Annal:2002 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the year 2002. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
Hell to Pay: A Novel
- 2002 LATimes–Mystery winner
- 2003 Anthony-Novel nominee
- 2003 Barry-Novel nominee
- 2003 Shamus-Novel nominee
- Score: 28.52
Derek Strange and Terry Quinn, the team of investigators who made their bestselling debut in Right As Rain, are hired to find a fourteen-year-old girl who’s run away from her home in the suburbs. It’s easy for Strange and Quinn to learn that the girl is now working as a prostitute in one of D.C.’s most brutal neighborhoods. Getting her to leave is harder. The two ex-cops think they know this world-but nothing in their experience has prepared them for the vengeance of Worldwide Wilson, the ruthless operator whose territory they are intruding upon.
Their…
- 2002 LATimes–Mystery finalist
- 2002 New Blood Dagger shortlist
- Score: 12.52
An extraordinary fiction debut: a large, stirring novel of suspense that is, at the same time, a work of brilliantly astute social observation. The Emperor of Ocean Park is set in two privileged worlds: the upper crust African American society of the eastern seaboard—old families who summer on Martha’s Vineyard—and the inner circle of an Ivy League law school. It tells the story of a complex family with a single, seductive link to the shadowlands of crime.
The Emperor of the title, Judge Oliver Garland, has just died, suddenly. A brilliant legal mind,…
- 2002 LATimes–Mystery finalist
- Score: 6.52
There is no trace of Paul Luden’s ex-wife at his old home, a two-bedroom log cabin on the shores of Granite Lake. It’s fall. The summer people are long gone. The year-round population is sparse. No one in the small community has seen her for days. A friend has alerted Paul, who has driven up from L.A. with his embarrassingly young girlfriend, hoping for the best. “I mean, she could be in Bosnia doing humanitarian relief.” Together they cross the lake and approach the house. The front door is locked and the boat is tethered. Entering through an open back door,…
One Step Behind: A Kurt Wallander Mystery
Henning Mankell, Ebba Segerberg
- 2002 LATimes–Mystery finalist
- Score: 6.52
On Midsummer’s Eve, three friends gather in a secluded meadow in Sweden. In the still-sun-lit northern night, they don costumes and begin to role play. But an uninvited guest soon brings their performance to a gruesome conclusion. His approach is careful; his aim is perfect. Three bullets, three corpses. The murderer then carefully photographs the grisly tableau.
Meanwhile, the Ystad police station is experiencing a summer lull. Inspector Kurt Wallander is focusing on living healthier, but his peace of mind is shattered when a fellow officer is murdered. The…
Reversible Errors: A Novel
- 2002 LATimes–Mystery finalist
- Score: 6.52
Rommy “Squirrel” Gandolph is a Yellow Man, an inmate on death row for a 1991 triple murder in Kindle County. His slow progress toward certain execution is nearing completion when Arthur Raven, a corporate lawyer who is Rommy’s reluctant court-appointed representative, receives word that another inmate may have new evidence that will exonerate Gandolph.
Arthur’s opponent in the case is Muriel Wynn, Kindle County’s formidable chief deputy prosecuting attorney, who is considering a run for her boss’s job. Muriel and Larry Starczek, the original detective on the…
