Annal:2005 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the year 2005. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
Legends: A Novel of Dissimulation
- 2005 LATimes–Mystery winner
- Score: 10.55
Martin Odum is a CIA field agent turned private detective, struggling his way through a labyrinth of past identities—”legends” in CIA parlance. Is he really Martin Odum? Or is he Dante Pippen, an IRA explosives maven? Or Lincoln Dittmann, Civil War expert? These men like different foods, speak different languages, have different skills. Is he suffering from multiple personality disorder, brainwashing, or simply exhaustion? Can Odum trust the CIA psychiatrist? Or Stella Kastner, a young Russian woman who engages him to find her brother-in-law so he can give her…
The Lincoln Lawyer: A Novel
- 2006 Macavity-Novel winner
- 2006 Shamus-Novel winner
- 2006 Anthony-Novel nominee
- 2006 Edgar–Novel nominee
- 2006 Steel Dagger shortlist
- 2005 LATimes–Mystery finalist
- Score: 44.56
Mickey Haller has spent all his professional life afraid that he wouldn’t recognize innocence if it stood right in front of him. But what he should have been on the watch for was evil. Haller is a Lincoln Lawyer, a criminal defense pro who operates out of the backseat of his Lincoln Town Car, to defend the clients at the bottom of the legal food chain. It’s no wonder that he is despised by cops, prosecutors, and even some of his own clients. From bikers to con artists to drunk drivers and drug dealers, they’re all on Mickey Haller’s client list. But when a…
The Right Madness: A Novel
- 2005 LATimes–Mystery finalist
- Score: 6.55
James Crumley is one of the most influential crime writers of the post-Chandler era, and his raw, subversive novels have earned him living legend status. He first introduced readers to C. W. Sughrue (“‘Shoog’ as in sugar. And ‘rue’ as in rue the goddamned day”) in his now classic The Last Good Kiss. An ex-army officer turned Montana private eye, Sughrue is as tough and cynical as he is good-hearted and weak-kneed when it comes to women and booze. He’s back to take readers on a bender through small towns, dark bars, and dank hotel rooms in a novel charged…
Ash & Bone: A Frank Elder Mystery
- 2005 LATimes–Mystery finalist
- Score: 6.55
In the depths of his Cornish hideaway, retired Detective Inspector Frank Elder’s solitary life is disturbed by a call from his estranged wife, telling him his seventeen-year-old daughter, Katherine, is running wild, unbalanced by the abduction and rape he feels he should have prevented. Meanwhile, in the heart of London, the takedown of a violent criminal goes badly, and Detective Sergeant Maddy Birch is uneasy about the reasons why, an uneasiness that is compounded when she starts to believe she is being stalked.
Maddy and Frank have a connection, a brief…
Strange Affair: A Novel of Suspense
- 2006 Macavity-Novel nominee
- 2005 LATimes–Mystery finalist
- Score: 12.56
On a warm summer night, an attractive woman hurtles north in a blue Peugeot with a hastily scrawled address in her pocket, while, back in London, a desperate man leaves an urgent late-night phone message on his brother’s answering machine. By sunrise the next morning, the woman is found inside her car along an otherwise peaceful country lane, shot, execution-style, through the head.
Welcome to the idyllic Yorkshire Dales, where Detective Inspector Annie Cabbot arrives on the scene and discovers, to her surprise, a slip of paper in the dead woman’s pocket that…
