Annal:2006 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the year 2006. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
Echo Park: A Harry Bosch Novel
- 2006 LATimes–Mystery winner
- Score: 10.56
In 1993 Marie Gesto disappeared after walking out of a supermarket. Harry Bosch worked the case but couldn’t crack it, and the twenty-two-year-old was never found. Now, more than a decade later, with the Gesto file still on his desk, Bosch gets a call from the District Attorney. A man accused of two heinous murders is willing to come clean about several others, including the killing of Marie Gesto. Taking the confession of the man he has sought-and hated-for thirteen years is bad enough. Discovering that he missed a clue back in 1993 that could have stopped nine other murders may just be the straw that breaks Harry Bosch.
- 2007 Edgar-Paperback nominee
- 2006 LATimes–Mystery finalist
- Score: 12.57
A contemporary murder mystery set in the heart of London, this is the story of Tommy Akhtar, hard-drinking veteran of the Mujahideen, devoted on, sometime private investigator and sometime idol to the thug-lites of the ethnic motley of West London. Hired by a bewitching prostitute, he’s to track down the whereabouts of her missing friend, last seen meeting a client in a local dive. But as the search heats up, Tommy’s case takes a turn for the sinister, as he’s drawn into a murder investigation and the dark side of both the establishment and those who plan to overthrow it.
The Night Gardener: A Novel
- 2007 Barry-Novel winner
- 2006 LATimes–Mystery finalist
- Score: 16.57
The haunting story of three cops—one good, one bad, one broken—and the murder that reunites them in a showdown decades in the making. Gus Ramone is good police, a former Internal Affairs investigator now working homicide for the city’s Violent Crime branch. His new case involves a body found in a community garden. The murder unearths intense memories of a case Ramone worked as a patrol cop 20 years earlier, when he and his partner, Dan “Doc” Holiday, assisted a legendary detective named T.C. Cook. The series of murders was never solved.
Holiday left the force under a cloud of morals charges, and Cook retired but still agonizes about the Night Gardener killings. The new case draws the three men together, re-igniting the love, regret, and anger that once burned between them as they try to lay to rest the monster who has stalked their dreams.
The Winter of Frankie Machine: A Novel
- 2006 LATimes–Mystery finalist
- Score: 6.56
Frank Machianno is a stand-up businessman, a devoted father to his daughter, and a beloved fixture in the community. He’s also a retired hit man. Years ago Frank consigned his Mob ties to the past, which is where he wants them to stay. But a favor being called in now by the local boss is one Frank can’t refuse, and soon he’s sucked back into the treacherous currents of his former life. Someone from the past wants him dead. He has to figure out who, and why, and he has to do it fast.
The problem is that the list of candidates is about the size of his local phone book and Frank’s rapidly running out of time.
And then things go really bad.
The Zero: A Novel
- 2006 LATimes–Mystery finalist
- 2006 NBA–Fiction finalist
- Score: 12.56
The Zero is a groundbreaking novel, a darkly comic snapshot of our times that is already being compared to the works of Franz Kafka and Joseph Heller.
From its opening pages—when hero cop Brian Remy wakes up to find he’s shot himself in the head—novelist Jess Walter takes us on a harrowing tour of a city and a country shuddering through the aftershocks of a devastating terrorist attack. As the smoke slowly clears, Remy finds that his memory is skipping, lurching between moments of lucidity and days when he doesn’t seem to be living his own life at all.…
