Annal:2004 Shamus Award for Best P.I. Novel
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Shamus Award in the year 2004. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
- 2004 Shamus-Novel winner
- 2004 Barry-Novel nominee
- 2004 Edgar–Novel nominee
- 2004 Macavity-Novel nominee
- Score: 28.54
Still stinging from his unceremonious ouster from the Garda SÌoch·na—the Guards, Ireland’s police force—and staring at the world through the smoky bottom of his beer mug, Jack Taylor is stuck in Galway with nothing to look forward to. In his sober moments Jack aspires to become Ireland’s best private investigator, not to mention its first—Irish history, full of betrayal and espionage, discourages any profession so closely related to informing. But in truth Jack is teetering on the brink of his life’s sharpest edges, his memories of the past cutting deep into his…
- 2004 Shamus-Novel nominee
- Score: 6.54
Jimmy Gage is a reporter for Slap magazine in Los Angeles—“a troublemaker by trade and inclination, with fast hands and too much curiosity for his own good. Fight or flight, it made no difference anymore.”
This time around, it’s definitely fight.
While on an L. A. party-scene scavenger hunt, Jimmy meets Garrett Walsh, a former boy-wonder director who has just been released from prison after serving seven years for the drug-rage murder of a seemingly innocent teenage girl. Out of prison and out for justice, Walsh chooses Jimmy to help him clear his name…
Blood is the Sky: An Alex McKnight Novel
- 2004 Anthony-Novel nominee
- 2004 Shamus-Novel nominee
- Score: 12.54
Alex McKnight isn’t a man with many friends, but the few he has know they’re never alone in a fix. So when Vinnie LeBlanc asks for his help in taking a trip deep into Canada in search of his missing brother, the Ojibwa Indian knows he can count on Alex. Tom LeBlanc had taken a job as hunting guide for a rough crew of Detroit “businessmen.” The group was due back days ago, yet there’s been no sign of them, and there’s mounting evidence of something odd about their disappearing act. The trackless forests of northern Ontario keep many secrets, but none more shocking…
- 2004 Shamus-Novel nominee
- Score: 6.54
“Lust will make a fool of any man, but it is only love that can truly ruin him.” So says Victor Carl, the ethically adventurous Philadelphia lawyer who usually ends up doing the right thing, but, as his law partner says, often for all the wrong reasons.
Late one night Victor gets a panicked phone call from an old law school classmate. Guy Forrest claims he has just found the body of his fiancée lying murdered in the house they shared. The victim is Hailey Prouix, for whose love Guy had abandoned his children, his job, his wife, his life. Hailey had…
A Visible Darkness: A Max Freeman Novel
- 2004 Shamus-Novel nominee
- Score: 6.54
Max Freeman is seeking refuge from the familiar demons of his former life as a Philadelphia police officer in his secluded shack deep in the Everglades. But his self-imposed isolation is interrupted when he receives a desperate call from his best friend, attorney Billy Manchester. There has been a recent string of suspicious deaths—all elderly women, all from a poor neighborhood, and all with sizable and recently sold-off insurance policies—which the police have been unable, or unwilling, to investigate. Billy suspects something sinister may be at work, and so,…
