Annal:2003 Shamus Award for Best P.I. Novel
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Shamus Award in the year 2003. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
Blackwater Sound: A Thorn Mystery
- 2003 Shamus-Novel winner
- Score: 10.53
The Braswell family had everything people would kill for: money, looks, power. But their eldest son, the family’s shining light, died in a bizarre fishing accident. And when he disappeared—hauled into the depths by the giant marlin he had been fighting—he took with him a secret so corrupt that it could destroy the Braswells.
Ten years later, a huge airliner crashes in the steamy shallows off the Florida coast. Helping pull survivors from the water, Thorn finds himself drawn into a bizarre conspiracy: someone has developed a high-tech weapon capable of…
North of Nowhere: An Alex McKnight Novel
- 2003 Anthony-Novel nominee
- 2003 Barry-Novel nominee
- 2003 Shamus-Novel nominee
- Score: 18.53
Steve Hamilton’s debut novel A Cold Day In Paradise was the first novel to capture mystery’s three most prestigious awards-the Edgar, the Shamus, and the Anthony awards for best first novel. Now North of Nowhere returns to the beautiful and dangerous landscapes of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where former Detroit cop Alex McKnight’s attempts to leave civilization behind only lead to disaster…
Lying facedown on the floor with a gun to the back of his head is where Alex McKnight finds himself after a game of cards turns into a professional heist at…
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…
- 2003 Edgar–Novel winner
- 2003 Macavity-Novel winner
- 2003 Anthony-Novel nominee
- 2003 Barry-Novel nominee
- 2003 Shamus-Novel nominee
- Score: 38.53
Private detective Bill Smith is hurtled headlong into the most provocative-and personal-case of his career when he receives a chilling late night telephone call from the NYPD, who are holding his fifteen-year-old nephew Gary. But before he can find out what’s going on, Gary escapes Bill’s custody and disappears into the dark and unfamiliar streets…
Bill and his partner, Lydia Chin, try to find the missing teen and uncover what it is that has led him so far from home. Their search takes them to Gary’s family in a small town in New Jersey, where they discover…
The Last Place: A Tess Monaghan Mystery
- 2003 Shamus-Novel nominee
- Score: 6.53
In hot legal water—and court-ordered therapy—for having assaulted a potential child molester, Tess Monaghan is more than ready for a distraction. So she agrees to look into a series of unsolved homicides that date back over the past six years despite the fact that the assignment originates in part from a most troubling source: wealthy Baltimore benefactor Luisa O’Neal, who was both instrumental in launching Tess’s present career and intimately connected with the murder of Tess’s former boyfriend.
There are other troubling aspects as well. Apart from the…
