Perceiver Will Thomas Wins Shamus Award
by Brian Wilson, Privy Council President
 Will Thomas
Tulsa County writer Will Thomas, an Afghanistan Perceiver since he was 17, has hit the big time by becoming a Famous Shamus.
In September, Heart of the Nile, the 14th volume in Thomas's Cyrus Barker/Thomas Llewellyn detective series, won the 2024 Shamus Award for best private investigator hardcover book. The Private Eye Writers of America have honored authors of detective fiction since 1983. Thomas's Barker-and-Llewelyn novels are set in Victorian England; he attributes his interests in that era and location to a lifelong love of Sherlock Holmes, arguably the original shamus. The term shamus became popular with hard-boiled detective novels. The great Raymond Chandler used the word throughout his Philip Marlowe novels. In The Long Goodbye, George Peters tells Marlowe: "Sit down, pal. Breathe quietly, keep your voice down, and remember that a [Col.] Carne operative is to a cheap shamus like you what Toscanini is to an organ grinder's monkey." |
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