Annal:2007 Barry Award for Best Novel
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Barry Award in the year 2007. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
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.
City of Shadows: A Novel of Suspense
- 2007 Barry-Novel nominee
- Score: 6.57
This is 1922 Berlin.
One of the troubled city’s growing number of refugees, Esther Solomonova survives by working as secretary to the charming, unscrupulous cabaret owner “Prince” Nick, and she’s being drawn against her will into his scheme to pass a young asylum patient off as Anastasia, the last surviving heir to the murdered czar of all Russia. But their found “princess,” Anna Anderson, fears that she’s being huntedand this may turn out to be more than paranoia when innocent people all around her begin to die.
The Last Assassin: A John Rain Novel
- 2007 Barry-Novel nominee
- Score: 6.57
Barry Eisler has been compared to Forsyth, Ludlum, le Carré, Ian Fleming, and Graham Greene. But his latest thriller brings Eisler into a league of his own. When Japanese/American contract killer John Rain learns that his former lover, Midori, has been raising their child in New York, he senses a chance for reconciliation, perhaps even for redemption. But Midori is being watched by Rain’s enemies, and his sudden appearance puts mother and child in terrible danger. To save them, Rain is forced to use the same deadly talents he had been hoping to leave behind. With the help of Tatsu, his friendly nemesis in the Japanese FBI, and Dox, the ex-marine sniper whose good ol’ boy persona masks a killer as deadly as Rain himself, Rain races against time to bring his enemies into the open and eliminate them forever. But to finish the job, he’ll need one more ally: Israeli intelligence agent Delilah, a woman who represents an altogether different kind of threat…
Oh Danny Boy: A Molly Murphy Mystery
- 2007 Barry-Novel nominee
- Score: 6.57
Irish immigrant Molly Murphy is contemplating giving up PI work for something a little less…exciting. Molly has had quite enough excitement recently, thank you very much. Especially from the handsome but deceptive NYPD captain Daniel Sullivan. She wants him out of her life for good. But when Daniel is accused of accepting bribes and lands himself in the Tombs, the notorious city jail, he begs Molly to help prove he was framed. After everything they’ve been through together, how can she turn him down? As Molly finds herself drawn further into Daniel’s case, Molly begins to fear that his trouble is related to one of his investigations: catching a serial killer who is targeting prostitutes, known to the locals as the East Side Ripper….
The Prisoner of Guantánamo: A Novel
- 2006 Hammett winner
- 2007 Barry-Novel nominee
- Score: 16.56
Revere Falk—FBI veteran, Arabic speaker—is an interrogator at “Gitmo” when the body of an American soldier is found washed ashore in Cuban territory. No American has ever turned up dead on the wrong side of the fence before.
Falk is put in charge of the investigation and almost immediately senses an unusual level of interest in the proceedings: from his commander, from the Cubans, and from the various factions of the military. And when the Defense Intelligence Agency unexpectedly sends its own team to “reinforce” the investigation, Falk is drawn into a game of evasion and pursuit.
- 2007 Barry-Novel nominee
- Score: 6.57
Tampa, Florida, 1955: a city pulsing with Sicilian and Cuban gangsters, smoky clubs, cigar factories, light, voices, and rum. The bludgeoning death of mob boss Charlie Wall sends shock waves rippling through the communities, setting cops and reporters and associates, known and unknown, scrambling to discover the truth. The truth is that there are many more surprises to come. As the trail winds through neighborhoods, rich and poor, enmeshing the corrupt and innocent alike, all the way down to the streets of pre-revolutionary Havana, an extraordinary story of revenge, honor, and greed begins to emerge. But that is only the beginning. For Charlie Wall had his secrets, and he guarded them well. And those secrets will have repercussions.
