THE DILYS AWARD

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The Dilys Award was created in 1993 by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association (IMBA), an organization of independent-bookstores across North America and Britain that specialize in selling mysteries.  According to the IMBA website, the award is named after Dilys Winn who opened the first independent bookstore dedicated solely to mysteries: Murder Ink in New York City from 1972 to 2006. The Dilys Award is given in the spring to the mystery novel in the previous year that members of the IMBA most enjoyed selling to mystery fans.

Follow the links on the titles below to full book reviews. The links in the green boxes lead you to Amazon.com.

Buy on Amazon: Thunder Bay: A Cork O'Connor Mystery (Cork O'Connor Mysteries)

2008 Thunder Bay by William Kent Krueger.  The seventh book in the Cork O'Connor series has private investigator O'Connor searching for the long-missing son of his good friend Henry Meloux, an elderly Ojibwe Indian.

2007 Still Life by Louise Penny.   A retired schoolteacher is killed in what looks like a hunting accident in a tiny Canadian town and Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Montreal Surete must investigate.  Buy on Amazon: Still Life

Buy on Amazon: Thirty-three Teeth

2006 Thirty-Three Teeth by Colin Cotterill. In 1977 Communist Laos, the aging and psychic chief coroner Dr. Siri Paiboun must solve a bizarre set of murders with supernatural overtones.

Buy on Amazon: Darkly Dreaming Dexter

2005 Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeffrey Lindsay.  Dexter, a lab technician, is a psychopath and a serial killer who was taught by his foster father, a cop, to channel his murderous urges towards the deserving: other serial killers. 

2004 Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde. In this fantasy-satire, heroine Thursday Next, who routinely enters the very real world of various books, faces a foe from Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven." Sequel to The Eyre Affair.

2003 In the Bleak Midwinter by Julia Spencer-Fleming.  Clare, an Episcopalian priest, and Russ, the Chief of Police of their small town, team up to solve a mystery involving an abandoned child and murdered mother.

2002 Mystic River by Dennis Lehane.  In a Boston working-class Irish neighborhood, a shop owner with mob connections goes looking for vengeance after his daughter is murdered; his boyhood pal, now a cop, investigates the case, and another pal, now a haunted loser, looks like the main suspect.

2001 A Place of Execution by Val McDermid. In 1963 in a remote English village, a young detective assigned to the case of a missing girl encounters hostility and secrecy as the villagers close ranks to foil his investigation.

2000 L.A. Requiem by Robert Crais.  A wisecracking L.A. detective searches for the killer of the daughter of a powerful businessman as his own enigmatic partner starts to look like the main suspect.

1999 Gone, Baby, Gone by Dennis Lehane. As PIs Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro search for a missing child through the underbelly of working-class Boston, they must interact precariously with cops and criminals.

1998 Three to Get Deadly by Janet Evanovich.  Bounty hunter Stephanie must track down a beloved candy-store owner who may have become a vigilante and murdered several drug dealers.

1997 The Poet by Michael Connelly.  A reporter blackmails his way into an FBI investigation of a serial cop-killer after his own brother, a homicide detective, is murdered.

1996 The Last Coyote by Michael Connelly. LAPD detective Harry Bosch faces an existential crisis as he tries to solve the 30 year-old murder of a prostitute who also happened to be his mother.

1995 One for the Money by Janet Evanovich.  New Jersey girl Stephanie takes a job as a bounty hunter and must bring in her old boyfriend Joe Morelli, a cop suspected of murder.

1994 Smilla's Sense of Snow by Peter Hoeg.  In Copenhagen, half-Danish half-Greenlander Smilla, a scientific expert on snow and ice, becomes obsessed with the mysterious death of a young boy who fell from a rooftop.

1993 Booked to Die by John Dunning.  A Denver cop who collects rare books must solve several murders in the antiquarian book world that he thinks were committed by a man he has long hated.

1992 Native Tongue by Carl Hiaasen.   A journalist gets involved in a hilarious yet bizarre war between militant environmentalists and sleazy real estate developers in the Florida Keys.

Noteworthy Links:   Wonderquest - Science Q/A! The Connection - Tech blog! Author site - John the Eunuch Historical Mystery series, Cozy Mystery List for all your cozy mystery needs, Obsidian Bookshelf - reviews of gay-themed fiction.
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