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Andy Straka (born September 29, 1958) [1] is a Shamus Award-winning American crime novelist. [2] Born and raised in upstate New York and a graduate of Williams College, he worked in publishing and medical sales for nearly fifteen years before turning to writing in the late 1990s. His debut private-eye novel, A Witness Above, garnered Shamus, Anthony, and Agatha Award nominations for Best First Novel in 2002. A Killing Sky received an Anthony Award nomination in 2003, and Straka's third book, Cold Quarry, won a 2004 Shamus Award. His series of six Frank Pavlicek novels features a former New York City police detective who also spends much of his time flying various hawks to help inspire him to solve criminal cases. The fourth novel in the Pavlicek series, Kitty Hitter, was called a "great read" by Library Journal. Kitty Hitter was re-released with a new title, The Night Falconer, as an e-book and paperback. A fifth book featuring Pavlicek is the novella Flightfall. Another full-length novel, The K Street Hunting Society, was released as book 6 in the Pavlicek series in 2014.
Straka's inaugural non-series novel, Record of Wrongs, was labelled "a first-rate thriller" by Mystery Scene magazine in 2008. His second non-series novel was The Blue Hallelujah. Publishers Weekly magazine also cited Straka among a featured group of "rising stars in crime fiction." His other books include the recently optioned for television sci-fi thriller series Dragonflies.
Straka also has written a short story, Directions For Disassembly Of An Old Set Of Swings, and he recently reworked his first novel, A Witness Above, into an edition for teenagers, including a falconry primer.
Straka's interests range from parenting and basketball (he was co-captain of his college team) to English and predatory birds (he is a licensed falconer). Straka appears at select conferences and events and is a frequent presenter at the nearly two-decades-old 'Virginia Festival of the Book, and he is a co-founder of the popular Crime Wave program of panels and speakers at the annual event.
Harlan Coben is an American writer of mystery novels and thrillers. The plots of his novels often involve the resurfacing of unresolved or misinterpreted events in the past, murders, or fatal accidents and have multiple twists. Among his novels are two series, each involving the same protagonist set in and around New York and New Jersey; some characters appear in both.
Robert Crais is an American author of detective fiction. Crais began his career writing scripts for television shows such as Hill Street Blues, Cagney & Lacey, Quincy, Miami Vice and L.A. Law. His writing is influenced by Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Ernest Hemingway, Robert B. Parker and John Steinbeck. Crais has won numerous awards for his crime novels. Lee Child has cited him in interviews as one of his favourite American crime writers. The novels of Robert Crais have been published in 62 countries and are bestsellers around the world. Robert Crais received the Ross Macdonald Literary Award in 2006 and was named Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America in 2014.
Loren D. Estleman is an American writer of detective and Western fiction. He is known for a series of crime novels featuring the investigator Amos Walker.
Warren Burton Murphy was an American author, most famous as the co-creator of The Destroyer series, the basis for the film Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins.
Karin Slaughter is an American crime writer. She has written 21 novels, which have sold more than 40 million copies and have been published in 120 countries. Her first novel, Blindsighted (2001), was published in 27 languages and made the Crime Writers' Association's Dagger Award shortlist for "Best Thriller Debut" of 2001.
Earl Emerson is an American mystery novelist and author.
Ken Bruen is an Irish writer of hard-boiled and noir crime fiction.
Bill Pronzini is an American writer of detective fiction. He is also an active anthologist, having compiled more than 100 collections, most of which focus on mystery, western, and science fiction short stories. Pronzini is known as the creator of the San Francisco-based Nameless Detective, who starred in over 40 books from the early 1970s into the 2000s.
The Lincoln Lawyer is a 2005 novel, the 16th by American crime writer Michael Connelly. It introduces Los Angeles attorney Mickey Haller, half-brother of Connelly's mainstay character Detective Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch.
Steve Hamilton is a mystery writer who is known for the Alex McKnight series. Apart from his Alex McKnight books, Hamilton has written Night Work and The Lock Artist. His works have won the Edgar Award, Shamus Award and Barry Award.
Michael Wiley writes the Shamus Award-nominated Franky Dast mysteries, the Shamus Award-nominated Sam Kelson Chicago PI mystery series, the Daniel Turner thrillers, and the Shamus Award-winning Joe Kozmarski hard-boiled detective mystery series.
Rick Mofina is a Canadian author of crime fiction and thriller novels. He grew up in Belleville, Ontario and began writing short stories in school. He sold his first short story at the age of fifteen. As a member of the Mystery Writers of America, the International Thriller Writers, the International Crime Writers Association, and the Crime Writers' Association and Crime Writers of Canada, Rick continues to be a featured panelist at mystery conferences across the United States and Canada.
Libby Fischer Hellmann is an American crime fiction writer who currently resides in Chicago, Illinois. Most of her novels and stories are set in Chicago; the Chicago Sun-Times notes that she "grew up in Washington, D.C., but she has embraced her adopted home of Chicago with the passion of a convert."
Kelli Stanley is an American author of mystery-thrillers. The majority of her published fiction is written in the genres of historical crime fiction and noir. Her best known work, the Miranda Corbie series, is set in San Francisco, her adoptive hometown.
Gerald Moody Ford was an American crime and thriller novelist, writing as G. M. Ford.
S. J. Rozan is an American architect and writer of detective fiction and thrillers, based in New York City. She also co-writes a paranormal thriller series under the pseudonym Sam Cabot with Carlos Dews.
Dave Zeltserman is an American novelist, born in Boston, Massachusetts on 23 May 1959. He has published noir, mystery, thriller, and horror novels, including Small Crimes and Pariah. He won both the Shamus and Derringer awards for his novelette Julius Katz in 2010. He also writes Morris Brick serial killer thrillers under the pseudonym Jacob Stone. His novel Small Crimes was made into a Netflix Original film starring Nikolaj Coster-Waldau.
Brad Parks is an American author of mystery novels and thrillers. He is the winner of the 2010 and 2014 Shamus Award, the 2010 Nero Award and the 2013 and 2014 Lefty Award. He is the only author to have won all three of those awards. He writes both standalone domestic suspense novels and a series featuring investigative reporter Carter Ross, who covers crime for a fictional newspaper The Newark Eagle-Examiner, based in Newark, New Jersey. His novels are known for mixing humor with the gritty realism of their urban setting. Library Journal has called him "a gifted storyteller ."
P. J. Parrish is a pseudonym used by Detroit-born sisters Kelly Nichols and Kristy Montee in writing their critically acclaimed and commercially successful Louis Kincaid series of mystery thriller novels, which have won an International Thriller Writers Award, a Shamus Award from the Private Eye Writers of America, an Anthony Award, and a finalist for the Edgar Award, given by the Mystery Writers of America.
Lia Matera is a Canadian author of two series of mystery novels and short stories.