Place Your Bets: The CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award for Thrillers

Seeking a heart attack? Try Toronto's Edge Walk.

Are you a Type T personality, the sort of person who jumps at the chance to sky dive, run with the bulls in Pamplona or kayak over a waterfall higher than Niagara? Most people don't go that far for thrills, but many of us love movies that raise the pulse and books that require breathing through the mouth while reading.

My name is Fleming, Ian Fleming.

The British Crime Writers Association's Ian Fleming Steel Dagger is awarded to the best thriller novel, including translated works, first published in the UK during the judging period. (For this year's Dagger, it's June 1, 2013 to May 31, 2014.) Thrillers nominated by their UK publishers "can be set in any period and include, but are not limited to, spy fiction and/or action/adventure stories. Ian Fleming said there was one essential criterion for a good thriller: that 'one simply has to turn the pages.' This is one of the main characteristics that the judges will be looking for."

Recent past winners include Roger Hobbs's Ghostman, featuring a pro criminal who has 48 hours to fix a botched casino robbery; A Foreign Country by Charles Cumming, in which a disgraced spy searches for Britain's missing SIS chief-to-be (see review here); and Gillian Flynn's take on a deeply troubled journalist covering the murders of two preteen girls in Sharp Objects.

Those Dagger winners are very different. The shortlisted books are also dissimilar, creating a difficult task for the judges and a headache for anyone trying to predict the judges' decision. Let's take a quick look at last year's shortlist. How does one choose between a criminal fixer (the eventual winner, Hobbs's Ghostman); former Nazis in Ireland (Stuart Neville's Ratlines, reviewed here); Franco's secret police during the Spanish Civil War (The Sentinel by Mark Oldfield); and the enigmatic kidnapping of a Mumbai billionaire's daughter (Robert Wilson's Capital Punishment, reviewed here)? I didn't read The Sentinel but I enjoyed the others. My interpretation of the judges' choice is that originality, adrenaline and momentum were key. Unfortunately for my prediction of this year's winner, the judges aren't the same.

So, let's take a look at this year's shortlist. (All of the books on the list have been published in the United States. The US publisher is given after the UK publisher.)

Apple Tree Yard by Louise Doughty (Faber & Faber; Sarah Crichton Books)
An Officer and a Spy by Robert Harris (Random House; Knopf)
I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes (Bantam; Atria/Emily Bestler Books)
Natchez Burning by Greg Iles (HarperCollins; William Morrow)

The Oscars telecast features little clips of the nominated movies and Read Me Deadly follows that lead with thumbnail synopses of the Steel Dagger shortlist:

In Doughty's psychological suspense, Apple Tree Yard, eminent British geneticist Dr. Yvonne Carmichael is married to a fellow scientist and mother of two grown children. Her sexual liaison with a stranger (she calls him X) eventually leads to her appearance at the Old Bailey, charged with murder.

Harris's An Officer and a Spy is based on the real Dreyfus Affair in France at the end of the 19th century. Alfred Dreyfus has been sentenced to life imprisonment for treason when Col. Georges Picquart, head of France's counterespionage, investigates and comes to believe in his innocence.

Hayes's I Am Pilgrim features a race between a Middle Eastern terrorist's unfolding plot and an espionage/forensics specialist's attempt to identify and stop him.

The mayor of Natchez, Mississippi confronts a history of racial violence when his well-respected father faces murder charges in Iles's Natchez Burning, first book in a planned southern trilogy about family, honor and redemption.

Prediction: My Edgars predictions (here and here) were a piece of cake compared to forecasting the winner of this year's Ian Fleming Steel Dagger. As usual, I'll try not to divulge spoilers when I explain the thinking that leads to my pick.

Louise Doughty

In many ways, Doughty's Apple Tree Yard reminds me of one of the books that contended for this year's Edgar Award for Best Novel, Sandrine's Case, by Thomas H. Cook. Both novels begin in a courtroom, where a narrator of questionable reliability is on trial for murder. They, like the other main characters, are intelligent, accomplished people who are rather unlikable. The events that landed each in court are foretold by hints and divulged in a skillfully controlled way over the course of the book while the court case continues. The readers watch the piecing together of a jigsaw puzzle that's completed only near the end.

Apple Tree Yard, like Sandrine's Case, is very suspenseful. It is a chilling story about how we see ourselves and others and the devastating ways these perceptions can deceive us. I enjoyed the book and it definitely had me flipping the pages but it engaged my head more than my heart.

Robert Harris

On to the next candidate, Harris's historical fiction, An Officer and a Spy (reviewed here). It reads as an honest retelling of the infamous Dreyfus Affair and doesn't give in to melodrama. Rather than making Dreyfus his main character, Harris (author of the alternate-history novel Fatherland, in which Germany won World War II) gives that role to Colonel Picquart. It's an interesting choice. As the momentum of Picquart's investigation builds, we witness both Picquart's growth and change and the emerging proof of Dreyfus's innocence.

I agree with Sister Mary that this is a riveting read. Had it pulled in more historical background, I think it would have a better chance of claiming the Dagger.

Terry Hayes

Hayes' book, I Am Pilgrim (reviewed here), is a 624-page thriller. It's a rambling mishmash of police procedural, super-secret spy agency stuff, personal sagas and action adventure that begins with a crime scene in a seedy New York City hotel room, where we meet the forensics genius and loner known as Scott Murdoch, who later becomes Pilgrim. While the story backtracks to trace Scott's path to that hotel room, we also meet a young boy in Saudi Arabia who grows up to be a dangerous terrorist Pilgrim calls "the Saracen." It is Pilgrim's task to identify the Saracen, discover what plot he's planning and where it will hatch. This involves a far-flung and dangerous investigation that evokes painful memories for Pilgrim.

I had some problems with this book. I found the Saracen, although dastardly, in some ways more sympathetic than Pilgrim. He is certainly a more believable character. We are led to believe that Pilgrim is a brilliant forensics expert/spy, yet he makes some ludicrous mistakes necessary to advance the plot. These mistakes, and the number of convenient coincidences, stuck in my craw and affected my suspension of disbelief. That said, I still found the book entertaining and I bet it will make a blockbuster movie.

Greg Iles

Greg Iles has a long unsettling tale to tell about the history and consequences of racial hatred. Apparently 800 pages isn't enough, because his Natchez Burning is the first in a projected trilogy (The Bone Tree is due May 2015 and Unwritten Laws will arrive in May 2016).

I said earlier that Doughty's Apple Tree Yard reminds me of Cook's 2014 Edgar-nominated Sandrine's Case. Iles's book brings to mind a book nominated for that same Best Novel Edgar, William Kent Krueger's Ordinary Grace. Iles, like Krueger, is intimately familiar with his novel's setting, its people and their history. His book is also a powerful story about the need to right a wrong and how an adult's perception of an authority figure differs from that of his childhood. We know lawyer/writer/now-mayor Penn Cage from three excellent books and this is the best one yet. Ordinary Grace won the Edgar and I think Natchez Burning, a page-turning thriller and more, will win the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger.

Title Drawn Out of a Hat: Harris's An Officer and a Spy

I liked all of these books and I won't be surprised or disappointed if the judges' pick isn't the one I predict. Tell me, which do you think will be announced the winner on October 24th?

Firecrackers for the Fourth of July

Do I need to remind you this Friday is the Fourth of July? Many of us Americans will be celebrating our country's birthday by hitting the road for a three-day weekend. Packing a terrific book is crucial, and do I have a few sure-fire reads for you!

Let's begin with the trip itself. We'll assume you're traveling with an adult companion. To pass the time, you could jointly tackle one of those impossible British cryptic crossword puzzles. If that attempt fizzles, and your conversation falters, fuel it with a controversy. Note I said "fuel," not "use flamethrower." Keep in mind that topics such as "your no-good cousin, the one we have to keep bailing out of jail" or "your rotten taste in men that always gets you in trouble" could ruin the trip before you reach the destination. A better choice for a delectable bone of contention is provided by Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, edited by Joe Levy and published by Wenner Books in 2005. Where would you rank albums by Elvis Presley, the Stones, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Chuck Berry?

Maybe you and your travel mate would rather sing songs instead of merely talk about them (hopefully, you're belting out lyrics in your car and not on my Southwest flight to Portland, Oregon). Take along Reading Lyrics, edited by Robert Gottlieb and Robert Kimball. It covers more than 1,000 lyrics, by more than 100 American and British song writers, from 1900 to 1975. It's a book you can use once you reach your destination, too. Hand it to your significant other while you slip into the shower. He or she can sit braced against the shower door and feed you lyrics. The two of you can warble a duet à la Natalie Cole and her father, Nat King Cole, with "Unforgettable."

Alternatively, loll in the tub with mai tais and accompany lyrics from the musical South Pacific with rhythmic splashing and drumming toes. Create some personal fireworks and then towel off to "People Will Say We're in Love" from the Broadway hit Oklahoma!. Or, commemorate American independence with a bathtub reenactment of the Boston Tea Party (Twinings English Breakfast tea would be ideal here) and a spirited rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner." (Note: This last suggestion is open to suitable modification. If you're an American in the tub with a Brit, this scenario will work well; if your tub mate is French, pay tribute to Lafayette, the aristocratic French general who fought on the Americans' side in the Revolutionary War, with beaucoup toasts of champagne. If you're sharing the tub with a fellow American of the opposite political party, display patriotism as currently practiced in the United States by trying to drown each other.)

If you're alone in the tub, there's no better place to begin Terry Hayes's I Am Pilgrim (Emily Bestler Books/Atria, May 27, 2014), which opens with a brilliant forensics expert, whom we come to know as Scott Murdoch (aka the Pilgrim), prowling around a squalid Manhattan hotel room, while an unidentifiable young woman lies in a bathtub full of acid. She appears to be the victim of a perfect, albeit gruesome, murder, but the roles she, the killer, and NYPD homicide detective Ben Bradley play in the multi-layered plot will only fully be revealed much later in this book of 600+ pages.

Meanwhile, we weave in and out of a jumble of Scott's troubled memories of people and places, piecing together his relationship with his folks, his recruitment into espionage by the Division, and his duties as a federal agent policing American spies in Europe and Asia before 9/11. Scott has barely taken early retirement when he is asked to investigate evidence of a terrorist plot found in Afghanistan. There is plenty of foreshadowing, but we readers are already following the separate story thread of a determined jihadi, codenamed "the Saracen," as he witnesses his father's beheading in Saudi Arabia, moves with his stricken mother and sisters to Bahrain, and forms the belief that the way to strike back at Saudi rulers is through their enablers in the West. It's a fascinating to and fro, watching Saracen's unfolding plot and Pilgrim's attempts to identify and stop him.

By the time we reach the ticking-clock finale, we've visited many locations, watched ingenious maneuvering and deductions, and met a host of complex characters. We may not be rooting for Saracen, but we understand him. The book could have used some trimming, and there are some exceedingly grisly scenes. But this first in an anticipated trilogy by Hayes, a movie screenwriter and producer of Payback and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, is a highly entertaining espionage thriller I was reluctant to put down.

Speaking of highly entertaining, let me tell you about Lenny Kleinfeld's wild and witty Some Dead Genius (Niaux-Noir Books, May 30, 2014), which forced me to repeatedly put the book down, squeeze my eyes shut, clamp my lips closed, and re-route laughter through my nose out of courtesy to other people on the train.

This hardboiled black comedy involves a series of artists' murders investigated by the pair of smart, but cynical Chicago cops we first met in Shooters & Chasers (see review here): Mark Bergman, a 35-year-old hunk who goes through women like a dolphin goes through waves, and John "Doonie" Dunegan, a happily married family man. In Some Dead Genius, which can be read as a standalone, they're joined by a cast of colorful characters that includes mobsters, artists, politicians, and journalists. The book is R-rated for violence, sex, and language. Its structure allows a reader to tag along with the criminals, one of whom is so racked with guilt, I had to root for him; as well as watch Doonie and Mark chase the clues (I rooted for them, too). Chicago locations are put to good use; at one point, the cops pursue the killers through the Art Institute in an extended cinematic scene that could have been choreographed by Quentin Tarantino, had he channeled the Marx Brothers.

I've been a Kleinfeld fan since the late Leighton Gage raved about him after judging books for the Best First Novel Edgar. Kleinfeld's fast-paced books are likely to appeal to fans of Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen, but it's difficult to convey the high energy and originality of the prose without a sample, so here you go:

Tesca [a "semi-simian" loan shark] grabbed Dale's ear and dragged the squealing art dealer past forlorn walls pimpled with empty picture hooks, up a short set of stairs to a sleeping loft. Only thing in it was an air mattress, lost inside the imprint left by a king-size bed; Dale's furniture had marched out the door months ago. Tesca kicked the air mattress out of the way as he strode to the closet, with Dale's ear and what was attached to it lurching after him.

Some Dead Genius would make a very fun vacation companion this weekend.

I'll be back on Thursday to tell you about a few more good weekend reads: Josh Malerman's Bird Box and Adam Brookes's Night Heron.

Note: I received a free advance review copy of Some Dead Genius from the author.