Toronto writer Lee Lamothe is nominated for The Finger's Twist. (Robert Lecker Agency)Dark thrillers Finger's Twist and Death Spiral are among the books vying for this year's Arthur Ellis Award, the annual award for the best in Canadian crime fiction.

Nominations for the award, named for the pseudonym of Canada's official hangman, were released Thursday evening by the Crime Writers of Canada.

Finger's Twist is by Toronto's Lee Lamothe, who riveted readers with his non-fiction work The Sixth Family: The Collapse of the New York Mafia and the Rise of Vito Rizzuto. Finger's Twist is a twisting tale of eco-terrorism and political intrigue set in Toronto in the near future.

Death Spiral is the third novel by previous Arthur Ellis winner James W. Nichol, also of Toronto. It is set in Toronto right after the Second World War and examines the effect of war on young veterans.

Nichol previously won an Arthur Ellis Award for Midnight Cab, which began life as a CBC radio series in the 1990s.

The other nominees for best novel feature a Jewish detective, a gay detective and a female detective who works mainly in wilderness areas of Canada.

They are:

• Aloha, Candy Hearts, a Russell Quant novel by Anthony Bidulka of Saskatoon.
• Arctic Blue Death, a Meg Harris mystery by R.J. Harlick of Otttawa.
• High Chicago, a Jonah Geller mystery by Howard Shrier of Toronto.

The non-fiction nominees examine crime stories ripped from the headlines, including multiple murders of Bandidos gang members and the shocking story of a 12-year-old Medicine Hat girl who killed her own family.

Former police informant Alex Caine's The Fat Mexican: The Bloody Rise of the Bandidos Motorcycle Club is vying with Runaway Devil by Robert Remington and Sherri Zickefoose who followed the Medicine Hat murders as crime reporters.

Tim Wynne-Jones is nominated for his suspense novel The Uninvited. (Candlewick Press/Random House of Canada)Also nominated is Patrick Brode's The Slasher Killings, about a series of slasher murders in 1945-46 in Windsor, Ont., Post Mortem by Jon Wells, about a Hamilton, Ont., murder investigation and Terry Gould's Murder Without Borders, which investigates murders of journalists in Colombia, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Russia and Iraq

The nominations for best juvenile crime writing include The Uninvited, a suspense tale by veteran young adult writer Tim Wynne-Jones.

Wynne-Jones also was nominated for a Libris and a Governor General's Literary Award for The Uninvited, which follows a young woman who travels to a supposedly empty house in the country, only to find someone else already there.

Other nominees for juvenile crime writing:

• Not Suitable for Family Viewing by Vicki Grant.
• Haunted by Barbara Haworth-Attard.
• Homicide Related by Norah McClintock.
• The Hunchback Assignments by Arthur Slade.

In the first novel category, the nominees are:

• The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley.
• The Cold Light of Mourning by Elizabeth J. Duncan.
• The Weight of Stones by C.B. Forrest.
• A Magpie's Smile by Eugene Meese.
• Darkness at the Stroke of Noon by Dennis Richard Murphy.

Nominees for best unpublished novel, best short story and best French crime writing were also announced.