Last week we extolled the prodigious talent of James Lee Burke, a royal member of the mystery-thriller-suspense genre. I hope you’ve been privileged to pick up one of his books. When you do, it will only take a few pages for you to feel like you just moved to the Louisiana bayou. The richness of the sounds, smells and tastes of New Orleans, its Garden District and the French Quarter, feels like you’re ravishing a huge gumbo pot with Étouffée and jambalaya on the side.
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[All names in Bold Italic … BLACK for authors, titles in GREEN, characters in ORANGE … except URL references in RED.}
Edgar Award nominees for 2011 are out! Have you read any?
The Edgar Award nominees for 2011 have been announced for books in the mystery genre. I’ve only read one of these authors, Harlan Coben, but I have one of Tana French’ books in a sample since her name seems to keep turning up. I’m committed to read each of the Best Novel and Best First Novel nominees to see if I can discover some new characters to add to our shrine.
Have you read any of these?
Here’s a longer list of ideas … the Edgar Award submissions!
You can also find a list of all of the Edgar Award submissions, which reflects all those submitted for consideration. Novel of the Year is a pretty long list but it gives you some sense of the books published last year. The list is very long, but it includes many that I’ve read, and many of our Top Ten Favorite Characters.
There’s no bad ones in here because I don’t have time for any of those. This is a proven and very talented bunch of authors so you can’t go wrong. Without counting, I’d say that these authors have collectively written at least 150+ novels. Among them, the only one that’s relatively new to me is C.J. Box, but you better get started with him since he won the 2009 Edgar Award for Blue Heaven.
Berry, Steve, THE EMPEROR’S TOMB
Box, C.J., NOWHERE TO RUN
Burke, James Lee, THE GLASS RAINBOW
Child, Lee, 61 HOURS
Forsyth, Frederick, THE COBRA
Higgins, Jack, THE WOLF AT THE DOOR
Hunter, Stephen, DEAD ZERO
Margolin, Phillip, SUPREME JUSTICE
Patterson, Richard North, IN THE NAME OF HONOR
Reich, Christopher, RULES OF BETRAYAL
Sandford, John, STORM PREY
Turow, Scott, THE INNOCENT
Now Reading ….
I’m about halfway through Ken Follett’s WWI novel, Fall of Giants, the first of a planned trilogy about 3 generations of families. It’s a big one but he can spin a great yarn from ordinary cloth better than most. What a poignant way, too, to look back at the tragedy of World War I and how the world couldn’t help itself from the conflagration known as the War to end all Wars!
New Amazon Widget
Just so you know, I’m trying out an Amazon widget … and maybe some others down the road … to see how it works. I’ve featured just a few of my recent favorites but I’ll keep experimenting with it for awhile. If you scroll down to the bottom of the right-hand sidebar, you’ll see it. Let me know what you think. Is it helpful at all?
Just arrived …. and arriving on the bookshelf
- Finally after 10 years, Dead or Alive appears, the #13 novel from Tom Clancy featuring Jack Ryan.
- Dead Zero, the 17th book in the Bob Lee Swagger series from Stephen Hunter.
- Brad Meltzer, The Inner Circle … coming this month.
- Jack Higgins with our favorite Sean Dillon character in his 19th book … Judas Gate.
- Three Stations with Arkady Renko, the Moscow detective from Martin Cruz Smith.
So much more to say … so little time …. What are you reading? Who do you like?
