2017 Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction Shortlist

The shortlist for the 2017 Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction was announced by the ABA Law Journal and University of Alabama Law School earlier today.

On the shortlist are:

1.) Gone Again by James Grippando;

2.) Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult; and,

3.) The Last Days of Night by Graham Moore.

As with most literary awards I have not read any of the books.

Certainly Grippando, Picoult and Moore are all well known authors.

In 2011 I loved Moore’s book, The Sherlockian. There were past and present mysteries involving Holmes. In my review I said:

Both White and Doyle work to solve their mysteries by Holmesian methods. We have a devout Sherlockian and the author of Holmes trying to be Holmes. The book is a triumph of logic. It is a rare mystery so devoted to logical reasoning. There are no leaps of intuition and but rare coincidences or fortunate circumstances.

It tied for third on Bill’s Best of Fiction in 2011.

I exchanged emails with Moore on the question of whether a person can cause their own death by strangulation by tying and tightening a ligature around their neck. I referred to a criminal trial which involved a young woman who tied many ligatures around in neck. Here is a link to that post - http://mysteriesandmore.blogspot.ca/2011/03/email-exchange-with-graham-moore-author.html

With regard to this year’s award there were 25 books submitted. A few years ago, after John Grisham won for the second time, the criteria were tweaked to provide previous winners could not win again.

This year’s panel of judges are:

Deborah Johnson, winner of the 2015 Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction and 

author of The Secret of Magic; Cassandra King, author of The Same Sweet Girls 

Guide to Life; Don Noble, host of Alabama Public Radio’s book review series as 

well as host of “Bookmark,” which airs on Alabama Public Television and Han 

Nolan, author of Dancing on the Edge.

They are described as a panel of writers.

For unexplained reasons the Award will be handed out at the University of Alabama this year rather than at the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C.

I am planning to read and review the shortlist and post my thoughts on whether I agree on the best book.