Annal:2005 Macavity Award for Best First Mystery Novel
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Macavity Award in the year 2005. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
- 2005 Anthony-1st Novel winner
- 2005 Macavity-1st Novel winner
- 2004 Agatha–1st Novel winner
- Score: 30.55
Los Angeles greeting-card artist and card-and-gift shop manager Wollie Shelley is dating forty men in sixty days as research for radio talk-show host and bestselling author Dr. Cookie Lahven’s upcoming book, How to Avoid Getting Dumped All the Time. Wollie is meeting plenty of eligible bachelors but not falling in love, not until she stumbles over a dead body en route to Rio Pescado–a state-run mental hospital–and is momentarily taken hostage by a charismatic “doctor” who is on the run from the Mob. Wollie fears that her beloved brother, a paranoid…
- 2005 Anthony-1st Novel nominee
- 2005 Macavity-1st Novel nominee
- Score: 12.55
Patricia Harper is dead, killed in Uncommon Grounds, her gourmet coffee store. Maggy Thorsen wants to know who killed one of her partners. She joins forces with Sarah Kingstown, Particia’s closet friend to investigate the killing. Together, they uncover unsavory samll-town politics, bribes, kickbacks, and rampant infidelity. Before she’s through, Maggie’s sense of right and wrong will be shaken to its foundations. For once in her life she is forced to draw her own line in the sand, and be prepared to defend it.
Whiskey Sour: A Jack Daniels Mystery
- 2005 Anthony-1st Novel nominee
- 2005 Macavity-1st Novel nominee
- Score: 12.55
Lieutenant Jacqueline “Jack” Daniels is having a bad week. Her live-in boyfriend has left her for his personal trainer, chronic insomnia has caused her to max out her credit cards with late-night home shopping purchases, and a frightening killer who calls himself “The Gingerbread Man” is dumping mutilated bodies in her district.
Between avoiding the FBI and its moronic profiling computer, joining a dating service, mixing it up with street thugs, and parrying the advances of an uncouth PI, Jack and her binge-eating partner, Herb, must catch the maniac before…
Summer of the Big Bachi: A Mas Arai Mystery
- 2005 Macavity-1st Novel nominee
- Score: 6.55
In the foothills of Pasadena, Mas Arai is just another Japanese-American gardener, his lawnmower blades clean and sharp, his truck carefully tuned. But while Mas keeps lawns neatly trimmed, his own life has gone to seed. His wife is dead. And his livelihood is falling into the hands of the men he once hired by the day. For Mas, a life of sin is catching up to him. And now bachi—the spirit of retribution—is knocking on his door.
It begins when a stranger comes around, asking questions about a nurseryman who once lived in Hiroshima, a man known as Joji Haneda.…
Misdemeanor Man: A Novel
- 2005 Macavity-1st Novel nominee
- Score: 6.55
Gordon Seegerman is a reluctant public defender by day, and the wildly enthusiastic lead singer in a Barry Manilow cover band by night. Perfectly content to handle petty cases for the rest of his career, he dreams that Manilow-the real Barry Manilow-will one day show up at his band’s gig.
When his boss sticks him with a misdemeanor flasher case, Seegerman thinks, no problem. He’ll plead the case, caution his client to keep his trousers zipped, and rush back to rehearsal. No such luck. The flasher is rotting in a maximum security unit, and opposing counsel is…
