This Dilys is a Dilly - Tomorrow is the big day!!

Things at Kingdom Books have been wildly busy this week, so I haven't posted as many recaps of Dilys winners as I'd hoped to this week -- here's the list:

DILYS AWARDS - Winners

1992, Carl Hiassen, Native Tongue

1993, John Dunning, Booked to Die

1994, Peter Hoeg, Smilla’s Sense of Snow

1995, Janet Evanovich, One for the Money

1996, Michael Connelly, The Last Coyote

1997, Michael Connelly, The Poet

1998, Janet Evanovich, Three to Get Deadly

1999, Dennis Lehane, Gone, Baby, Gone

2000, Robert Crais, L.A. Requiem

2001, Val McDermid, A Place of Execution

2002, Dennis Lehane, Mystic River

2003, Julia Spencer-Fleming, In the Bleak Midwinter

2004, Jasper Fforde, Lost in a Good Book

2005, Jeff Lindsay, Darkly Dreaming Dexter

2006, Colin Cotterill, Thirty-Three Teeth

2007, Louise Penny, Still Life

2008, William Kent Krueger, Thunder Bay

2009, Sean Chercover, Trigger City

2010, Alan Bradley, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Poe

2011, Louise Penny, Bury Your Dead

2012, S. J. Rozan, Ghost Hero

 I'll toss a few quick notes here: Although Mystic River is one of the finest Dennis Lehane books for reading, I'm just plain hooked on the film version of Gone, Baby, Gone -- Dave and I must have seen it three or four times already, and I'd watch it again. I love the Boston tough-tender of Lehane's books.

Dave's the Crais reader in the house -- honey, are you listening??

Whenever I've read a not-so-great-yet author and need to get the "awkward" out of my head, Val McDermid is one of the authors I return to. A Place of Execution is stunning, and worth re-reading.

I've collected Jasper Fforde's first five or six books -- the puns are wonderful fun, although it would help if I had more of a "literary" background (I gained my book sense mostly by reading and listening, not from college classes).  But a good familiarity with Alice in Wonderland made the first few of his books hit home for me. I think of them as "caper books for classic readers"!

Darkly Dreaming Dexter proved that Jeff Lindsay's writing could reach at least two generations at once -- I like the book, gruesome though it can be, and one of my sons is an ardent fan of the TV series ("Dexter"). How about you?

Colin Cotterill writes wonderful fiction set in Laos and Cambodia; he's also a great person who sent us signed and illustrated bookplates to use in his books here. I line up his newest as a pre-order, to give myself a treat. Always a book I'll feel good about, as well as intriguing plotting.

I've written so much about Louise Penny and her remarkable arc of narrative across multiple novels that I can't add more -- browse this blog using her name if you have a moment.

Back to Dave for Krueger and Chercover. I do mean to read Krueger; we're just suffering from a scarcity of his books, and the Kingdom Books law is, you can't take a signed copy to bed with you (somehow the bottom of the spine always gets soft that way), so I have to wait until our stock of these expands. Chercover is definitely in Dave's area more than mine.

How on earth did Allan Bradley's "young adult" fantasy-mystery get onto the list of mysteries booksellers enjoyed selling the most? Simple -- it's a really, really enjoyable book, so one can't help talking it up to other readers. Bend your own self discipline and dip into this series about Flavia De Luce. Worth every minute (and a reminder that Good Books come in all age ranges).

Last: S. J. Rozan, whose Lydia Chin/Bill Smith series is both entertaining and a classic mystery series. Read about GHOST HERO here -- http://kingdombks.blogspot.com/2012/02/chinatown-mysteries-s-j-rozan-henry.html

Tomorrow we welcome Archer Mayor, to celebrate his 23rd Joe Gunther book, PARADISE CITY. We'll nominate his work, once again, for the Dilys (maybe enough others will join us this year, to push it to the top!). S. J. Rozan is a friend of his, and we'll honor DILYS week by giving away a signed Archer Mayor book at our event tomorrow, as well as two signed copies of the trade paperback of GHOST HERO.

Are you going to be here? If not, you can still order a signed copy of Archer Mayor's PARADISE CITY -- just drop us an e-mail at kingdombks@gmail.com before noon tomorrow!

Michael Connelly, Dilys Awards, 1996 and 1997

There is actually a drawback to the phenomenal success and sales of each new Michael Connelly crime novel: Readers are always looking ahead to the next book, which now means finding out which of Connelly's two current series protagonists -- Harry Bosch and Mickey Haller -- will take the lead in the next book from this master of the detective novel. Even more intriguingly, how will the two interact, now that Connelly is bringing them into the same books?

With all that forward motion, sometimes I forget to look back at (re-read!) Connelly's earlier work. His noted The Black Echo and The Black Ice (from 1992 and 1993, his first and second books) were extraordinarily powerful early work; his fourth and fifth engaged independent mystery booksellers so securely that they swept the Dilys Award (for the book those sellers in IMBA have most enjoyed providing to readers) two years in a row.

So here's a refresher: In The Last Coyote, LAPD detective Harry Bosch goes onto "involuntary stress leave" for attacking his boss -- and finds himself investigating the murder of his own mother. And in The Poet, crime reporter Jack McEvoy begins to investigate police suicides, only to discover a serial killer at work. (The Poet was reissued in 2004 in softcover with an introduction by Stephen King.)

Although The Poet appeared to be a stand-alone diversion from the Harry Bosch series, Connelly would later tie its characters back into more of his fiction.

It's no exaggeration to say that early on, Connelly established a high standard for American crime fiction. Each of his subsequent books has been compared against that standard. No wonder we race for each new title. On November 26, the newest will release in the United States: The Black Box. It's a Harry Bosch title, dipping into 20 years of Bosch's career and files. After this Dilys week is over (and I hope you're reading ALL of our posts for it!) and the signed copies of S. J. Rozan's Ghost Hero have been awarded (here at Kingdom Books, we'll give them on Sat. Oct. 20 as part of Archer Mayor's 2 pm event), there will be about five weeks until the new Michael Connelly. Think you can fit in re-reading all the earlier titles?

I might try it.

1995 Dilys Award: Janet Evanovich, ONE FOR THE MONEY

Who would have guessed that amateur sleuth and bail bondswoman Stephanie Plum would still be arriving, fresh and funny, on our bookshelves for so many years? Not only are there 18 wonderfully wacky crime fiction titles, each with a play on words that contains the number of the book -- but Janet Evanovich has also provided novellas in between, aimed at holiday periods or quirky intermediate angles.

I particularly like the review posted on "April Books," a blog written by Lauryn April, whose specialty is young-adult fiction -- and who therefore is both delighted by the plucky sleuth, and careful to warn readers that there are real complexities mingling with the Evanovich humor, like being threatened by criminals, some violence, some friendly sex. Here is the start of the review -- read more of it at April's blogsite:

This was a very entertaining and funny read. Janet Evanovich has a wonderfully witty writing style that gives Stephanie Plum a sassy but also honest voice. Divorcee and jobless Stephanie has been selling off her furniture and appliances to keep from having to move back in with her parents. She is stubborn to the core and a little naïve, which is in part how she ends up as a bounty hunter chasing down her ex-fling Joe Morelli.

The whole book is filled with colorful and engaging characters. Grandma Mazur in particular was an awesome character, she was so funny. Everything she said had me laughing. I loved that every character had their own voice. From the hookers, to the boxer Ramirez, to good cop gone ‘bad’ Morelli, they were all well developed and interesting. This is an adult book with some adult themes, including sex and murder, but I enjoyed that. I was glad that Janet didn’t water down any of the issues she deals with.

That gives a good idea of why booksellers had so much fun with ONE FOR THE MONEY that the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association awarded the book the Dilys Award in 1995. Evanovich's series would capture a second Dilys, too, in 1998, for Three to Get Deadly. 

Here's the list of the 18 Stephanie Plum adventures so far -- check in at Evanovich's official website for more titles. The November 2012 release of Notorious Nineteen will give this author and her sleuth a chance to be the first to capture three (!) Dilys awards. Or do you think there's already another 2012 book that has given booksellers so much pleasure in the promotion that it's sure to win?? Let us know your guess.

Stephanie Plum Series (in order written)

• One for the Money
• Two for the Dough
• Three to Get Deadly
• Four to Score
• High Five
• Hot Six
• Seven Up
• Hard Eight
• To the Nines
• Ten Big Ones
• Eleven on Top
• Twelve Sharp
• Lean Mean Thirteen
• Fearless Fourteen
• Finger Lickin' Fifteen
• Sizzling Sixteen
• Smokin' Seventeen
• Explosive Eighteen
  

The Second Dilys Award: John Dunning, BOOKED TO DIE

John Dunning was born in 1942, and began receiving awards for his writing in 1981. His Dilys Award, however, didn't arrive until 1993, when independent mystery booksellers discovered the pleasure of pointing readers to Dunning's first Cliff Janeway detective novel, BOOKED TO DIE. Today Dave, whose expertise covers a wide range of mysteries, fills in the details:

One of my favorite mystery books is John Dunning’s first mystery in the Cliff Janeway series, titled Booked to Die. Janeway is an ex-policeman who has become a bookseller in Denver. There are five books in the series and they were all sought after by mystery collectors and readers and are considered bibliomysteries. The titles are the following:

Cliff Janeway novels

Booked to Die (1992)

The Bookman's Wake (1995)

The Bookman's Promise (2004)

The Sign of the Book (2005)

The Bookwoman's Last Fling (2006)

Dunning's awards for the Cliff Janeway series are the following:  Booked to Die won the Nero Award and was nominated for the 1993 Anthony Award in the "Best Novel" category; the book also won the Dilys Award for 1993. The follow-up to this novel, The Bookman's Wake, was nominated for the 1996 Edgar Award in the "Best Novel" category. Dunning had also been nominated early in his career (1981) for an Edgar Award (best paperback original) for his mystery by the title of Looking for the Ginger North, which was a stand-alone.

Booked to Die is one of the books that I constantly recommend because it has the themes of book collecting, bookselling, police work, and mystery. I have given more than 12 copies to friends and family over the years, and without fail everyone loves this book. Maybe that's why first edition, first printings that are signed are fetching from $650.00 to $1,200.00.

Find a copy and let us know what you think!

PS from Beth -- nice bio of John Dunning from Old Algonquin Books here. Also, if you haven't already seen it, please see our earlier post in this week's "This Dilys Is a Dilly!" We're building up to Archer Mayor's visit to Kingdom Books on Saturday Oct. 20 at 2 p.m., with a giveaway of one copy of his new book PARADISE CITY and two signed copies of S. J. Rozan's Dilly of a book, GHOST HERO.

This Dilys is a Dilly! And it started with Carl Hiassen's book ...

Actually, it all started with a group of bookstore owners -- the ones who specialize in mysteries and who formed IMBA, the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association. And when these booksellers realized they had a much different view of the books in their stores than did the industry or the trade publications, they came up with a wonderful idea: The Dilys Award.

The Dilys Award has been given annually since 1992 by IMBA to the mystery titles of the year which the member booksellers have most enjoyed hand selling. The Dilys Award is named in honor of Dilys Winn, the founder of the first specialty bookseller of mystery books in the United States.   

What a great idea -- an award that reflects enjoyment in one's chosen (and delightful!) career. It's been fun every since.

The first Dilys award was given to a Carl Hiassen's book NATIVE TONGUE (check it out here: http://www.carlhiaasen.com/books/books-native.html). It's the fourth solo book from this (still active) journalist, sardonic and funny and also a classic caper mystery -- and set in Florida. That made Hiassen's books a 180-degree change from the Florida mysteries best known before that, the ones of John D. MacDonald. That series featured Travis McGee, attempting to live quietly on his boat but pulled again and again toward resolving some crime that hurt some friend of his -- during the course of which, McGee would fall reluctantly in love once again, and somehow lose his chance at happiness. (I don't mean to sound dismissive: I read every single one of the Travis McGee books and they were marvelous escape fiction at the time. But eventually rather predictable.)

So Hiassen's sassy journalistic tongue and willingess to offend came with a fresh breeze, and mystery booksellers got a lot of pleasure out of introducing his books to those readers who'd appreciate them.

That last sentence really sums up what independent mystery booksellers do: We get to know readers, get familiar with their tastes, and point them toward titles they haven't yet read, some of which will become new favorites and bring lots of pleasure.

Below is the entire Dilys list; we'll be exploring more of the authors and titles this week, during THIS DILYS IS A DILLY!, the celebration of 20 years of the award. 

Then, on Saturday October 20, Kingdom Books -- like other participating bookshops -- will give away two signed softcover copies of GHOST HERO by S. J. Rozan, the winner of the most recent Dilys Award. Join us also in welcoming author Archer Mayor, a Vermont friend of Rozan's and author of the Joe Gunther investigative series -- he'll be here at Kingdom Books at 2 pm for lively conversation around his own newest title, PARADISE CITY. We're giving away one of those, too!

BUT YOU NEED TO BE HERE TO WIN ONE OF THE THREE BOOKS! So please mark your calendar, and let Dave know you're coming (dknel@charter.net) and how many books you'd like to purchase. (Hint: The holidays are coming!) Join us to celebrate both the new Joe Gunther, and this Dilly of an award.

Oh yes, Archer Mayor's books get nominated for the Dilys, time and again ... maybe this will be the year he snags this enjoyable award for Joe Gunther at last.

Reviews This Week, and Dilys Celebration

Coming up: Much pleasure in reading a delightful debut mystery from Anna Loan-Wilsey, A Lack of Temperance. Also a discussion of the newest in the Billy Boyle series from James R. Benn, Death's Door, and a much-mulled-over  consideration of Port Villa Blues from Garry Disher.

Also, during Oct. 13-20 we're celebrating the Dilys Award, given since 1992 by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association -- check in for review of titles and authors that earned the award in the past, as well as the most recent one, Ghost Hero by S. J. Rozan.

Grand finale for the Dilys week: Meet Archer Mayor here at Kingdom Books at 2 pm on Saturday October 20. Mayor's new book Paradise City is the 23rd Joe Gunther investigation. At the end of the event, we'll give away two signed trade paperback copies of Ghost Hero courtesy of the publisher; we first met its author through Archer Mayor, so it all fits together!