Annal:2002 Barry Award for Best British Crime Novel
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Barry Award in the year 2002. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
Dancing with the Virgins: A Constable Ben Cooper Novel
- 2002 Barry-British winner
- 2001 Dagger shortlist
- Score: 16.52
Stephen Booth, one of the most acclaimed new voices in crime fiction, takes us to a remote region of northern England where a prehistoric ring of stones, the Nine Virgins, harbors a dark legend.
With winter looming, a tenth figure soon joins the circle: the body of young cyclist Jenny Weston, whose limbs are carefully arranged in death to parody a woman dancing. Weeks earlier, another woman, Maggie Crew, was attacked nearby, her face savagely cut open. Is there a maniac on the loose, knifing women at random? Maggie may hold the answer, but she has no memory…
Blood Junction: A Novel
- 2002 Barry-British nominee
- Score: 6.52
In 1952, in a dusty, remote region of Australia, an Aboriginal family was executed by men wielding machetes. A half century later, a tall, beautiful young reporter who has made a life for herself abroad returns to Australia—and plunges into a mystery that lies at the heart of a family, a friendship, and a nation. Traveling to the Outback where the massacre occurred, India Kane is here to meet her best friend Lauren, a fellow journalist who has a story she wants India to hear.
Then, almost immediately after her arrival in the small, sun-bleached desert town…
- 2002 Barry-British nominee
- 2002 IHG–Novel nominee
- Score: 12.52
When the discovery of a mass grave in northern Maine reveals the grim truth behind the disappearance of a religious community, private detective Charlie Parker is drawn into a violent conflict with a group of zealots intent on tracking down a relic that could link them to the slaughter. Haunted by the ghost of a small boy and tormented by the demonic killer known as Mr. Pudd, Parker is forced to fight for his lover, his friends…and his very soul.
- 2002 Barry-British nominee
- Score: 6.52
In the Beginning was the Word…And the Word was Murder.
A motorist dies after plunging off a bridge…. A motorcyclist is found dead after a fatal encounter with a tree. Two apparently innocuous tragedies…until two Dialogues are submitted to a local literary competition, claiming responsibility for the deaths. But has anybody heard the Word?
When a beautiful, unscrupulous journalist meets her Maker in fact, and then in fiction, as victim of The Third Dialogue, Dalziel and Pascoe take note and find themselves involved in a deadly duel of wits against an…
Death in Holy Orders: An Adam Dalgliesh Mystery
- 2002 Barry-British nominee
- Score: 6.52
Death in Holy Orders is set in an Anglican theological college on a desolate stretch of the East Anglian coast, a locality which she has made particularly her own. When the body of the one of the students is found on the shore smothered by a fall of sand, his weathly father demands that Scotland Yard should re-examine the verdict of accidental death. Commander Dalgliesh has visited St. Anselm’s in his boyhood and, as he is due for a holiday, agrees to pay a visit, expecting no more than a nostaglic return to old haunts and a straightforward examination of the…
- 2002 Barry-British nominee
- Score: 6.52
A killer is on the loose, blurring the line between fact and fiction. His prey—the writers of crime novels who have turned psychological profilers into the heroes of the nineties. But this killer is like no other. His bloodlust shatters all the conventional wisdom surrounding the motives and mechanics of how serial killers operate. And for one woman, the desperate hunt to uncover his identity becomes a matter of life and death.
Professor Fiona Cameron is an academic psychologist who uses computer technology to help police forces track serial offenders. She…
The Falls: An Inspector Rebus Novel
- 2002 Barry-British nominee
- Score: 6.52
Ian Rankin’s John Rebus, arguably the most realistic detective in crime fiction, is a brilliant but troubled man. When a young woman goes missing near his native Edinburgh, Scotland, Rebus finds himself just one small cog in the huge wheel of an inquiry set in motion by her powerfully rich father. Struggling to deal with both his own often-terrifying inner demons as well as the monstrous bureaucracy of the investigative team, Rebus finds himself drawn again and again into the case, desperately searching for the girl’s salvation, as well as his own.
In time…
