Annal:2009 Barry Award for Best Paperback Original P.I. Novel
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Barry Award in the year 2009. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
- <–2008
- Barry Award
- –end–
State of the Onion: A White House Chef Mystery
- 2009 Anthony-Paperback winner
- 2009 Barry-Paperback winner
- Score: 20.59
Introducing White House Assistant Chef Olivia Paras, who is rising-and sleuthing-to the top.
Includes recipes for a complete presidential menu! Never let them see you sweat-that’s White House Assistant Chef Olivia Paras’s motto, which is pretty hard to honor in the most important kitchen in the world. She’s hell-bent on earning her dream job, Executive Chef. There’s just one thing: her nemesis is vying for it, too. Well, that and the fact that an elusive assassin wants to see her fry.
The Black Path: A Novel
- 2009 Barry-Paperback nominee
- Score: 6.59
A grisly torture-murder, a haunting northern Sweden backdrop, and a dark drama of twisted sexuality collide memorably in Åsa Larsson’s masterpiece of suspense—a tale of menace, hope, longing, and darkness beyond imagining.
The dead woman was found on a frozen lake, her body riddled with evidence of torture. Instantly, Inspector Anna-Maria Mella knows she needs help. Because the dead woman—found in workout clothes with lacy underwear beneath them—was a key player in a mining company whose tentacles reach across the globe. Anna-Maria needs a lawyer to help explain some things—and she knows one of the best.
Attorney Rebecka Martinsson is desperate to get back to work, to feel alive again after a case that almost destroyed her. Soon Rebecka is prying into the affairs of the dead woman’s boss, the founder of Kallis Mining, whose relationship with his star employee was both complex and ominous. But what Rebecka and Anna-Maria are about to uncover—a tangled drama of secrets, perversion, and criminality—will lay bare a tale as shocking as it is sad…about a man’s obsession, a woman’s lonely death, and a killer’s cold, cold heart.
- 2009 New Blood Dagger winner
- 2009 Barry-Paperback nominee
- Score: 16.59
On a gray September day, on an island off the coast of Sweden, six -year -old Jens Davidsson ventured out of his backyard, walked out into a fog, and vanished….Now twenty years have passed, and in this magnificent debut novel of suspense—a runaway bestseller in Sweden—the boy’s mother returns to the place where her son disappeared, drawn by a chilling package sent in the mail… In it, lovingly wrapped, is one of Jens’ sandals—sandals Julia Davidsson put on her son’s feet that very last morning.
Now, with only a handful of clues, Julia and her father are questioning islanders who were present the day Jens vanished—and making a shocking connection to Öland’s most notorious murder case: the killing spree of a wealthy young man who fled the island and died years before Jens was even born. Suddenly the island that once seemed so achingly familiar turns strange and dangerous… Until Julia finds herself facing truths she never imagined—about what really happened on that September day twenty years ago, about who may have crossed paths with little Jens in the fog, and how a child could truly vanish without a trace…until now.
- 2009 Anthony-Paperback nominee
- 2009 Barry-Paperback nominee
- Score: 12.59
Crime fiction readers know Quarry, the ruthless killer-for-hire, from Max Allan Collins’ acclaimed novels—most recently The Last Quarry, which told the story of the assassin’s final assignment (and was the basis for the feature film The Last Lullaby).
But where did Quarry’s story start? For the first time ever, Collins takes us back to the beginning, revealing the never-before-told story of Quarry’s first job: infiltrating a college town and eliminating a professor whose affair with one of his beautiful, young students is the least of his sins…
- 2009 Anthony-Paperback nominee
- 2009 Barry-Paperback nominee
- 2009 Edgar-Paperback nominee
- Score: 18.59
They thought she’d be easy. They thought wrong.
It all began with the phone call asking former porn star Angel Dare to do one more movie. Before she knew it, she’d been shot and left for dead in the trunk of a car. But Angel is a survivor. And that means she’ll get to the bottom of what’s been done to her even if she has to leave a trail of bodies along the way…
- 2009 Barry-Paperback nominee
- Score: 6.59
Jamie DeBroux’s boss has called a special meeting for all “key personnel” at 9:00 a.m. on a hot Saturday in August.
When Jamie arrives, the conference room is stocked with cookies and champagne. His boss smiles and tells his employees, “We’re a cover for a branch of the intelligence community. And we’re being shut down.” Jamie’s boss then tells everyone to drink some champagne, and in a few seconds they’ll fall asleep—for good. If they refuse, they’ll be shot in the head.
Escape is not an option. Jamie’s boss has shut down the elevators and rigged the fire towers with chemical bombs. Panic sets in, chaos erupts, and no one is sure whom to trust. Jamie quickly realizes that there’s only one way he’s ever going to see his family again: the hard way.- <–2008
- Barry Award
- –end–
