The 2009 Edgar Award Winners are NOT the "Johnnies"



"Young man, there's a place you can go... I said young man, when you're short on your dough..."

On the base would be some damn Nathaniel Hawthorne quote about "lucubration," plus your year, name, and publisher

So they gave out the Nebulas last week in Los Angeles and then they gave out the Edgar Awards immediately afterward in New York. Next they will do the Hugos, a completely different award ceremony for speculative fiction and fantasy.Why don't they just have one awards ceremony for genre fiction? In addition to mysteries and sci-fi, they could do westerns, romance, graphic novels, young adult, and horror...They could even give out an award for "literary fiction" just to be assholes. It would be a gas! Everyone who reads would get excited about the "Outstanding Genre Fiction Awards."(It's fun to stay at the O-G-F-A!)They could even televise them. They would call them the "Johnnies." The statues would be solid-gold table-lamps to symbolize fiction that keeps you up all night, turning pages.Anyway, here's who won the Edgar Awards this year:# Best Novel -- "Blue Heaven," by C.J. Box"A twelve-year-old girl and her younger brother go on the run in the woods of North Idaho, pursued by four men they have just watched commit murder -- four men who know exactly who William and Annie are, and who know exactly where their desperate mother is waiting for news of her children's fate. Retired cops from Los Angeles, the killers easily persuade the inexperienced sheriff to let them lead the search for the missing children.William and Annie's unexpected savior comes in the form of an old-school rancher teetering on the brink of foreclosure. But as one man against four who will stop at nothing to silence their witnesses, Jess Rawlins needs allies, and he knows that one word to the wrong person could seal the fate of the children or their mother."OH SHIT DON'T KILL THOSE KIDS# Best First Novel by an American Author -- "The Foreigner," by Francie Lin"Emerson Chang is a mild mannered bachelor on the cusp of forty, a financial analyst in a neatly pressed suit, a child of Taiwanese immigrants who doesn't speak a word of Chinese, and, well, a virgin. His only real family is his mother, whose subtle manipulations have kept him close -- all in the name of preserving an obscure idea of family and culture.But when his mother suddenly dies, Emerson sets out for Taipei to scatter her ashes, and to convey a surprising inheritance to his younger brother, Little P. Now enmeshed in the Taiwanese criminal underworld, Little P seems to be running some very shady business out of his uncle's karaoke bar, and he conceals a secret -- a crime that has not only severed him from his family, but may have annihilated his conscience. Hoping to appease both the living and the dead, Emerson isn't about to give up the inheritance until he uncovers Little P's past, and saves what is left of his family."LITTLE P SAY YOU ARE SORRY# Best Paperback Original (I guess this means best thriller published straight-to-paperback?) -- "China Lake," by Meg Gardiner"Evan Delaney is a heroine of our times: a woman with a big heart, a quick tongue and a hot temper that gets her into trouble. She is shocked to discover that Tabitha, her ex-sister-in-law, has joined The Remnant -- the Reverend Pete Wyoming's fanatical band of disciples. And that Tabitha is trying to regain custody of her six-year-old son, Luke, currently in Evan's care while his father is posted to the Naval Air Warfare Center. Then one of the Remnant is killed, and Evan's brother is the prime suspect. With her boyfriend, lawyer Jesse Blackburn, Evan tries to clear her brother's name and rescue her nephew. In doing so, she finds herself caught up in a wild plan to steal weapons, and a blazing inferno on a Santa Barbara hillside."SHE SHALL RIDE A MAN NAMED JESSE AND SASS SHALL BE HER FLAMETHROWER# Best Short Story -- "Skinhead Central," by T. Jefferson ParkerIn this short story, a young skinhead named Dale steals jewelry from an ex-cop and his wife, but it turns out that the kid and his brother have had an abusive past, and so the cop decides to intervene in their future.If you want to read this story, you are going to have to buy the anthology called "The Blue Religion" (edited by Michael Connelly) which is stories about being a cop, wanting to be a cop, retiring from being a cop, making love to cops, hanging out with cops in taco bars, cops going on double-dates to ice-cream parlors, and cops puting on a "big dance show" in order to make enough money to keep Mr. Mooney's Candy Store from going out of business due to Doofus Pete's funky tax return.***Come on, people. The Johnnies. You know you want this.