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
Detective Harry Bosch reopens one of his own unsolved cases and comes face to face with a psychotic killer he has been seeking for years. A thrilling new novel by the author of the #1 bestseller The Lincoln Lawyer.
In 1995 Marie Gesto disappeared after walking out of a supermarket. Harry Bosch worked the case but couldn’t crack it, and the 22-year-old woman was never found. Now Bosch is in the Open-Unsolved Unit, where he still keeps the Gesto file on his desk, when the DA calls. A man accused of two heinous killings is willing to come clean about several others, including the murder of Marie Gesto.
Bosch must now take the confession of the man he has sought—and hated—for eleven years. But when Bosch learns that he and his partner missed a clue back in 1995 that could have led them to Gesto’s killer—and stopped nine murders that followed—his whole being as a cop begins to crack.
Michael Connelly’s enthralling new novel pits the detective People magazine calls “one of the most complex crime fighters around” against one of the most sadistic killers he has ever confronted.
- 2007 Edgar-Paperback nominee
- 2006 LATimes–Mystery finalist
- Score: 12.57
From award-winning novelist Patrick Neate, a literary mystery that introduces a new kind of British detective, Ugandan-Indian Tommy Akhtar, and a side of London that the mystery world has never seen.
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.
Written with all the energy and vividness that has earned Neate multiple literary awards, City of Tiny Lights is poised to find a wide new audience for its talented, charismatic young author.
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
The author of The Death and Life of Bobby Z. and The Power of the Dog now gives us a fierce and funny new novel—and a blistering new take on the Mafia story.
Frank Machianno is a late-middle-aged ex–surf bum who runs a bait shack on the San Diego waterfront when he’s not juggling any of his other three part-time jobs or trying to get a quick set in on his longboard. He’s a stand-up businessman, a devoted father to his daughter, and a beloved fixture in the community.
Frank’s also a hit man. Specifically: a retired hit man. Back in the day, when he was one of the most feared members of the West Coast Mafia, he was known as Frankie Machine. 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. The landscape around him is at once fractured and oddly familiar: a world dominated by a Machiavellian mayor known as “The Boss,” and peopled by gawking celebrities, anguished policemen peddling First Responder cereal, and pink real estate divas hyping the spoils of tragedy. Remy himself has a new girlfriend he doesn’t know, a son who pretends he’s dead, and an unsettling new job chasing a trail of paper scraps for a shadowy intelligence agency known as the Department of Documentation. Whether that trail will lead Remy…
