2023 Edgar Award Nominations

 

Mystery Writers of America have announced the nominees for the 2023 Edgar Allan Poe Awards, honouring the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction and television published or produced in 2022. 

The 77th Annual Edgar® Awards will be celebrated on April 27, 2023, at the New York Marriott Marquis Times Square.

The Nominations are as follows :-

BEST NOVEL

Devil House by John Darnielle (Farrar, Straus and Giroux – MCD)

Like a Sister by Kellye Garrett (Little, Brown & Co./Mulholland Books)

Gangland by Chuck Hogan (Grand Central Publishing)

The Devil Takes You Home by Gabino Iglesias (Little, Brown & Co./Mulholland Books)

Notes on an Execution by Danya Kukafka (HarperCollins – William Morrow)

The Maid by Nita Prose (Penguin Random House – Ballantine Books)

BEST FIRST NOVEL BY AN AMERICAN AUTHOR

Jackal by Erin E. Adams (Penguin Random House – Bantam)

Don’t Know Tough by Eli Cranor (Soho Press – Soho Crime)

Shutter by Ramona Emerson (Soho Press – Soho Crime)

More Than You’ll Ever Know by Katie Gutierrez (HarperCollins – William Morrow)

Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li (Penguin Random House – Tiny Reparations Books)

BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL

Quarry’s Blood by Max Allan Collins (Hard Case Crime

On a Quiet Street by Seraphina Nova Glass (Harlequin Trade Publishing – Graydon House

Or Else by Joe Hart (Amazon Publishing – Thomas & Mercer)

Cleopatra’s Dagger by Carole Lawrence (Amazon Publishing – Thomas & Mercer)

A Familiar Stranger by A.R. Torre (Amazon Publishing – Thomas & Mercer)

BEST FACT CRIME

Slenderman: Online Obsession, Mental Illness, and the Violent Crime of Two Midwestern Girls by Kathleen Hale (Grove Atlantic – Grove Press)

Tell Me Everything: The Story of a Private Investigation by Erika Krouse (Flatiron Books)

Trailed: One Woman's Quest to Solve the Shenandoah Murders by Kathryn Miles (Hachette Book Group – Workman Publishing – Algonquin Books)

American Caliph: The True Story of a Muslim Mystic, a Hollywood Epic, and the 1977 Siege of Washington, D.C. by Shahan Mufti (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

American Demon: Eliot Ness and the Hunt for America's Jack the Ripper by Daniel Stashower (Minotaur Books)

BEST CRITICAL/BIOGRAPHICAL

The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and Their Creators by Martin Edwards (HarperCollins – Collins Crime Club)

The Bloomsbury Handbook to Agatha Christie by Mary Anna Evans & J.C. Bernthal (Bloomsbury – Bloomsbury Academic)

The Crime World of Michael Connelly: A Study of His Works and Their Adaptations by David Geherin (McFarland)

The Woman Beyond the Attic: The V.C. Andrews Story by Andrew Neiderman (Simon & Schuster – Gallery Books)

Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman by Lucy Worsley (Pegasus Books – Pegasus Crime)

BEST SHORT STORY

"Red Flag," by Gregory Fallis  in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine (Dell Magazines)

"Backstory," by Charles John Harper in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine (Dell Magazines)

"Locked-In," by William Burton McCormick in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine (Dell Magazines)

“The Amnesty Box," by Tim McLoughlin in Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (Akashic Books)

“First You Dream, Then You Die," by Donna Moore in Black is the Night (Titan Books)

BEST JUVENILE

The Swallowtail Legacy: Wreck at Ada’s Reef by Michael D. Beil (Holiday House – Pixel+Ink)

The Area 51 Files by Julie Buxbaum (Random House Children's Books - Delacorte Press)

Aggie Morton Mystery Queen: The Seaside Corpse by Marthe Jocelyn (Penguin Random House Canada - Tundra Books)

Adventures on Trains: Murder on the Safari Star by M.G. Leonard & Sam Sedgman (Macmillan Children's Publishing - Feiwel & Friends)

Chester Keene Cracks the Code by Kekla Magoon (Random House Children's Books Wendy Lamb Books)

BEST YOUNG ADULT

Pretty Dead Queens by Alexa Donne (Random House Children’s Books – Crown BFYR)

Frightmares by Eva V. Gibson (Random House Children’s Books – Underlined)

The Black Girls Left Standing by Juliana Goodman (Macmillan Children’s Books – Feiwel & Friends)

The Red Palace by June Hur (Macmillan Children’s Books – Feiwel & Friends)

Lock the Doors by Vincent Ralph (Sourcebooks – Fire)

BEST TELEVISION EPISODE TELEPLAY

“One Mighty and Strong" - Under the Banner of Heaven, Written by Brandon Boyce (Hulu/FX)

“Episode 1” – Magpie Murders, Written by Anthony Horowitz (Masterpiece/PBS)

“Episode 1" - Karen Pirie, Written by Emer Kenny (BritBox)

“When Harry Met Fergus" - Harry Wild, Written by David Logan (Acorn TV)

“The Reagan Way" - Blue Bloods, Written by Siobhan Byrne O’Connor (CBS)

"Eighteen Wheels A Predator" - Law & Order: SVU, Written by Brianna Yellen & Monet Hurst-Mendoza (NBC Universal)

ROBERT L. FISH MEMORIAL AWARD

"Dogs in the Canyon," by Mark Harrison in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine (Dell Magazines)

THE SIMON & SCHUSTER 

MARY HIGGINS CLARK AWARD

Because I Could Not Stop for Death by Amanda Flower (Penguin Random House Berkley)

The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill (Sourcebooks – Poisoned Pen Press)

The Disinvited Guest by Carol Goodman (HarperCollins – William Morrow)

A Dreadful Splendor by B.R. Myers (HarperCollins – William Morrow)

Never Name the Dead by D.M. Rowell (Crooked Lane Books)

THE G.P. PUTNAM’S SONS 

SUE GRAFTON MEMORIAL AWARD

Secret Lives by Mark de Castrique (Sourcebooks – Poisoned Pen Press)

An Unforgiving Place by Claire Kells (Crooked Lane Books)

Hideout by Louisa Luna (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group – Doubleday)

Behind the Lie by Emilya Naymark (Crooked Lane Books)

Secrets Typed in Blood by Stephen Spotswood (Knopf Doubleday Publishing 

Doubleday)

THE LILIAN JACKSON BRAUN MEMORIAL AWARD

The Shadow of Memory by Connie Berry (Crooked Lane Books)

Buried in a Good Book by Tamara Berry (Sourcebooks – Poisoned Pen Press)

Smile Beach Murder by Alicia Bessette (Penguin Random House – Berkley)

Desert Getaway by Michael Craft (Brash Books)

The Marlow Murder Club by Robert Thorogood (Sourcebooks – Poisoned Pen Press)

SPECIAL AWARDS

GRAND MASTER

Michael Connelly

Joanne Fluke

RAVEN AWARD

Crime Writers of Color

Eddie Muller for Noir Alley and The Noir Foundation

ELLERY QUEEN AWARD

The Strand Magazine

Stephen Spotswood - Fortune Favours the Dead - The Inspiration

 

It started with my grandmother’s bookshelf. This was the grandmother I got along with, which was convenient since I spent as much time at her house as at home. It was a modest bookshelf--two dozen ceramic knick-knacks taking pride of place at eye level with the floor-level shelves left for my grandmother’s small collection of aging paperbacks. I imagine things were arranged that way for my benefit. Keeping the breakables safe from the curious toddler.

The curious toddler grew up, but remained curious. Eventually I started pulling out those old paperbacks. The covers caught me first: colourful, sinister, many featuring gun-wielding women showing enough skin that made me think these weren’t for children.

So of course I read them.

I don’t remember if I liked them much. I was very young and was still working on the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. But they stuck with me. Those hardboiled heroes from half a century before.

Fast forward a few decades. I was going through my own bookshelves--less modest than my grandmother’s since I didn’t have to make room for curios, though I probably have some of the same titles she had. Maybe even the same editions, since my fondness for lurid covers remains.

I was shelving a Rex Stout novel and thought, “I think I’d like to read that again.” One thing led to another and I ended up spending a season doing a reread and sometimes first read of all of Stout’s Nero Wolfe books in chronological order. It wasn’t a hard task since I have a great fondness for Stout, who married the traditional English murder mystery with the hardboiled American voice.

Somewhere in there I began wondering what kind of story I would tell if I decided to play in that particular sandbox. I’d spent the last two decades as a playwright writing almost exclusively female protagonists, many of them queer. And most of my plays deal with characters learning to thrive in a world that, for one reason or other, is set against them.

Very quickly, Lillian Pentecost and Will Parker emerged. The reserved genius thriving in spite of (or to spite) her multiple sclerosis and her circus-trained protege who is learning to be a working detective one hard-won lesson at a time.

As for why I put them in 1945, it’s because life shouldn’t be easy for a hardboiled hero. That time was a pivot point in American culture. Coming off the high of the war and turning inward--to infrastructure and suburbia and family-building, but also to paranoia and fear, the McCarthy hearings and the Lavender Scare. The next decade won’t be kind to Will, a bisexual woman with a chip on her shoulder, and her boss, a woman who’s more interested in doing what’s right than what’s legal. And unlike Stout’s novels, I plan to have these two detectives grow and change as the world around them becomes a particularly difficult place to live if you’re different.

Hopefully I’ll find a collection of readers who will love Lillian and Will as much as I do. And hopefully they’ll tuck them away on the bottom shelf. All the better for a new generation of curious children.

Fortune Favours The Dead by Stephen Spotswood. (published in hardback on 12th November 2020 by Wildfire)

New York, 1946. Lillian Pentecost is the most successful private detective in the city, but her health is failing. She hires an assistant to help with the investigative legwork. Willowjean Parker is a circus runaway. Quick-witted and street-smart, she’s a jack-of-all-trades with a unique skill-set. She can pick locks blindfolded, wrestle men twice her size, and throw knives with deadly precision - all of which come in handy working for Ms P. When wealthy young widow Abigail Collins is murdered and the police are making no progress, Pentecost and Parker are hired by the family to track down the culprit. On Halloween night, there was a costume party at the Collins’ mansion, where a fortune teller performed a séance which greatly disturbed Abigail. Several hours later her body was discovered bludgeoned to death in her late husband’s office. Problem is, the door to the office was locked from the inside. There was no-one else in the room, and the murder weapon was beside the victim; the fortune teller’s crystal ball. It looks like an impossible crime, but Pentecost and Parker know there is no such thing...

Books from Headline Publishing incl Wildfire and Tinder Press

July 2020

They went out to the woods to have fun. And two of them didn't return.   I Shot the Devil is by Ruth McIver and is a dark, twisty thriller of small town buried secrets.  Twenty years ago, the devil visited the woods around Southport, Long Island, claiming the lives of two boys. A local youth was charged with murder. Case closed.   Now journalist Erin Sloane has been commissioned to dig deeper into the story and is sent notes from someone long forgotten. But can she trust what she unearths? And how can she unravel what happened when she has her own secrets to hide?

All My Lies Are True is by Dorothy Koomson.  Verity is telling lies...  And that's why she's about to be arrested for attempted murder.  Serena has been lying for years. . .  And that may have driven her daughter, Verity, to do something unthinkable...  Poppy's lies have come back to haunt her . . .  So will her quest for the truth hurt everyone she loves?  Everyone lies.  But whose lies are going to end in tragedy?

Operative 66 is by Andy McDermott.  Every operative knows the rules. The mission comes first. You are a deniable asset. Betrayal is punished by death.   Alex Reeve is Operative 66. A former special ops soldier and one of the UK’s deadliest weapons, he is part of the secretive SC 9 - an elite security service with a remit to neutralize the country’s most dangerous enemies.   But now Reeve is in the firing line. Accused of treason, Reeve is forced to flee as his team is instructed to eliminate the ‘rogue asset’ at any cost. Reeve must survive, alone and under the radar, with the full power of the state arrayed against him. He doesn’t know why he’s a target. Or who betrayed him. But if one man has the skills necessary to uncover the truth...it is Operative 66. 

Two years ago, Miff Ferguson chose to opt out of the rat race. Since then he's been living rough and happily so. That is until now. For, as the first signs of winter approach, everything changes. While looking for shelter, Miff stumbles across the dead body of a young woman inside a dilapidated warehouse. Quickly realising he's not alone, and what's worse he's been spotted, Miff becomes embroiled in a game of cat-and-mouse with a killer that forces him to abandon his life on the streets and take refuge with his aunt and uncle in the village of Weston St Ambrose. But, despite his best efforts to lie low, trouble seems to follow him and when another dead body is discovered at a local farm, it's clear Miff is not free from danger.  With the clock ticking, Inspector Jess Campbell and Superintendent Ian Carter must join forces once again with the team of police at Bamford to piece together the puzzle before another innocent life is lost...  A Matter of Murder is by Ann Granger

Senseless is by Ed James.  Day one - Six weeks after vanishing, Sarah Langton is suddenly found - delirious and starved close to death.  The police struggle to find any answers.  Day two - When another missing person reappears, half-crazed and hysterical, a terrifying pattern emerges: a twisted predator is pushing his victims to insanity.  DS Corcoran, haunted by a previous case, and Dr Marie Palmer, a leading criminal psychiatrist, must try to establish a link between the survivors.   Day three - As it becomes clear others are in grave danger, every second will be critical. But can Corcoran and Palmer unravel the deadliest of puzzles in time?

The Lies You Told is by Harriet Tyce.  Has she left her child in the care of a killer? Sadie has moved back to London so her daughter can attend the exclusive school her domineering father has secured her a place at. It’s highly sought-after and highly competitive - just like the other mothers, Sadie soon discovers.   While she’s trying to get her daughter settled and navigate the fraught politics of the school gate, Sadie is also trying to reclaim a position in her old legal chambers - she used to practice as a criminal barrister. She’s given the junior brief on a scandalous case involving a male teacher and his student. It’s an opportunity to prove herself, but will she let a dangerous flirtation cloud her professional judgement? And will her sudden close friendship with another mother prevent her from seeing the truth - and the threat that she’s Wildfire inviting into her home? 

August 2020

Beauregard "Bug" Montage: honest mechanic, loving husband, devoted parent. He's no longer the criminal he once was - the sharpest wheelman on the east coast, infamous from the hills of North Carolina to the beaches of Florida.  But when his respectable life begins to crumble, a shady associate comes calling with a clean, one-time job: a diamond heist promising a get-rich pay out. Inexorably drawn to the driver's seat - and haunted by the ghost of his outlaw father - Bug is yanked back into a savage world of bullets and betrayal, which soon endangers all he holds dear... Blacktop Wasteland is by S A Crosby.

Blackout is by Simon SCarrow.  Berlin, December 1939   As Germany goes to war, the Nazis tighten their terrifying grip. Paranoia in the capital is intensified by a rigidly enforced

blackout that plunges the city into oppressive darkness every night, as the bleak winter sunsets.  When a young woman is found brutally murdered, Criminal Inspector Horst Schenke is under immense pressure to solve the case, swiftly. Treated with suspicion by his superiors for his failure to joining the Nazi Party, Schenke walks a perilous line - for disloyalty is a death sentence.  The discovery of a second victim confirms Schenke's worst fears. He must uncover the truth before evil strikes again.  As the investigation takes him closer to the sinister heart of the regime, Schenke realises there is danger everywhere - and the warring factions of the Reich can be as deadly as a killer stalking the streets . . .

Innocent is by Erin Kinsley.  The pretty market town of Sterndale is a close-knit community where everyone thinks they know everyone else. But at a lavish summer wedding a local celebrity is discovered slumped in the gardens, the victim of a violent assault that leads to a murder investigation.  As the police search for answers, suspicion and paranoia build - and the lives of the locals are turned upside down. Secrets that lurk beneath the pristine facade of Sterndale come to light as detectives close in on the truth...

Say No More is by Karen Rose.  If they ever catch you, say nothing. Admit nothing. Never tell.  Mercy Callahan never thought she'd be able to talk about her past. When she arrives in Sacramento to make peace with her brother Gideon, and to help find the brutal cult that took away her childhood, she is finally ready to talk. But when Ephraim Burton - the man who made her life a living hell - follows her there, she realises she might never be safe.   Rafe Sokolov would do anything to have Mercy back in his life and would go to any length to protect her. But when it becomes apparent that Ephraim is more determined than ever to get Mercy back, even Rafe might not be able to stop the trail of destruction he leaves in his wake. As Ephraim draws near, it's clear it's not just Mercy who is in danger; those closest to her are firmly in his sights.

October 2020

Also due to be published is Loyalty by Martina Cole.

November 2020

Hermit is by S R White. He disappeared for 15 years … She has 12 hors to find out why. After the puzzling death of a shopkeeper in rural Australia, troubled detective Dana Russo has just 12 hours to interrogate the prime suspect - a silent, inscrutable man found at the scene of the crime, who simply vanished 15 years earlier.  Where has he been? And just how dangerous is he? Without conclusive evidence linking him to the killing, Dana must race against time to persuade him to speak. But over a series of increasingly intense interviews, Dana is forced to confront her own past if she wants him to reveal the shocking truth.

Fortune Favours the Dead is by Stephen Spotswood. New York, 1946. Lillian Pentecost is the most successful private detective in the city, but her health is failing. She hires an assistant to help with the investigative legwork. Willowjean Parker is a circus runaway. Quick-witted and street-smart, she's a jack-of-all-trades with a unique skill-set. She can pick locks blindfolded, wrestle men twice her size, and throw knives with deadly precision - all of which come in handy working for Ms P.  When wealthy young widow Abigail Collins is murdered and the police are making no progress, Pentecost and Parker are hired by the family to track down the culprit. On Halloween night, there was a costume party at the Collins' mansion, where a fortune teller performed a séance, which greatly disturbed Abigail. Several hours later her body was discovered bludgeoned to death in her late husband's office. Problem is, the door to the office was locked from the inside. There was no-one else in the room, and the murder weapon was beside the victim; the fortune teller's crystal ball.   It looks like an impossible crime, but Pentecost and Parker know there is no such thing...

Also published is The Roots of Evil by Quintin Jardine.