Annal:2000 Dagger Award for Crime Novel

Motherless Brooklyn

Jonathan Lethem

• 2000 Gold Dagger
• 1999 NBCC–Fiction winner
• Score: 20.5

“Tell your story walking.”

St. Vincent’s Home for Boys, Brooklyn, early 1970s. For Lionel Essrog, a.k.a. The Human Freakshow, a victim of Tourette’s syndrome (an uncontrollable urge to shout out nonsense, touch every surface in reach, rearrange objects), Frank Minna is a savior. A local tough guy and fixer, Minna shows up to take Lionel and three of his fellow orphans on mysterious errands: they empty a store of stereos as the owner watches; destroy a small amusement park; visit old Italian men. The four grow up to be the Minna Men, a fly-by-night detective agency-cum-limo service, and their days and nights revolve around Frank, the prince of Brooklyn, who glides through life on street smarts, attitude, and secret knowledge. Then one dreadful night, Frank is knifed and thrown into a Dumpster, and Lionel must become a real detective.

As Lionel struggles to find Frank’s killer—without letting his Tourette’s get in the way—he’s forced to delve into the complex, shadowy web of relationships, threats, and favors that make up the Brooklyn world he thought he knew so well.…

Friends in High Places

Donna Leon

• 2000 Silver Dagger
• Score: 8.5

Venetian detective, Commissario Brunetti, is drawn into an underworld of drugs and loan sharking in Donna Leon’s latest book. The death of two young drug addicts, the arrest and subsequent release of the son of the detective’s boss on suspicion of drug dealing reveal what a difference it makes in Venice to have friends in high places.