister and two-year-old nephew. Bitter that restraining orders couldn’t stop bullets, she became a private investigator and advocate for abused women and children whom the police and the legal system neglect.
Hayes is out on parole now, and he’s looking for Lena. Once a major figure in a brutal cult, he teams up with Archie Valetta, an old business partner who is also fresh from prison. When Archie kidnaps Charlie, his ex-wife’s four-year-old son, Eloise…
Brotherly Love: A Mystery
- 1994 Shamus-1st Novel nominee
- Score: 6.44
Lesbian private investigator Sydney Sloane had always had a troubled relationship with her brother. He had been reported dead 13 years ago, but now she finds herself staring at the photo of a recently escaped murderer who she is sure is her dead brother David. To find the truth, she begins to investigate and finds herself in the middle of a tangled web of deceit and treachery.
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…
