Announcing Criminal Plots II - The 2012 Reading Challenge

Welcome to the second annual Criminal Plots reading challenge! If you are a veteran of this challenge, thank you for coming back! If you are new to the challenge, thank you so much for joining us. I hope you'll enjoy your experience with this challenge.

As with last year's challenge, I hope you take this opportunity to expose yourself to some books and authors in the genre that you may not have experienced before. I think the categories should provide you with a chance to see the old and new alike.

This year's Rules of the Road:

You'll be reading six books between January 1, 2012, and December 31, 2012. One book should be read that fits into each of the following categories:

1. Novel with a weapon in the title (examples: A Night of Long Knives, A Nail Through the Heart, Sharp Objects, The Rope, Lay Down my Sword and Shield)

2. Book published at least 10 years ago - this should be an easy one, time to pull out those backlists (examples: Goodnight Irene, The Black Echo, Indemnity Only)

3. Book written by an author from the state/provinence/etc. where you live. (I live in Ohio, so examples for me would be Carla Buckley, Les Roberts, Craig McDonald)

4. Book written by an author using a pen name (i.e., Spencer Quinn, Ross Macdonald, Ariana Franklin, Noah Boyd, Juliett Blackwell, Lisa Black)

5. Crime novel whose protagonist is the opposite gender of the author (i.e., Demolition Angel, Bury Your Dead, Calumet City)

6. A stand-alone novel written by an author who writes at least one series (i.e., El Gavilan (Craig McDonald), Long Gone (Alafair Burke), The Lock Artist (Steve Hamilton), Envy the Night (Michael Koryta), The Most Dangerous Thing (Laura Lippman))

Other Important Details:

• You can read the books in any format you choose: print, audio, e-book, etc.
• You can read books from any sub-genre of crime fiction: hardboiled, P.I., police procedural, cozy, thriller, etc.
• You do not need to have a blog to participate.
• You can use the books for other challenges but one book cannot count for more than one category in THIS challenge.
• Books do not need to be pre-determined. You can choose them at any time throughout the year. And you can read them in whatever order you choose.
• At the conclusion, each participant that completes the challenge will be entered for a chance at one of three prize packs.

To sign up for this challenge, add your blog to the Mr. Linky below. Put your blog name in the top box and your blog's URL in the bottom box. If you do not have a blog, indicate that you are participating in the comments of this post. Also, if you run into any technical problems with Mr. Linky, you can add your blog name and URL to the comments.

On January 1st, six new posts will appear here, one for each of the categories involved. Each post will also have a Mr. Linky. Once you complete one of the categories and write your review, come to the post and add the link to your review. If you don't have a blog, then you will put your response to your book in the comments section - be sure to tell us something about the book, don't just leave the title.

I hope you enjoy it. Also, if you have any questions, feel free to email me.

Happy Reading!