The Duncan Lawrie Dagger 2008

Judges’ comments: ‘A passionate response to recent events in America. Burke uses crime fiction at its most atmospheric to explore the fallout after Hurricane Katrina, and to expose the government's abandonment of people who suffered in the aftermath.’

Synopsis: New Orleans is awash with corpses after Hurricane Katrina unleashes its awesome power. In a city patrolled only by looters, all law and order gone, the survivors wait in trees or on rooftops for help that never comes.

In a landscape transformed into a violent wasteland, Dave Robicheaux must investigate the shooting of two looters and find out why some very dangerous people are hunting a third. Is it because they unwittingly ransacked the house of a notorious mob boss? Or did a chance encounter with the father of a raped girl seal their fate? As Robicheaux starts to uncover a ruthless tale of greed, torture and murder, his own family comes under threat from a sinister psychopath, and the devastated city provides the perfect stage for a final confrontation between good and evil.

James Lee Burke was born in Houston, Texas, in 1936 and grew up on the Texas-Louisiana gulf coast. He attended Southwestern Louisiana Institute and later received a BA Degree in English and an MA from the University of Missouri in 1958 and 1960 respectively. Over the years he worked as a landman for Sinclair Oil Company, pipeliner, land surveyor, newspaper reporter, college English professor, social worker on Skid Row in Los Angeles, clerk for the Louisiana Employment Service, and instructor in the US Job Corps.

Burke's work has been awarded an Edgar twice for Best Crime Novel of the Year. He has also been a recipient of a Breadloaf and Guggenheim Fellowship and an NEA grant. Two of his novels, Heaven's Prisoners and Two For Texas, have been made into motion pictures. His novel The Lost Get-Back Boogie was rejected 111 times over a period of nine years, and upon publication by Louisiana State University press was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. He and his wife, Pearl, have been married for 48 years, have four children, and live in Missoula, Montana, and New Iberia, Louisiana.

Website: www.jamesleeburke.com

Judges’ comments: ‘An engaging and quirky tale with the glamour of strangeness, featuring a highly original sleuth and a fascinating story woven around an honourable man in a corrupt regime, and people's struggle to survive in the People's Republic of Laos.’

Synopsis: Laos, 1972. The Communist Pathet Lao has taken over this former French colony. Most of the educated class has fled, but Dr Siri Paiboun, a Paris-trained doctor whose late wife had been an ardent Communist, remains. And so this 72-year-old physician is appointed state coroner, despite the fact that he has no training or even supplies to use in performing his new task. What he does have is curiosity and integrity. At his age he is not about to let a bunch of ignorant bureaucrats dictate to him.

One of his first cases involves three bodies recovered from a reservoir, but Dr Siri establishes that the cause of death was not drowning. These men seem to have been electrocuted, perhaps tortured, and they also seem to be Vietnamese, which could have international repercussions. And then there is the inexplicable death of a Party bigwig's equally important wife. She collapsed and died at a banquet. But Dr Siri doesn't think her death was from natural causes.

In the course of his investigations, Dr Siri must travel to his birthplace, a Hmong village he has not visited for more than 60 years, where he makes a profound discovery, not only about the motive for several murders, but about himself.

Colin Cotterill, author of four previous books in the Dr Siri Paiboun series, was born in London and taught in Australia, the US, Laos and Japan. His books have been BookSense Picks and he won the Dilys Award for Thirty-Three Teeth. He lives in Chumphone in the south of Thailand with his wife and several dogs. He has taught, trained teachers and worked for UNESCO in the region. For several years he was involved in the rehabilitation of abused and trafficked children. He now writes full time.

Judges’ comments: ‘A reinvigoration of the classic Private Eye tale, with the PI morphing into a parole officer who is forced to confront a taut range of moral and ethical issues. Irresistibly readable, and a wonderful evocation of small-town America.’

Synopsis: Joe Trumble is a probation officer with a tragedy in his past. Two years ago his fiancée was brutally killed three days before their wedding. No one has yet been caught. As the story opens, Joe is heading for a blind date with Marlene, a jewellery designer, his first encounter with a woman since his late fiancée Laurel's death.

The evening is a success, but next day Marlene is reported missing and, two days later, her body is found. As the last person to see her alive, Joe is at the very least a material witness and, as the evidence mounts and another body is found, suspicion begins to centre on him.

Born and raised in Detroit, Steve Hamilton graduated from the University of Michigan where he won the prestigious Hopwood Award for fiction. In 2006, he won the Michigan Author Award for his outstanding body of work. His novels have won numerous awards and media acclaim beginning with the very first in the Alex McKnight series, A Cold Day in Paradise, which won the Private Eye Writers of America/St. Martin's Press Award for Best First Mystery by an Unpublished Writer. Once published, it went on to win the MWA Edgar and the PWA Shamus Awards for Best First Novel, and was shortlisted for the Anthony and Barry Awards. Hamilton currently works for IBM in upstate New York where he lives with his wife, Julia, and their two children.

Judges’ comments: ‘A very innovative structure and a daring use of chronology are deployed in a story that investigates the disappearance of two little girls in a shopping mall. The protagonist is intriguing, family secrets are skilfully uncovered, suspense is ratcheted up, and there is a great twist at the end.’

Synopsis: A middle-aged woman causes an accident on the Baltimore Beltway, flees the scene and is later picked up wandering on the shoulder of the Interstate. The accident occurs just a mile from the former home of the Bethany family, Dave and Miriam and their daughters Sunny and Heather. Thirty years before, twelve-year-old Heather persuaded her older sister Sunny to let her tag along on a visit to the mall. Neither of the girls has been seen since.

Now, the woman on the Beltway claims to be Heather Bethany. Today she has a different name; a different identity. What has prompted this woman to announce her true - if it is true - identity at this moment?

Laura Lippman was a reporter for twenty years, including twelve years at The (Baltimore) Sun. She began writing novels while working full time and published seven books about “accidental PI” Tess Monaghan before leaving daily journalism in 2001. Her work has been awarded the Edgar, the Anthony, the Agatha, the Shamus, the Nero Wolfe, Gumshoe and Barry awards. She also has been nominated for other prizes in the crime fiction field, including the Hammett and the Macavity. She was the first-ever recipient of the Mayor’s Prize for Literary Excellence and the first genre writer recognised as Author of the Year by the Maryland Library Association.

Website: www.lauralippman.com

Judges’ comments: ‘A brilliant reinvention of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment yields a very sympathetic Russian-set investigator and a vivid, pungently-evoked sense of 19th century St Petersburg.’

Synopsis: It is the middle of a hot, dusty St Petersburg summer in the late 1860s. A doctor's wife and son die suddenly - and in excruciating pain. The doctor is arrested, suspected of poisoning. As investigator Porfiry Petrovich concedes, in such cases the obvious solution often turns out to be the correct one. And in the city's stifling, stinking atmosphere, even he lacks the energy to look any deeper. But when further (and apparently unconnected) murders occur, something like a pattern seems to emerge. Porfiry is forced to reassess his assumptions and follow a tenuous, uncertain trail that takes him into the hidden, squalid heart of the city and brings him face to face with incomprehensible horror and cruelty.

Born in Manchester in 1960, RN Morris now lives in North London with his wife and two young children. He read Classics at Cambridge University. One of his stories, The Devil’s Drum, has been turned into a one-act opera, which was performed at the Purcell Room in London’s South Bank. Another, Revenants, was published as a comic book. He writes contemporary urban fiction as Roger Morris and historical crime as RN Morris.

Website: www.rogernmorris.co.uk