Annal:2006 Shamus Award for Best P.I. Novel
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Shamus Award in the year 2006. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
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 Forgotten Man: A Novel
- 2006 Shamus-Novel nominee
- Score: 6.56
Los Angeles, 3:58 a.m.: Elvis Cole receives the phone call he’s been waiting for since childhood. Responding to a gunshot, the LAPD has found an injured man in an alleyway. He has told the officer on the scene that he is looking for his son, Elvis Cole. Minutes later, the man is dead.
Haunted throughout his life by a lack of knowledge about his father, Elvis turns to the one person who can help him navigate the minefield of his past— his longtime partner and confidant, Joe Pike. Together with hard-edged LAPD detective, Carol Starkey, they launch a feverish…
- 2006 Shamus-Novel nominee
- Score: 6.56
Nick Petrov is a brilliant private investigator with a reputation for bringing missing children safely home. Launched to tabloid stardom when he apprehended a brutal serial killer named Gerald Reasoner, Petrov has become something of a celebrity. When a woman approaches him, begging him to use his unique gifts to find her missing daughter, Petrov’s instincts sound an alarm. He senses that she’s concealing something. But is she lying to get Petrov’s help or to set him up? Three days later, just as he has amassed all the answers he needs to close the case, they are…
In a Teapot: A Scott Elliott Mystery
- 2006 Shamus-Novel nominee
- Score: 6.56
A film version of The Tempest, William Shakespeare’s final play, featuring the cream of Hollywood’s aristocratic British Colony? When the project is announced in 1948, it sounds like an idea that can’t miss. But then the whispers start about one of those British actors and a burlesque queen, and murder follows shortly. Enter Scott Elliott, top operative of Hollywood Security and the soon-to-be husband of the lovely Ella Englehart. To get to the altar, Elliott must dodge blonde bombshells and gangsters, and solve a mystery that echoes Shakespeare’s crowning work.
The Man with the Iron-On Badge
- 2006 Shamus-Novel nominee
- Score: 6.56
Harvey Mapes is a twenty-nine-year-old security guard who spends his nights in a guard shack outside a gated community in Southern California, reading detective novels, watching TVLand reruns, and waiting for his life to finally start…which happens when Cyril Parkus, one of the wealthy residents, asks Harvey to follow his beautiful wife Lauren. The lowly security guard jumps at the opportunity to fulfill his private eye fantasies and use everything he’s learned from Spenser, Magnum, and Mannix. But things don’t exactly go according to the books…or the reruns. As…
Cinnamon Kiss: An Easy Rawlins Mystery
- 2006 Shamus-Novel nominee
- Score: 6.56
It is the Summer of Love as Cinnamon Kiss opens, and Easy Rawlins is deep in a conversation with his lifelong friend Mouse about robbing an armored car. It’s a cinch, Mouse says. This would be further outside the law than Easy has ever traveled—but his daughter Feather urgently needs a medical treatment that costs far more than Easy can earn or borrow in time.
Then another friend offers a job that just might solve Easy’s problem without the risk of jail time. He has to travel to San Francisco to investigate the disappearance of an eccentric, prominent…
