2021 Barry Awards Announced

Established in 1997, the Barry Awards usually are presented at the annual Bouchercon World Mystery Convention, which was canceled again this year due to Covid-19. As a result, the winners of the 2021 Barry Awards—voted on by readers of the Deadly Pleasures mystery magazine—were announced last week. The winners are:

Best novel: Blacktop Wasteland, by S. A. Cosby (pictured, left)

Best First Novel: Winter Counts, by David Heska Wanbli Weiden

Best Paperback Original: Turn To Stone, by James W. Ziskin

Best Thriller: Eddie’s Boy, by Thomas Perry

The Barry Awards are named in honor of Barry Gardner, an American critic and lover of great crime fiction. Congratulations to all the nominees and winners! 

Six Crime Novels Inspired

By True Crime Cases

When a novelist is inspired by a real-world crime, what can you expect from the resulting book? As readers, we long for something beyond the basic facts, more than a recounting of who committed the act, much more than exactly how it happened. A fiction writer tends to be adept at bringing the reader directly into the experience, immerse them in the story, and give them a reason to keep reading. As author Sarah Warburton observes in Crime Reads, “That’s where the novel shines, insisting that we step inside a character and look at the world as someone else, making a crime story personal. Instead of pity and horror, we find ourselves sharing experiences, empathizing, in a way no other art form fully allows. The biggest questions in a novel based on a true crime case can’t be ‘whodunnit’ and ‘how.’ Through fiction, those questions do service to bigger ones: What kind of world is this? What kind of people are we?” The following six novels are only a few of Warburton’s favorites from the vast number of books inspired by real crimes.

Lizzie Borden House Bought

By U.S. Ghost Adventures

“Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks…” We all know the catchy rhyme about the infamous and gruesome 1892 double-murder of Andrew Borden and Abby Borden (actually Lizzie’s stepmother), in Fall River, Massachusetts, for which Lizzie was actually acquitted (after only 90 minutes of deliberation) the following summer. Mystery and supposition has clouded the incident ever since, but the house in which the murders took place, located at 230 2nd Street in Fall River (yes, I’ve been there), over the years has served as a private residence, museum, and bed and breakfast. Earlier this year it changed hands once again, acquired for $2 million by U.S. Ghost Adventures, a company that hosts more than 30 ghost tour experiences across the country. "We look forward to adding the Lizzie Borden house to our growing portfolio of haunted experiences and working with the staff to create new opportunities for guests," Lance Zaal, who founded the company in 2018, said in a press release. "We have exciting plans for the house, and a healthy transition for the staff and preserving the historical site are our top priorities.”

Was Brutal Murder A “Revenge

Killing” Of Alleged Rapist?

In 1995, police in Irvine, California investigated a particularly macabre murder of Gonzalo Ramirez, the young father of two little girls. What struck detective Larry Montgomery at the time was the truly horrific nature of the 24-year-old’s death, telling NBC Dateline, “I’ve been to a lot of scenes in my career, but this one was a little more gruesome just because of the sheer amount of injury to the body. He was definitely hacked to death.” Investigators were baffled by the brutal murder until they found the phone number of Norma Patricia Esparza, a college student (and now college professor), scribbled on one of Ramirez’ phone bills. When they questioned her, she revealed that not long before his death, Ramirez had sexually assaulted her, which she reported to a school nurse but not the police. Esparza had mentioned the assault to her boyfriend, and several weeks later Ramirez and a friend were involved in a minor fender-bender. Two men got out of the van that had bumped their car, attacked the alleged rapist, and took off with him. His mangled body was later found along a stretch of the 405 freeway….

Seven True Espionage

Stories About America

It’s easy to think of the Cold War era as the heyday of international spycraft and intelligence scandals, but stories about espionage in America are as old as the country itself—right up to the present day. There are hundreds of wonderful historical true crime books sitting on library shelves across the country, but this list from Novel Suspects offers several titles that cover more recent history—including the 2016 election, the presidency of Donald Trump, and the Russian influence on American politics. Many of these books are thrilling accounts of sometimes shocking events, but they also have plenty to say about the state of our democracy—past, present, and future. Whether you’re interested in learning more about digital surveillance or classic submarine spying, these seven books contain some of the most intriguing stories about American espionage there are.

     “Reed Bunzel hits all the right notes in Seven-Thirty Thursday (Suspense Publishing), an intensely personal tale that has echoes of both Greg Isles and John Hart. 
     "Rick Devlin is living proof of the old Thomas Wolfe adage that you can’t go home again, especially in the wake of his mother’s murder at his father’s hand in his once-beloved Charleston, South Carolina. That is, until new evidence surfaces suggesting that his father may be innocent, leading Devlin to launch his own investigation. It turns out pretty much everyone involved is hiding something, and it’s up to him to sort through the grisly morass to get to the truth.
     “This is Southern gothic writing extraordinaire, establishing Bunzel as a kind of William Faulkner of the thriller-writing world. His effortless prose crackles with color and authenticity as the brooding Charleston skies set the stage for the storm that’s coming.”

—Providence Journal