The 2011 ITW Thriller Award for the Best Hard Cover Novel

Another set of award nominations have been announced: The 2011 ITW Thriller Award Nominees presented by the International Thriller Writers.

ITW Thriller Awards are given out at the ITW’s ThrillerFest VI. This year it will be held at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City on July 6-9, 2010. The winners will be announced on July 9.

Best Hard Cover Novel

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The Edge: A Novel

Author: Deaver, Jeffery
Format: Hardcover
Type: Thriller Novel
Page Count: 397pp.
Pub. Date: November 2010
Publisher: Simon and Schuster Adult Publishing Group

Nominated for the 2011 ITW Thriller Award for the Best Hard Cover Novel

Publisher’s Summary:
Behind the well-known U.S. security organizations — the FBI and CIA among them — lies a heavily guarded, anonymous government agency dedicated to intelligence surveillance and to a highly specialized brand of citizen protection.

Shock waves of alarm ripple through the clandestine agency when Washington, D.C., police detective Ryan Kessler inexplicably becomes the target of Henry Loving, a seasoned, ruthless “lifter” hired to obtain information using whatever means necessary.

While Loving is deft at torture, his expertise lies in getting an “edge” on his victim — leverage — usually by kidnapping or threatening family until the “primary” caves under pressure.

The job of keeping the Kessler family alive falls to a man named Corte, a senior federal protection officer known as a “shepherd.”

Uncompromising, relentlessly devoted to protecting those in his care and a passionate board game aficionado, he applies brilliant gaming strategy to his work. For Corte, the reappearance of Loving — the man who, six years earlier, had tortured and killed someone close to him — is also an opportunity to avenge his friend’s death.

The assignment soon escalates into a fast-paced duel between Corte and Loving, a dangerous volley of wits and calculated risks.

As he shepherds the Kesslers to a concealed safe house, Corte must anticipate Loving’s every step as the lifter moves in on his prey, and with the help of razor-sharp investigator Claire DuBois and his longtime ally, FBI agent Paul Fredericks, pinpoint which of Kessler’s seemingly insignificant cases has triggered Loving’s return.

As the team digs deeper, each of the Kesslers comes under close scrutiny, and in captivity their family bonds are stretched to the breaking point — as the lifter draws near, Corte must ultimately choose between protecting his charges and exposing them to a killer in the name of long-awaited revenge.

The Burying Place (Jonathan Stride Series #5)

Author: Freeman, Brian
Format: Hardcover
Type: Thriller Novel
Page Count: 352pp.
Pub. Date: April 2010
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press

Nominated for the 2011 ITW Thriller Award for the Best Hard Cover Novel

The audio book is available from the CLEVNET eMedia Collection.

Publisher’s Summary:
In the quiet town of Grand Rapids, Minnesota, a baby vanishes from her bedroom in an opulent lakeside home. Was she abducted — or does her father have a terrible secret to hide?

That same night, a young policewoman gets lost in the fog and stumbles into the middle of a horrific crime. Now a sadistic killer wants her to play his deadly game.

Lieutenant Jonathan Stride and his team need to move fast to save a child and stop a vicious killing spree. As fear grips the frozen winter farm lands, Stride knows that every snow-covered field may be the next burying place.

Each twist in the investigation takes Stride into an elaborate web of deceit and desire. But his biggest obstacles may be the very people he’s trying to help. With everything at risk and time running out, Stride worries how far a desperate mother will go to rescue her baby — and how far a desperate cop will go to save herself.

Skin (Jack Caffery Series #4)

Author: Hayder, Mo
Format: Hardcover
Type: Thriller Novel
Page Count: 382pp.
Pub. Date: January 2010
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Nominated for the 2011 ITW Thriller Award for the Best Hard Cover Novel

Publisher’s Summary:
In her eerie and hair-raising thriller Skin, Mo Hayder trails her two unforgettable protagonists as they race to staunch a rising tide of blood in a sweltering port town.

When the decomposing body of a young woman is found, the wounds on her wrists suggest an open-and-shut case of suicide. But Jack Caffery is not so sure. Other apparent suicides are cropping up, and they all have a connection to Elf’s Grotto, a nearly bottomless network of flooded quarries just outside the city.

Caffery begins to suspect a shadowy and sinister predator, someone — or something — that can disappear into darkness and slip into houses unseen. Working alongside Caffery is rough-and-tough police diver Flea Marley, but while pursuing her investigation, she stumbles upon something far too close to home that no one — not even Caffery — can help her face.

Skin is a penetrating dissection of family, friendships, and the evil that can tear them apart — or bind them together. Devious and disturbing, it introduces one of Hayder’s most horrifying villains yet.

Bad Blood (Virgil Flowers Series #4)

Author: Sandford, John
Format: Hardcover
Type: Thriller Novel
Page Count: 400pp.
Pub. Date: September 2010
Publisher: Penguin Group

Nominated for the 2011 ITW Thriller Award for the Best Hard Cover Novel

Publisher’s Summary:
The brilliant new Virgil Flowers thriller from the #1 New York Times-bestselling author.

One late fall Sunday in southern Minnesota, a farmer brings a load of soybeans to a local grain elevator — and a young man hits him on the head with a steel bar, drops him into the grain bin, waits until he’s sure he’s dead, and then calls the sheriff to report the “accident”.

Suspicious, the sheriff calls in Virgil Flowers, who quickly breaks the kid down . . . and the next day the boy’s found hanging in his cell.

Remorse?

Virgil isn’t so sure, and as he investigates he begins to uncover a multigeneration, multifamily conspiracy — a series of crimes of such monstrosity that, though he’s seen an awful lot in his life, even he has difficulty in comprehending it . . . and in figuring out what to do next.

The 2011 ITW Thriller Award Nominations Series:

Part 1 — Best Hard Cover Novel
Part 2 — Best Paperback Original
Part 3 — Best First Novel
Part 4 — Best Short Story
Part 5 — The 2011 ITW Thriller Award Winners