Ridgefield High Alum Adds Another Literary Award to His Shelf for Mystery Series

Press release:

Author Brad Parks, a 1992 graduate of Ridgefield High School, has won the Shamus Award for Best Hardcover Novel, the highest annual honor given by the Private Eye Writers of America and one of the most prestigious awards in crime fiction.
Parks won for his 2013 book The Good Cop, beating out a star-studded shortlist that included works by Sue Grafton and Bill Pronzini, both Mystery Writers of America Grand Masters and three-time Shamus winners.

The award, which is judged by a panel of authors, was presented to Parks on Friday by Sara Paretsky, another MWA Grand Master, at a banquet in Long Beach, Calif. “Shamus” is a slang term for a private investigator.
“I’m mostly just stunned,” Parks said. “Given who I was up against, I never expected they were going to call my name. This is way beyond anything I could have dreamed for myself when I started writing fiction.”

Parks has previously won the Shamus Award in the category of Best First Novel for his 2009 debut, Faces of the Gone. By following that up with this year’s award, Parks achieved a historic first: no former Best First winner had ever gone on to win Best Hardcover Novel.

Past winners in Best Hardcover Novel include perennial New York Times bestselling authors Michael Connelly, Lawrence Block and Robert Crais.

The Good Cop, the fourth novel featuring Parks’ wisecracking investigative reporter Carter Ross, also won the Lefty Award for best humorous mystery earlier this year. No book has ever captured both honors.
The series will continue with a sixth entry, The Fraud, in July, and Parks will be back in the area touring to support it.

This is the fifth national writing award for Parks, who has now won two Shamuses, two Leftys and the Nero Award, named in honor of legendary fictional detective Nero Wolfe. Parks remains the only author to have won all three of those prizes.

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