The Los Angeles Times has announced their nominees for the book award in mysteries and, strangely, my latest DIAGNOSIS MURDER novel is overlooked. The nominees are:
Alan Furst, Dark Voyage: A Novel (Random House)
Henning Mankell, The Return of the Dancing Master [translated from the Swedish by Laurie Thompson] (The New Press)
Charles McCarry, Old Boys (Overlook Press)
Kem Nunn, Tijuana Straits: A Novel (Scribner)
Ian Rankin, A Question of Blood: An Inspector Rebus Novel (Little, Brown)
The LA Times loves Henning Mankell…I think this is his second or third nomination. I don’t get it, to be honest. I’ve read a few of his books, wanting to get on the bandwagon (bandwagons are so much fun, all that convivial back-slapping, hearty smiles, and good eating), but they left me cold.
The judges also love George Pelecanos, who has won twice…once over my brother Tod (who, when George won the following year too, asked if he could have one of the awards. George wasn’t amused). Luckily for Ian Rankin, George didn’t have a book out this year…but I hear they were thinking of nominating him on general principle.
It’s nice to see Kem Nunn on the list…and an old pro like Charles McCarry. I remember reading McCarry’s TEARS OF AUTUMN years and years ago and loving it. His nomination this year is a nice surprise…even though his book is still on my tottering TBR pile (which has become so big, the county is threatening to red tag my house as uninhabitable due to the risk of avalanche. Suzanne Clarke’s JONATHAN STRANGE & MR. NORELL alone could crush my skull). I’ve got a copy of Alan Furst’s book in that pile somewhere, too. I’ll have to catch up on the LA Times nominees if I ever finish reading all of this year’s major Edgar nominees…
As long as we’re confessing to not getting multiply-nominated writers, I have to add Alan Furst to the list. I’ve read the glowing reviews, and my mother, who loves his books, has sent me several of them. I really want to love them, work my way dutifully through the first fifty pages, and find myself so completely indifferent that I can’t bring myself to start the next chapter.
I am, however, perfectly willing to accept this as a flaw in myself, rather than in his writing.
What I’m less willing to accept is the complete absence of Elliot Perlman’s brilliant “Seven Types of Ambiguity” either from the mystery (which it isn’t really, I suppose) or the fiction list. I can’t say I’ve read any of the five nominated novels on the fiction list, but if they are all actually better than this one, they should have made room for a sixth.