Annal:2000 Barry Award for Best First Novel
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Barry Award in the year 2000. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
Murder, With Peacocks: A Meg Langslow Mystery
- 2000 Anthony-1st Novel winner
- 2000 Barry-1st Novel winner
- 1999 Agatha–1st Novel winner
- 2000 Macavity-1st Novel nominee
- Score: 36.5
Donna Andrews introduces a cast of quirky characters who will pull her heroine in different directions as she plans three successive summer weddings.
When Meg Langslow is roped into being a bridesmaid for the nuptials of her mother, her brother’s fiancee, and her own best friend, she is apprehensive. Getting the brides to chose their outfits and those of their bridesmaids (and not change their minds three days later), trying to capture the principals long enough to work out details, and even finding peacocks to strut around the garden during the ceremony—these…
- 2000 Barry-1st Novel nominee
- 2000 Shamus-1st Novel nominee
- Score: 12.5
In the tradition of Phillip Marlowe and Sam Spade comes August Riordan, a bass-playing PI full of cynicism and irreverence. Hired by multimillionaire entrepreneur Edwin Bishop, whose advanced software program is stolen, Riordan must navigate his way through the underbelly of the technological and jazz worlds. Decorated by atmospheric photographs that add a new dimension to the hard-boiled genre, this fast-paced book is a modern take on the classic mystery.
- 1999 New Blood Dagger winner
- 2000 Barry-1st Novel nominee
- Score: 16.49
Investigator Petric makes his living from the dead, what with the siege around Sarajevo. Lately business has been slow. Condoned killing has displaced the crime of passion. His services with the civil police as a homicide investigator have been less in demand. One premeditated death does call for inquiry. It is no abused lover or distant sniper’s victim but a government official shot dead at close range-the chief of the Interior Ministry’s special police.
In a thriller that recalls the dark excitement of Vienna in Graham Greene’s The Third Man, author…
- 2000 Barry-1st Novel nominee
- Score: 6.5
Ellen has murder on her mind: a secret, untraceable act of retribution; payback for a horrifying act from her childhood that shattered her family and changed her life forever. After years of searching, the time for action has arrived. She takes to the road in pursuit of a man called Walker—setting into motion a plan so carefully crafted no one knows where she’s gone. Not even her husband, Pete, a college teacher who wakes up one morning alone in their bed. Unaware of her secret past, Pete suspects only that a troubled marriage has reached its end. With the…
White Sky, Black Ice: A Nathan Active Mystery
- 2000 Barry-1st Novel nominee
- Score: 6.5
In the small Alaskan village of Chukchi, what are the odds of two suicides occurring in a matter of a few days? State trooper Nathan Active discovers that his suspicions concerning the deaths are well-founded; the two men were murdered. But what was the motive and who killed them?
