2010 LEFTY NOMINEES

Dateline: Los Angeles, CA

Left Coast Crime announced the nominees for awards given on March 11-14 at the Left Coast Crime Convention at the Omni Hotel.

Lefty Award for Most Humorous Mystery

Swan for the Money by Donna Andrews
Living with Your Kids Is Murder by Mike Befeler
Strangle a Loaf of Italian Bread by Denise Dietz
Getting Old Is a Disaster by Rita Lakin
High Crimes on the Magical Plane by Kris Neri

Bruce Alexander Memorial Mystery Award

(historical mystery, covering events before 1950)

Tears of Pearl by Tasha Alexander
In a Gilded Cage by Rhys Bowen
A Trace of Smoke by Rebecca Cantrell
Freedom’s Flight by Gary Phillips
Serpent in the Thorns by Jeri Westerson

The Panik

Given in honor of the late Paul Anik, Chairman of Left Coast Crime 2010,
for the best Los Angeles Noir book published in 2009.

Cemetery Road by Gar Anthony Haywood
Trust No One by Gregg Hurwitz
Death Was in the Picture by Linda Richards
Boulevard by Stephen Jay Schwartz

Good luck to all excellent entries.

WHAT KEEPS A READER READING

Compelling opening, sure. A zingy one liner: From Lee Child's Without Fail: They found out about him in July and stayed angry all through August.

Who's he? Who's they?

The experts at writing novels, who don't seem to be writing novels themselves, say avoid weather openings like, well, the plague (also avoid cliches), but Robert Crais didn't listen and so his readers are treated with this hypnotic sentence from Sunset Express: The sky above the San Fernando Valley that Saturday morning was a deep blue, washed clean of the dirt and chemical particulates that typically color L.A. air by a breeze that burbled out of the San Gabriel Mountains and over the flat valley floor and across the high ridge of the Santa Monica Mountains.

Makes you want to settle in for a fabulous adventure.


http://www.gerrieferrisfinger.com