2022 Edgar Awards announced

 

Mystery Writers of America have announced the Winners for the 2022 Edgar Allan Poe Awards, honouring the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction and television published or produced in 2021 

Best Novel

Five Decembers by James Kestrel (Hard Case Crime)

Best First Novel by an American Author 

Deer Season by Erin Flanagan (University of Nebraska Press)

Best Paperback Original

Bobby March Will Live Forever by Alan Parks (Europa Editions – World Noir)

Best Fact Crime

Last Call: A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York by Elon Green (Celadon Books)

Best Critical/Biography

The Twelve Lives of Alfred Hitchcock: An Anatomy of the Master of Suspense by Edward White (W.W. Norton & Company)

Best Short Story

“The Road to Hana,” Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine by R.T. Lawton (Dell Magazines)

Best Juvenile

Concealed by Christina Diaz Gonzalez (Scholastic – Scholastic Press)

Best Young Adult

Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley (Macmillan Children’s Publishing – Henry Holt and Company BFYR)

Best Television Episode Teleplay

“Boots on the Ground” – Narcos: Mexico, Written by Iturri Sosa (Netflix)

Robert L. Fish Memorial Award 

“Analogue,” Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine by Rob Osler (Dell Magazines)

The Simon & Schuster Mary Higgins Clark Award 

Clark and Division by Naomi Hirahara (Soho Press – Soho Crime)

The G.P Putnam's & Sons Sue Grafton Memorial Award. 

Runner by Tracy Clark (Kensington Books)

Special Awards

GRAND MASTER

Laurie R. King

RAVEN AWARD

Lesa Holstine – Lesa’s Book Critiques; Library Journal Reviewer

ELLERY QUEEN AWARD

Juliet Grames – Soho Press – Soho Crime

Congratulations to all the winners and nominated authors. 

The Edgar® Awards were presented at the New York Marriott Marquis Times Square and livestreamed on YouTube.

The Edgar Awards, or “Edgars,” as they are commonly known, are named after MWA’s patron saint Edgar Allan Poe and are presented to authors of distinguished work in various categories. MWA is the premier organization for mystery writers, professionals allied to the crime-writing field, aspiring crime writers, and those who are devoted to the genre. The organization encompasses some 3,000 members including authors of fiction and non-fiction books, screen and television writers, as well as publishers, editors, and literary agents.

Mystery Writers of America would like to emphasize our commitment to diversity and fairness in the judging of the Edgar Awards. Judges are selected from every region of the country, from every sub-category of our genre, and from every demographic to ensure fairness and impartiality.

The EDGAR (and logo) are Registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office by the Mystery Writers of America, Inc.

Books to Look Forward To From Europa Editions

January 2021 

The third and final installment in the remarkable Marseilles Trilogy (Total Chaos, Chourmo), Solea continues Jean-Claude Izzo’s distinctive brand of vibrant crime writing, skillfully evoking a time and place that has captured the hearts and imaginations of readers the world over. Marseilles’ simmering issues of race, politics, organized crime and big business come to a rolling boil. Ex-cop, loner, would-be bon vivant, Fabio Montale is back and his heartfelt cry against the criminal forces devastating his beloved Marseilles provides the touching conclusion to a trilogy that epitomizes the aspirations and ideals of the Mediterranean noir movement. 

May 2021

It’s the middle of a long hot summer on the French Mediterranean shore and the town is full of tourists. Sebag and Molina, two tired cops who are being slowly devoured by dull routine and family worries, deal with the day’s misdemeanors and petty complaints at the Perpignan police headquarters without a trace of enthusiasm. Out of the blue a young Dutch woman is brutally murdered on a beach at Argelès, and another disappears without a trace in the alleys of the city. A serial killer obsessed with Dutch women? Maybe. The media goes wild. Gilles Sebag finds himself thrust into the middle of a diabolical game. If he intends to salvage something—anything—he will have to put aside his domestic cares, forget his suspicions of his wife’s unfaithfulness, ignore his heart murmur, and get over his existential angst. “He waits joylessly, patiently, and lets himself go. The stone house may end up being his grave. Who’s doing what, who’s chasing who? Who is the mouse, and who’s the cat?” Summertime, All the Cats are Bored is by Phillippe Georget.

June 2021

In the Shadow of the Fire is by Hervé Le Corre. A breathless criminal investigation set against the bloody canvas of the Paris Commune The Paris Commune’s “bloody week” sees the climax of the savagery of the clashes between the Communards and the French Armed Forces loyal to Versailles. Amid the shrapnel and the chaos, while the entire west side of Paris is a field of ruins, a photographer fascinated by the suffering of young women takes “suggestive” photos to sell to a particular clientele. Young women begin disappearing, and when Caroline, a seamstress who volunteers at a first aid station, is counted among the missing, her fiancé Nicolas, a member of the Commune’s National Guard, and Communal security officer Antoine, sets off independently in search of her. Their race against the clock to find her takes them through the shell-shocked streets of Paris, and introduces them to a cast of fascinating characters. 

Books to Look Forward to From Europa Editions

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August 2018

A long, rainy, deadly Autumn in Naples.  That Autumn it seemed the rain in Naples would never stop, and Commissario Ricciardi found himself having to face not only a homicide but long-buried feelings that have grown thick roots inside him.  It’s been over fifteen years since Vinnie Sannino left on a ship for America without telling anyone. There Vinnie found fame, success, and wealth as a boxer, becoming the middleweight champion of the world. But that all came to a terrifying halt when his last opponent died in the ring and Vinnie lost his desire to fight.  Now, he’s back in Italy in search of the woman he left behind, Cettina, the love of his life. But Cettina has moved on. She’s now a married woman. Or, she was until recently. Her husband, a wealthy businessman, has been found murdered. There’s no murder weapon to speak of. He was killed with a single blow to the head, not unlike the blow that felled Vinnie’s opponent in the ring on that fateful night in America.  Nameless Serenade is by Maurizio De Giovanni

September 2018

In the night of Rome, nothing is what it seems.  It’s all change in Rome. The new Pope, determined to bring radical reform to the Vatican, proclaims an extraordinary Jubilee year of Mercy. A new centre-left government replaces its disgraced predecessor, and sets about to rejuvenate the language of politics. And with crime lynchpin Samurai in jail, his protégé Sebastiano Laurenti attempts to establish himself as his designated successor. But he must reckon not only with a new generation of enterprising gangsters and racketeers—out to carve for themselves a slice of the profits and opportunities offered by the major public works planned for the Jubilee—but also with ambitious newly elected politician Chiara Visoni, and his own heart. Betrayals, alliances forged and broken, ambushes and infighting will inevitably alter the fragile political balance. As the sharks circle and the street-dogs fight, some tenuous hope endures, in the unlikely alliance of an incorruptible politician of the old left, all but forgotten, and a young bishop who refuses to play the Vatican’s power games. But it remains to be seen whether the long night of Rome can make room for redemption. Sharp and fast-paced, dark and taut, The Night of Rome is by Carlo Bonini and Giancarlo De Cataldo and is fiction that sails dangerously close to the wind of current events.

October 2018

Most of the remaining population of Vienna—a city scarred by World War I in which the grandeur of the Habsburg Empire is a fading memory—is surviving by its wits, living hand to mouth in a city rife with crime, prostitution, and grotesquely wounded beggars. There are shakedowns on every street corner, the black market is the only market, and shortages of vital goods create countless opportunities for unscrupulous operators.  Into this cauldron of vice comes Inspector August Emmerich, a veteran himself, whose ambitions lead him to break the rules when necessary and whose abiding wish is to join the Viennese major crimes unit. When a corpse is found in the woods outside the city and immediately labeled a suicide, Emmerich, convinced it was nothing of the sort, sees a chance to prove his mettle. His investigations will reveal an insidious and homicidal urge lurking in the city.  The Second Rider is by Alex Beer

Books to Look Forward to from Europa Editions

July 2017

Glass Souls is by Maurizio de Giovanni.  In the abyss of a profound personal crisis, Commissario Ricciardi feels unable to open himself up to life. He has refused the love of both Enrica and Livia and the friendship of his partner, Maione. Contentment for Ricciardi proves as elusive as clues to the latest crime he has been asked to investigate.  The beautiful, haughty Bianca, countess of Roccaspina, pleads with Ricciardi to investigate a homicide that was officially closed months ago. In the tense, charged atmosphere of 1930s Italy, where Benito Mussolini and his fascist thugs monitor the police closely, an unauthorized investigation is grounds for immediate dismissal and possible criminal charges. But Ricciardi's thirst for justice cannot be sated.  A tightly plotted historical noir novel, this eighth instalment in the Commissario Ricciardi series is a gripping meditation on revenge and justice in which each character's soul reveals itself to be made of glass.

August 2017

In Ostia, a depressed coastal settlement twenty miles from the powerful and corrupt city of Rome, a mighty local crime family, the Mafia, corrupt politicians, and new rabid criminal elements battle each other for a billion-dollar payoff. During the final days of Silvio Berlusconi's reign, a massive development proposal that will turn Ostia into a gambling paradise, a Las Vegas on the Mediterranean, is winding its way through the Italian legislature thanks to the sponsorship of politicians in the pay of crime syndicates with vested interests. In short, it's business as usual in the Italian capital. But a vicious gang of local thugs loyal to nobody but themselves is insisting on a bigger cut than agreed upon. They argue their case quite convincingly, but the Mafia and their political puppets aren't likely to back down without a fight.  Suburra is by Carlo Bonini and Giancarlo De Cataldo and is soon to be a Netflix original series.

October 2017

Ferocity is by Nicola Lagioia and is the Winner of the 2015 Strega Prize. Southern Italy, the 1980s. On a hot summer's night under a full moon, far from the outlying neighborhoods of a southern Italian metropolis, Clara stumbles naked, dazed, and bloodied down a major highway. When she dies no-one is able to say exactly how or why, but her brother cannot free himself from her memory or from the questions surrounding her death. The more he learns about her life and death, the more he uncovers the moral decay at the core of his family's ascent to social prominence.

 

Venice 1118 AD.  In a medieval Venice undone by devastating famine and excessive, orgiastic Carnival festivities of all kinds, the protagonists of The Apothecary's Shop chase a dream of rebirth, the eternal dream of defeating death.  The young Costanza, of the noble Grimani family, has disappeared. The family scribe, Edgardo, promises to return the girl to her family, who themselves may not be above suspicion. Doctors, apothecaries, undertakers, Eastern merchants, farmers: everyone seems to be involved in the girl's disappearance, even African slave traders.  Abella, Edgardo's ambiguous ally and the only female doctor in Venice, introduces him into secrets and occult practices of medicine. Through her, Edgardo discovers Sabbatai's Apothecary, where remedies and concoctions of all kinds are prepared and clues to Costanza's disappearance may lie.  The Apothecary's Shop is by Roberto Tiraboschi.

January 2018

The Sacco Gang is by Andrea Camilleri.  Raffadali, province of Agrigento, 1920s. The Sacco brothers are free men with strong ideas about socialism and the State. Their lives change radically one morning when their father, Luigi Sacco, receives an anonymous letter from the local Mafia demanding protection money and is the victim of a robbery attempt. Luigi tells the police of the extortion letters he received, but the police don't know what to do: no one in the village has ever dared denounce the Mafia before. From that moment on, the Sacco brothers must defend themselves: from the Mafia and the forces of order, from their collaborators, traitors, and from the village's leaders, as they are assailed by murder attempts, false accusations, and false testimony.  Through the tale of the Sacco brothers and what happens to the town of Raffadali, The Sacco Gang makes clear that not only does the mafia kill people, but it can also condition and irreparably devastate people's lives.

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Books to look forward to from Europa Editions

March 2016

An exciting entry into the noir canon, Joe Flanagan’s Lesser Evils expertly reimagines 1957 Cape Cod, where the mystifying murder of a local child brings us into a world of intrigue— honed by intricate plotting, sharp dialogue, and original characters—that culminates in a conclusion both surprising and deeply moving.  When the first young boy goes missing in a quiet Cape Cod town, Lieutenant Bill Warren is pulled into a morass that promises no happy ending. As his pursuit uncovers the unimaginable, he is led into a world of gambling, drug peddling, corruption, and secret psychiatric experiments. Now he must fight to maintain control of an investigation that more and more people—from the state police to the district attorney to a tenacious Boston reporter—have become seriously interested in. As facts become murkier and the threat rises, Warren struggles to survive in a world where the police can be just as corrupt as the criminals they chase, and where a murder inquiry will ultimately lead to his front door. Years later, the locals will still be debating whether the case’s resolution was factual or miraculous.

April 2016

The Bastards of Pizzofalcone is a new series of hardboiled crime fiction set in contemporary Naples by Maurizio de Giovanni the author of the internationally bestselling Commissario Ricciardi series. They’ve made a fresh start at the Pizzofalcone precinct of Naples. They fired every member of the investigative branch after they were found guilty of corruption. Now, there’s a new group of detectives, a new commissario, and a new superintendent.  The new cops immediately find themselves investigating a high-profile murder that has the whole town on edge. Heading the investigation is Inspector Lojacono, known as the Chinaman, a cop with a chequered past and a reputation as crack investigator. Lojacono’s partner is Aragona, who wants to be known as Serpico, but the name doesn’t stick. Luigi Palma is the Commissario, Francesco Romano, aka Hulk, the self-deluded lieutenant. Lojacono, Aragona, Palma and Romano are joined by a cast of cops portrayed by de Giovanni with depth and intimate knowledge of the close-knit world of police investigators.

Let's talk about “Giallo”!

Stefano Tura in conversation
with Maurizio De Giovanni

Italian Cultural Institute

39 Belgrave Square, London SW1X 8NX

Crime fiction is all the rage, seemingly immune to crisis and recession, and gaining new readers every day. Camilleri’s  Commissario Montalbano to mention just one, is now a household name on both sides of the Atlantic, with the eponymous TV series commanding peak audiences at every re-run….it’s even credited with a boost to tourism in Sicily!  Crime writers Maurizio De Giovanni and Stefano Tura will talk about the enduring success of this literary genre.

Stefano Tura,  journalist and writer, is London correspondent for RAI TV since 2006. After several years working for RAI as a reporter on current affairs in Italy, in 1999 he became a war correspondent from Kosovo, then Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan. He has written several thrillers, including Il killer delle ballerine, set in his home region of Emilia Romagna, Non spegnere la luce, Arriveranno I fiori del sangue (set in war-torn Kosovo), Delitti per le feste. He has also recounted his experiences in Afghanistan in Le caramelle di Super Osama – Viaggio a Kandahar di un inviato di Guerra. His latest book is Tu sei il prossimo (published by Fazi Editore). Maurizio De Giovanni lives and works in Naples. In 2005, he won a writing competition for unpublished authors with a short story set in the thirties and featuring Commissario Ricciardi, which was then turned into the first novel of the series. The Crocodile, another best-seller, marks the beginning of a new crime-series set in present-day Naples and featuring Inspector Lojacono.  His books have been successfully translated into French, Spanish and German, and are now available in English for the first time, published by Europa Editions. A television series is under way in Italy.  WEDNESDAY 26 NOVEMBER, 6.30pm Book Online at www.icilondon.esteri.it

International Crime Month

Leading independent publishers Serpent’s Tail, Melville House, Europa Editions and No Exit Press get together to bring you International Crime Month, a celebration of one of the most vital and socially significant fiction genres of our time.

The launch event will take place at Waterstones’ Piccadilly on the 9th of July at 7pm.

Authors Mallock (Europa) and Adrian McKinty (Serpent’s Tail) will discuss their writing with Barry Forshaw, author of Euro Noir (No Exit Press) and one of the country's foremost authorities on crime fiction, and with Serpent’s Tail founder Pete Ayrton.

Join them for a glass of wine and a unique opportunity to meet some of Europe’s most twisted criminal masterminds….

More info on Waterstones' website.

The event is free but places are limited: please reserve your place in store, via 020 785 12400 or email piccadilly@waterstones.com.

More Bloody Foreigners

Don't miss out  on what looks like will be a brilliant event at the London Review of Books!

More information about the event can be found here.  There are still tickets available.

More Bloody Foreigners @ London Review Bookshop

Criminally good books at London Review Bookshop

Wednesday 11 June, 7pm
London Review Bookshop
14 Bury Place
London WC1A 2JL

FREE but booking essential due to limited places
RSVP to More Bloody Foreigners

Four sparklingly original crime writers offer their perspectives on culture and society from different corners of Europe. As they say, tell me about your crimes and I'll tell you about your society.

Mariusz Czubaj, Marco Malvaldi, Andrej Nikolaidis, and Ben Pastor appear in conversation with Jake Kerridge, journalist and crime fiction critic for The Telegraph.

Mariusz Czubaj is a cultural anthropologist whose first novel featuring Rudolf Heinz, 21:37 (Stork Press, translated by Anna Hyde), won the High Callibre Award for the Best Polish Crime Novel.

Marco Malvaldi is the author of the Camillieri-endorsed Game for Five (Europa Editions) and The Art of Killing Well (MacLehose Press), both translated by Howard Curtis, a historical murder mystery featuring real-life 19th-century chef Pellegrino Artusi.

Andrej Nikolaidis is a controversial and outspoken journalist. In his novel The Coming (Istros Books, translated by Will Firth), set in a small Montenegrin town on the Adriatic, a detective sacrifices truth for the sake of telling his clients what they want to hear.

The third in Ben Pastor's crime series featuring Wehrmacht officer Martin von Bora, A Dark Song of Blood (Bitter Lemon Press), is set in Rome in 1944 as the Germans prepare to flee the city.

Organised by Bitter Lemon Press, Europa Editions, Istros Books, Maclehose Press, and Stork Press, with the support of the Arts Council England / Heritage Lottery Fund and the Polish Cultural Institute in London.

Magda Raczynska

Head of Literature

Polish Cultural Institute

52-53 Poland Street

London W1F 7LX

T: 0207 440 0246

F: 0207 434 0139

Website: www.polishculture.org.uk

Facebook: facebook.com/polishinstitutelondon

Twitter: @PLInst_London