From AwardAnnals
Results of the Barry Award in the year 2002. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
Killing Gifts: A Shaker Mystery
Deborah Woodworth
The Depression’s winter gloom has crept into the summerhouse of the Hancock Shaker Village in Massachusetts. The dead body of a woman “of dubious reputation”—a lost soul befriended by many of the brothers and sisters—sits at a table in an evening gown, snow swirling around her frozen ankles, her lifeless arms stretched out before her. A frantic call goes out to Kentucky, begging Eldress Rose Callahan to brave the February cold and come East, where her keen eye and peerless deductive powers are needed to help lift a terrible weight from the bereft and dwindling community of Believers. But Sister Rose’s arrival is greeted with local suspicion and spreading terror when murder once again scars the gentle village. And as the fury of winter further isolates the small village from its suspicious neighbors, Sister rose and her dear friend Gennie Malone must race to unmask a killer who may be mad enough to keep killing throughout this frigid season of dying.
Rode Hard, Put Away Dead
Sinclair Browning
Dying to earn her spurs…
Even in sweltering June, there’s plenty of work for Trade Ellis on her Arizona ranch, but right now her part-time P.I. practice is as dry as the desert—until bull rider J. B. Calendar marries a candy heiress who’s crazy to turn cowgirl.
Abigail Van Thiessen, nipped and tucked into great shape, has thirty-two years—and a few hundred million dollars—on her husband. So when she meets her untimely death on a romantic horseback trip with her newlywed stud, the cops suspect foul play. And J.B. hires Trade to prove him innocent.
While plenty of people stood to gain from Abby’s death—the ex-football-star preacher she bankrolled, a half brother with his own millions, and a topless dancer with a grudge, just for starters—no suspect looks better than J.B., a boozing tomcatter who’s lucky with the ladies. Until Trade learns about another murder in town the same night Abby died…a development that may bring the investigation—and Trade—to the very deadest of ends.
Death is a Cabaret: An Antique Lover's Mystery
Deborah Morgan
Since Jeff Talbot left the FBI, he’s been investigating yard sales as a professional antique picker. And though he prefers finding hidden treasures to finding hidden bodies, he discovers that for some collectors, the right item can be worth killing for-like a one-of-a-kind French cabaret set.
Straw Men
Martin J. Smith
He is a madman known as the Scarecrow. For eight years he has languished in prison, convicted of a vicious attack that left a rookie policewoman near death—and unable to remember her past. When DNA evidence surfaces that frees him, Teresa Harnett must face the possibility that her flawed memory put the wrong man behind bars. But then the phone calls begin—and the crackly, threatening voice of the Scarecrow reawakens her terror. Only Teresa’s onetime nemesis. psychologist Jim Christensen, can pull the truth from her shattered mind—before the man who left her for dead can finish the job…
The Fourth Wall: An Alex Bernier Mystery
Beth Saulnier
After a near-lethal confrontation with a serial killer, reporter Alex Bernier is happy to cover a nice, dull story on the hapless attempts to save a grand old theater in her upstate New York college town. But when the body of a long-vanished actress turns up in the wreckage and the theater’s advocates start dying off, Alex is at odds with one strange troupe of suspects: a duplicitous former child star, a cadre of Martha Stewart-esque academic wives with nasty secrets, and a vicious mob boss. Again, Alex must play detective, sorting illusion from deadly truth-and, with luck, outwitting a murderer determined to bring the curtain down on her act.
