Annal:2003 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the year 2003. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
- 2003 LATimes–Mystery winner
- Score: 10.53
A Washington, D.C., crime overlord is fighting for his life in court. Two younger dealers are fighting for his territory, prestige, and millions of dollars in future profits. It takes only one slip-a kid going out of control with a rented pistol-to push friction closer to wholesale slaughter.
In the midst of this extraordinary tension, private investigator Derek Strange has found a woman whose testimony could mean death or freedom for the crime lord. He wants her to talk-but first he’ll have to find a way to keep her alive.
Step by step, Strange and his…
- 2004 Edgar-1st Novel winner
- 2004 Anthony-1st Novel nominee
- 2004 Macavity-1st Novel nominee
- 2003 LATimes–Mystery finalist
- Score: 28.54
Madrid 1938. Carlos Tejada Alonso y Leon is a Sergeant in the Guardia Civil, a rank rare for a man not yet thirty, but Tejada is an unusual recruit. The bitter civil war between the Nationalists and the Republicans has interrupted his legal studies in Salamanca. Second son of a conservative Southern family of landowners, he is an enthusiast for the Catholic Franquista cause, a dedicated, and now triumphant, Nationalist.
This war has drawn international attention. In a dress rehearsal for World War II, fascists support the Nationalists, while Communists have…
- 2003 LATimes–Mystery finalist
- Score: 6.53
With the publication of his highly praised first novel, Sacrifice of Isaac, Neil Gordon proved himself a master of the intellectual thriller. In his new novel, Gordon mixes political turmoil and family drama to deliver a plot that is as intricate as it is compelling.
Based on intensive research into the divisive events of the late sixties and the lives of Weather Underground radicals and Vietnam veterans, The Company You Keep is a story of the ecstatic righteousness of youth and the bonds of family love, of ideals betrayed by violence, and of…
- 2004 Macavity-Novel winner
- 2004 Barry-British nominee
- 2003 LATimes–Mystery finalist
- Score: 22.54
When a woman is found strangled to death on a popular beach in Sussex, the police have a hard time identifying her. It takes twelve days to discover she was a top psychological profiler for the National Crime Faculty. Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond is called in because the victim lived in Bath. He must coordinate his efforts with those of Henrietta Mallin, the original senior investigating officer, as well as try to cooperate with the cocky young officer charged with investigating the bizarre murder that the victim had been working on.
Oddly, the…
The Dogs of Riga: A Kurt Wallendar Mystery
Henning Mankell, Laurie Thompson
- 2003 LATimes–Mystery finalist
- Score: 6.53
Bringing the acclaimed series to a close, The Dogs of Riga takes Inspector Kurt Wallander across the Baltic to a disintegrating soviet union
February, 1991. A life raft washes ashore in Skåne carrying two dead men in expensive suits, shot gangland-style. Inspector Kurt Wallander and his team determine that the men were Eastern European criminals. But what appears in Sweden to be an open-and-shut case soon plunges Wallander into an alien world of police surveillance, thinly veiled threats, and life-endangering lies.
When another murder is committed,…
