Shamus Superiority

[image error]At this weekend's Bouchercon Conference, the Private Eye Writers of America announced the winners for the 2023 Shamus Awards. The annual awards celebrate crime fiction that features as a main character a person paid for investigative work but not employed for that work by a unit of government. These include traditionally licensed private investigators; lawyers and reporters who do their own investigations; and others who function as hired private agents. Congratulations to all this year's winners and finalists!

BEST PI HARDCOVER: The Wheel of Doll by Jonathan Ames (Mulholland Books)

The Big Bundle by Max Allan Collins (Hard Case Crime)
The Goodbye Coast by Joe Ide (Mulholland Books)
Holmes Coming by Kenneth Johnson (Blackstone Publishing)
The Blackmail by M. Ravenel (Chikara Press)

BEST ORIGINAL PI PAPERBACK: Dead-Bang Fall by J.R. Sanders (Level Best Books)

Quarry’s Blood by Max Allan Collins (Hard Case Crime)
DoubleBlind by Libby Fischer Hellmann (The Red Herrings Press)
Canary in a Coal Mine by Charles Salzberg (Down & Out Books)
Hush Hush by Gabriel Valjan (Historia/Level Best Books)

BEST FIRST PI NOVEL: The Goldenacre by Philip Miller (Soho Crime) 

Big Fat F@!k-up by Lawrence Allan (M.S. Wooten Press) 
Pay Dirt Road by Samantha Jayne Allen (Minotaur Books)
Foote by Tom Bredehoft (West Virginia University Press)
What Meets the Eye by Alex Kenna (Crooked Lane Books)

BEST  PI SHORT STORY: “Charlie’s Medicine” by Libby Cudmore (Lawyers, Guns, and Money: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Music of Warren Zevon/Down & Out Books)

“No Place for a Dame" by Lori Armstrong (Edgar & Shamus Go Golden/Down & Out Books)
“A Jelly of Intrigue” by O’Neil De Noux (Edgar & Shamus Go Golden/Down & Out Books)
“The Pearl of Antilles” by Caroline Garcia-Aguilera (Edgar & Shamus Go Golden/Down & Out Books)
“Bad Actor” by Elliot Sweeney (Nov/Dec 2022, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine)