Thriller Awards

July 13, 2009

Here are the Thriller Awards this year:

2009
ThrillerMaster: David Morrell
Silver Bullet Award: Brad Meltzer
Silver Bullet Corporate Award: Dollar General
(winners announced July 11, 2009)

Best Thriller Of The Year
Hold Tight by Harlan Coben
The Bodies Left Behind by Jeffery Deaver*
The Broken Window by Jeffery Deaver
The Dark Tide by Andrew Gross
The Last Patriot by Brad Thor

Best First Novel
Calumet City by Charlie Newton
Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith*
Criminal Paradise by Steven Thomas
Sacrifice by S. J. Bolton
The Killer's Wife by Bill Floyd

Best Short Story
Between the Dark and the Daylight (Ellery Queen Magazine) by Tom Piccirilli
Last Island South (Ellery Queen Magazine) by John C. Boland
The Edge of Seventeen (The Darker Mask) by Alexandra Sokoloff*
The Point Guard (Killer Year Anthology) by Jason Pinter
Time of the Green (Killer Year Anthology) by Ken Bruen

I'm not sure that any of you care, or even should care. I do want to point out two sort of interesting things. First, I was a judge for the Thriller Award, in the category of Best Thriller of the Year. The second point I want to make, which is a very strange oddity, is that due to the way the Thriller judging was done last year--ie., judges were paired and given about 30 books to read--I did not read any of the titles that made the short list, let alone the one that won. NONE. Frankly, I don't know what to think of that, so I'll just leave it at that.

Cheers,

Mark Terry