He Who Laughs Last Laughs Lastiest

You get good weeks and you get bad weeks and I guess this is one of the good weeks. Yesterday I heard that ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL has been shortlisted for the ‘Goldsboro Last Laugh Award’, which will be conferred at Crimefest in Bristol for ‘the best humorous crime novel first published in the British Isles in 2011’.
  And that list of nominees in full:

- Declan Burke for Absolute Zero Cool (Liberties Press)
- Colin Cotterill for Killed at the Whim of a Hat (Quercus)
- Chris Ewan for The Good Thief's Guide to Venice (Simon & Schuster)
- Christopher Fowler for Bryant & May and the Memory of Blood (Doubleday)
- Carl Hiaasen for Star Island (Sphere)
- Doug Johnstone for Smokeheads (Faber and Faber)
- Elmore Leonard for Djibouti (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
- L.C. Tyler for Herring on the Nile (Macmillan)

  It’s obligatory - but no less accurate for all that - to point out that I haven’t a hope of winning given the stellar quality of the shortlist, but seriously, it really is very nice just to be mentioned in the same company.
  I was shortlisted for the ‘Last Laugh Award’ before, actually, back in 2008, when Ruth Dudley Edwards won it with MURDERING AMERICANS. The book was THE BIG O, which was deliberately conceived as a homage to some of my favourite crime writers, Elmore Leonard, Carl Hiaasen and Barry Gifford. And here we are, four years later, having written an entirely different kind of comic novel to THE BIG O, and staring down the twin barrels of Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen …
  So there you have it. There’s been more good news this week, and it’s actually better news than the ‘Last Laugh’ nomination, but today I’m strapped for time because I’m in the middle of proofing a collection of essays that I think will blow your socks off, and I better crack on. Have a great weekend, everyone …