The Edgar Awards are presented every year by the Mystery Writers of America and are often considered the most prestigious awards for the mystery genre. This year's awards were presented this week and the winners include:
Best Novel: Gone [1] by Mo Hayder
Investigating a serial carjacker whose actual targets are young children in back seats, Jack Caffery teams up once again with police diver Sergeant Flea Marley, whose life is endangered by a discovery in an abandoned, half-submerged tunnel.
Best First Novel: Bent Road [2] by Lori Roy
Celia Scott and her family move back to her husband's hometown in Kansas, where his sister died under mysterious circumstances twenty years before, and where Celia and two of her children struggle to adjust--especially when a local girl disappears.
Best Paperback Original: The Company Man [3] by Robert Jackson Bennett
In 1919, the McNaughton Corporation is the pinnacle of American industry located in Evesden-a shining metropolis, the best that the world has to offer. But then eleven union men are butchered by hand in the blink of an eye. Now, one man, Cyril Hayes, must fix this and uncover the dark secret behind the inventions of McNaughton.
Best Fact Crime: Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President [4] by Candice Millard
A narrative account of James Garfield’s political career offers insight into his background as a scholar and Civil War hero, his battles against the corrupt establishment, and Alexander Graham Bell's failed attempt to save him from an assassin's bullet.
Best Critical Biographical: On Conan Doyle: Or, the Whole Art of Storytelling [5] by Michael Dirda
Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Michael Dirda combines memoir and sincere appreciation in this book about the creator of one of the most memorable mystery characters, Sherlock Holmes.
Best Juvenile: Icefall [6] by Matthew J. Kirby
Princess Solveig and her siblings are trapped in a hidden fortress tucked between towering mountains and a frozen fjord, along with her best friend and an army of restless soldiers, all awaiting news of the king's victory in battle, but as they wait for winter's end and the all-encompassing ice to break, acts of treachery make it clear that a traitor lurks in their midst.
Best Young Adult: The Silence of Murder [7] by Dandi Daley Mackall
Sixteen-year-old Hope must defend her developmentally disabled brother (who has not spoken a word since he was seven) when he is accused of murdering a beloved high school baseball coach.
Check out the whole list of nominees at the Mystery Writers of America website [8].
