Annal:2000 Barry Award for Best Novel

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Results of the Barry Award in the year 2000. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:

In a Dry Season

Peter Robinson

Peter Robinson, internationally acclaimed author of literary suspense, knows the serenity found in the rustic Yorkshire countryside can be deceptive. For evil can strike in the most pastoral of surroundings, and go unpunished for years-even decades.

Water is the essence of life. Yet during a dry season, when supply cannot meet demand, the precious commodity rapidly drains from a manmade reservoir to reveal a forgotten town that was sacrificed for the sake of water. A blistering summer has struck, and thirst has consumed the resources provided by the Thornfield Resevoir, unmasking the remains of Hobb’s End, a small village at its bottom that ceased to exist in post World War II England.

A curious child thinks of the resurfaced hamlet as a mystical playground, until he unearths a human skeleton. Modern forensics determine that the skeleton belongs to a young woman who appears to have been brutally murdered and hidden beneath the floor of a decrepit outbuilding in the 1940’s. It falls to a grudge-wielding police superior to select a detective for the impossible task of putting a name…

Angels Flight: Detective Harry Bosch Mystery

Michael Connelly

The man most hated by the LAPD—a black lawyer who has made his name by bringing lawsuits alleging racism and brutality by police officers—has been found murdered on the eve of a high-profile trial. The list of suspects included half the police force. And Harry Bosch is the detective chosen to head the investigation.

The political dangers of the case are huge. If it’s not investigation fairly, the public outcry could make the Rodney King riots look tame. But a full investigation will take Bosch into the ugliest corners of law enforcement.

To make matters worse, Bosch’s wife, Eleanor, has disappeared. Bosch fears she has left him—or succumbed to her gambling addiction. He’s not sure which would be worse.

Angels Flight reads in a white heat. It continues to up the ante of the series that is “raising the hard-boiled detective novel to a new level…adding substance and depth to modern crime fiction.” (Boston Globe)

L.A. Requiem

Robert Crais

The day starts like any other in L.A. The sun burns hot as the Santa Ana winds blow ash from mountain fires to coat the glittering city. But for private investigator Joe Pike, the city will never be the same again. His ex-lover, Karen Garcia, is dead, brutally murdered with a gun shot to the head.

Now Karen’s father calls on Pike and his partner, Elvis Cole, to keep an eye on the LAPD as they search for his daughter’s killer—because in the City of Angels, everyone has something to hide. But what starts as routine turns into a deadly game of cat-and-mouse. For a dark web of conspiracy threatens to destroy Pike and Cole’s twelve-year friendship—if not their lives.

High Five: A Stephanie Plum Novel

Janet Evanovich

Bail jumping in Trenton is down to small potatoes. Stephanie’s only open case is a small bond for a small violation, committed by a small person who raises Stephanie’s frustration level in big ways. So, short of money and long on bills, Stephanie comes up with a plan—diversify! Signing on as an intern with entrepreneurial Super Bounty Hunter Ranger, Stephanie ventures into Ranger’s mostly morally correct and marginally legal operations.

None of this makes vice cop Joe Morelli a happy man. The cop in him can’t help but wonder as to the source of Stephanie’s expensive new car. And the rest of him, the man who’s been friend and lover to Stephanie, can’t help but wonder if there’s more to the partnership than meets the eye.

The internship is downgraded to second priority when Uncle Fred goes missing. Even though Grandma Mazur is sure he was abducted by aliens, Stephanie sets out to look for Fred. He’s a perfectly average senior citizen, and he’s disappeared without a trace while running errands. He’s left his ten-year-old Pontiac station wagon locked up nice and…

Prayers for Rain

Dennis Lehane

What if a total stranger was watching your every move? What if he read your mail, listened in on your phone calls, knew what you spoke of only to your most trusted confidants? What if he learned Your routines? Your weaknesses? And, most important, what if he discovered those things you love and cling to…and then he stripped you of them? And sat back to watch while you self-destructed?

Boston private investigator Patrick Kenzie is about to anger such a man.

When Patrick first meets Karen Nichols, she strikes him as the kind of woman who irons her socks—an innocent from a protected upbringing, untouched by tragedy. But six months later Karen commits suicide by leaping from one of Boston’s most cherished monuments. Patrick finds himself wondering what can alter someone so drastically, so quickly, that suicide seems her only option. Yet what begins as idle curiosity soon becomes obsessive as Patrick suspects that the tragic events that befell Karen during the last months of her life—an “accident” that destroyed her fiancé; the loss of her job, her apartment, and eventually…

Hart's War: A Novel of Suspense

John Katzenbach

Life isn’t easy when you should have died, recalls Second Lieutenant Tommy Hart, the navigator of a B-25 who was shot out of the sky in 1942. Hart—burdened with guilt as the only surviving member of his crew—becomes just another kriegie (“war captured”) at the fiercely guarded Stalag Luft 13 in Bavaria. But routine comes to a halt with the arrival of a new prisoner: First Lieutenant Lincoln Scott, an African American Tuskegee airman who instantly becomes the target of contempt from his fellow soldiers. His most notable adversary is Vincent Bedford, a decorated bomber captain from Mississippi. The hatred between the two men as volatile as a grenade ready to be detonated.

When a prisoner is brutally murdered, and all the blood-soaked evidence points to Scott, Hart is tapped to defend the soldier, who steadfastly claims his innocence. Yet from the start, Hart senses he has been chosen merely to make a show of defending the accused, in what is presumed to be an open-and-shut case.

In a trial rife with racial tension and raw conflict, where the lines between ally and enemy blur,…

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