The Edgar Awards - Best Novel

Suspense: An ex-U.S. Treasury agent is hired to smuggle money from England to Switzerland by a double crossing lawyer.

JOHNSTONE COUNTRY. THE ULTIMATE KILLING GROUND. The latest action-packed installment in bestselling Western authors William W. Johnstone and J.A. Johnstone in the Hunter Buchanon Black Hills Western series. THE HILLS HAVE EYES The Buchanans are no strangers to hard times—or making hard choices. After losing a hefty number of livestock to a killer grizzly, Hunter Buchanan is forced to sell a dozen broncs down in Denver for some badly needed cash. Everything goes smoothly—until he’s ambushed on the way home. The culprits are a murderous bunch of prairie rat outlaws, as dangerous as any Buchanan has ever tangled with. But Hunter is hell-bent on getting his money back. Even if means pursuing the thieves into Dakota Territory—where even deadlier dangers await . . . Meanwhile, Angus Buchanan has agreed to guide three former Confederate bounty hunters into the Black Hills, on the trail of six cutthroats who robbed a saloon and killed two men in Deadwood. This motley trio of hunters are as cutthroat as the cutthroats they’re after. And it doesn’t take long for Angus to realize they mean to slaughter him as well at the end of the trail . . . One family of ranchers. Two groups of cold-hearted murderers. So many ways to die.

"Boyer is up there with the best." The Boston Globe A Doc Adams Thriller, winner of the Edgar Award for Best Mystery Novel of the Year. First, a fishing trawler runs aground on the Massachusetts shore. Then a young scuba diver sent to investigate the wreck is found dead in the water. Doc Adams, a friend of the dead diver, sets out through the stormy seas and blood-flecked sands of Cape Cod to plumb a murder he should have prevented. There he uncovers a hidden treasure in illegal arms and is nearly killed in the process. Doc lets the world think he's dead, the better to hunt for the killers of his friend. But if he makes a single mistake, he'll be clam chowder.

Three complete novels by Elmore Leonard: **Cat Chaser** - A former soldier and Florida hotel owner goes back to the country where he fought to find a girl he lost, and gets himself in trouble along the way. **LaBrava** - One time Secret Service agent Joe Labrava has given up his government job to become a photographer, but now he's gotten mixed up with a redneck scam artist security guard and a cuban hitman/go-go dancer. And his new neighbor, a former movie star, may be their next target. **Split Images** - When a wealthy Florida businessman shoots an intruder on his property vacationing Detroit cop Bryan Hurd thinks there might be more to the story than meets the eye.

Presents the story of a Washington, D.C. policeman, the murder of his sister under suspicious circumstances, and his investigation of the crime.

To Karl Alberg, a small town on Canada?s ?Sunshine Coast? looks like the perfect place to sooth a psyche that?s been battered by too much big-city police work. Bees buzz among the roses, and the local librarian is attractive, intriguing, and unattached. Perhaps he has at last come in from the cold. But sunny towns can conceal a lot of secrets?some of them bleak enough to make a man yearn for some nice straightforward urban crime. In 1986 The Suspect beat out titles by Ruth Rendell and Jonathan Kellerman to become the first Canadian novel to win an Edgar award. It went on to become a great cult favorite among mystery fans, who prized its delicately etched sense of melancholy, and intriguing character studies of the cop, his quarry, and the enigmatic librarian who proves an unlikely bridge between the two.

The first book Rendell wrote as Barbara Vine. A personal exploration into the past, searching for the truth that led Vera Hillyard to commit the violent murder for which she is hanged. The story unfolds slowly, painfully, full of secrets and lies. Dark, claustrophobic, and chilling.

An Edgar Award–winning mystery featuring the forensic anthropologist hailed as "a likable, down-to-earth, cerebral sleuth"—from the author of Switcheroo ( Chicago Tribune). "With the roar of thunder and the speed of a galloping horse comes the tide to Mont St. Michel," goes the old nursery song. So when the aged patriarch of the du Rocher family falls victim to the perilous tide, even the old man's family accepts the verdict of accidental drowning. But too quickly, this "accident" is followed by a bizarre discovery in the ancient du Rocher chateau: a human skeleton, wrapped in butcher paper, beneath the old stone flooring. Professor Gideon Oliver, lecturing on forensic anthropology at nearby St. Malo, is asked to examine the bones. He quickly demonstrates why he is known as the "Skeleton Detective," providing the police with forensic details that lead them to conclude that these are the remains of a Nazi officer believed to have been murdered in the area during the Occupation. Or are they? Gideon himself has his doubts. Then, when another of the current du Rochers dies—this time via cyanide poisoning—his doubts solidify into a single certainty: Someone wants old secrets to stay buried . . . and is perfectly willing to eradicate the meddlesome American to make that happen. Voted one of the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association's 100 Favorite Mysteries of the 20th Century, and featuring "a thrilling final scene," Old Bones will captivate fans of Kathy Reichs and Tess Gerritsen as well as readers of Aaron Elkins's popular Alix London series ( Publishers Weekly). Old Bones is the 4th book in the Gideon Oliver Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

A Moscow cop is left out in the cold in this “impressive” Edgar Award winner for Best Mystery Novel (The Washington Post Book World). When forced to choose between the law and the party line, Police Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov has a disturbing tendency to fight for justice, and that has won him no friends at the Kremlin. Now his enemies in the KGB have arranged a transfer to the lowest rungs of Moscow law enforcement, a backwater department assigned to only the most hopeless cases, one of which is about to take Rostnikov deep into Siberia. A corrupt commissar has been stabbed through the eye with an icicle. A murder at this level should be a top priority, but Rostnikov gets the distinct impression that the powers-that-be would prefer this case go unsolved—and that Rostnikov not survive this Siberian winter. “As always, Kaminsky provides a colorful, tightly written mystery . . . filled with twists, countertwists, and a surprise ending that is plausible and clever.” —Chicago Tribune

In this Edgar Award-winning thriller, former Louisiana homicide cop Dave Robicheaux is trying to start a new life after the murder of his wife — but he can't escape his past forever. Dave Robicheaux was once a Louisiana homicide cop. Now he's trying to start a new life, opening up a fishing business and caring for his adopted girl, Alafair. Compared to Louisiana, Robicheaux thought Montana would be safe — until two Native American activists suddenly go missing. When Robicheaux begins investigating, he is led into the dark world of the Mafia and oil companies. At the same time, someone from his past comes back to haunt him. Someone who was responsible for Robicheaux's flight from New Orleans — someone who brutally murdered his wife — and now is after young Alafair... Winner of the Edgar Award for Best Novel, Black Cherry Blues spans from the mystical streets of New Orleans to the endless mountains of Montana, and ranks among James Lee Burke's finest work — an enduring classic, darkly beautiful and thrilling.

It's Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and civic leader and socialite Chauncey St. Amant has been crowned Rex, King of Carnival. But his day of glory comes to an abrupt and bloody end when a parade-goer dressed as Dolly Parton guns him down. Enter resourceful heroine Skip Langdon, a rookie police officer and former debutante turned cynic of the Uptown crowd. Langdon, with all her outsider anxiety, family dysfunction, and yet overall toughness, has long been a favorite of those who like their female sleuths bold, smart, and refreshingly human.

Matthew Scudder Crime Novel #9. "A master…. Lawrence Block's estimable private eye Matthew Scudder is one of the most fully developed and credible characters working in the genre today" (Chicago Tribune).

Deborah Knott, an attorney attempting to infiltrate the old boy network of tobacco country by running for district judge, is distracted from the race, and almost eliminated, when she finds new evidence to an old small-town murder.

Winner of the Edgar Award and the Macavity Award for Best Novel In prison they call her the sculptress: a grotesquely obese young woman convicted of cutting her mother and sister to pieces and rearranging their bodies on the floor like a jigsaw puzzle. She pleaded guilty to the crime, but no one has noticed that the facts don't add up until Rosalind Leigh comes to visit the prisoner, hoping to get a book deal out of her story. The more fevered Rosalind's pursuit of the truth, the closer she gets to the true source of the evil ascribed to the Sculptress in her cell.

In her latest, hard-hitting novel of suspense, award-winning writer Mary Willis Walker introduces a gutsy new heroine - Texas-based crime reporter Molly Cates - and a chilling tale of violence and revenge. As The Red Scream begins, Molly has just published her first true crime book, which describes the blood-curdling exploits of serial killer Louie Bronk. Now Louie is on death row, about to be executed by lethal injection. Molly will be there as a witness, and she wants to write about it - the final coda to her story. But suddenly she's being strongly discouraged - by her boss at the Lone Star Monthly and by Charlie McFarland, the millionaire real estate developer whose first wife, Tiny, was Bronk's most famous victim - and the only one whose murder is a capital offense. Then Molly starts to receive dark hints that Louie may not have killed Tiny after all. First the veracity of her book is threatened, and then her very life. Caught between moral imperative and personal threat, Molly realizes that by attempting to save Louie, she will be putting herself in jeopardy, and discrediting her own work. Mary Willis Walker brings a lusty new voice to the mystery scene. In Molly Cates she has created a character just cheeky and appealing enough to take her place among the top rank of female protagonists - Kinsey Millhone, Kat Colorado, and Kay Scarpetta.

Sid Halley, the ex-champion jockey turned investigator has uncovered an obnoxious crime committed by a friend whom he -and everyone else -has held in deep affection. On the morning set for the opening of the friend's trial, at which Sid is due to be called as witness, other people's miseries explode and send him spinning into days of hard rational detection and heart-searching torment.

When Malcolm Gaines asks his attorney to prepare his will, he resurrects the long-buried secret behind a tragedy at Chatham School, which destroyed lives and shattered a quiet community.

Texas attorney Billy Bob Holland must confront the past in order to save his illegitimate son from a murder conviction in this brilliant, fast-paced thriller from beloved New York Times bestselling author James Lee Burke. Lucas Smothers, nineteen and from the wrong end of town, has been arrested for the rape and murder of a local girl. His lawyer, former Texas Ranger Billy Bob Holland, is convinced of Lucas’s innocence—but proving it means unearthing the truth from the seething mass of deceit and corruption that spreads like wildfire in a gossipy small town where everybody knows everybody else’s business. Billy Bob’s relationship with Lucas’s family is not an easy one. Years back he was a close friend of Mrs. Smothers—too close, according to her husband. But when Lucas overhears gruesome tales of serial murder from a neighboring cell in the local lock-up, he himself looks like a candidate for an untimely death, and Billy Bob incurs enemies far more dangerous than any he faced as a Ranger. With the same electric language and hard-edged style that brought James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux novels to the forefront of American crime fiction, Cimarron Rose explodes with a harsh, evocative setting and unforgettable characters.

A psychological mystery centered on the murder of two showgirls in 1930s St. Paul, Minnesota. A man is arrested and everything points to his guilt, but Lieutenant Horner is convinced the man is innocent.

A serial killer leads authorities in Nevada to the graves of his women victims which he has secretly booby trapped. A grave explodes, killing several people and he escapes in the confusion, but reporter Irene Kelly survives and goes after him.

Its 1933 in East Texas and the Depression lingers in the air like a slow moving storm. When a young Harry Collins and his little sister stumble across the body of a black woman who has been savagely mutilated and left to die in the bottoms of the Sabine River, their small town is instantly charged with tension. When a second body turns up, this time of a white woman, there is little Harry can do from stopping his Klan neighbors from lynching an innocent black man. Together with his younger sister, Harry sets out to discover who the real killer is, and to do so they will search for a truth that resides far deeper than any river or skin color.

With the horrible remnants of a childhood tragedy forever visible across his otherwise handsome face, Joe Trona is scarred in more ways than one. Rescued from an orphanage by Will Trona, a charismatic politician who sensed his dark potential, Joe is swept into the maelstrom of influence and intimidation that surrounds his adoptive father’s illustrious career. When Will is murdered, Joe will stop at nothing to find out who did it. As Joe’s investigation deepens, he is forced to confront how many secrets Will Trona possessed, and how many people he had the power to harm. (from the back cover)

Rebus is off the case - literally. A few days into a murder inquiry following the brutal death of an Edinburgh art dealer, Rebus blows up at DCS Gill Templer. He is sent to the Scottish Police College for 'retraining' - in other words, he's in the Last Chance Saloon. Rebus is given an old, unsolved case to work on, in order to teach him and others the merits of teamwork. But there are those in the team who have their own secrets - and they'll stop at nothing to protect them. As if this wasn't enough, Rebus is asked to act as a go-between for gangster 'Big Ger' Cafferty. And as newly promoted DS Siobhan Clarke works the case of the murdered art dealer, she is brought closer to Cafferty than she could ever have anticipated...

The times, they are a-changin' . . . The Orange County, California, that the Becker brothers knew as boys is no more -- unrecognizably altered since the afternoon in 1954 when Nick, Clay, David, and Andy rumbled with the lowlife Vonns, while five-year-old Janelle Vonn watched from the sidelines. The new decade has brought about the end of the orange groves and the birth of suburban sprawl. It is the era of Johnson, hippies, John Birchers, and LSD. Clay becomes a casualty of a far-off jungle war. Nick becomes a cop, Andy a reporter, David a minister. And the decapitated corpse of teenage beauty queen Janelle Vonn is discovered in an abandoned warehouse. A hideous crime has touched the Beckers in ways that none of them could have anticipated, setting three brothers on a dangerous collision course that will change their family -- and their world -- forever. And no one will emerge from the wreckage unscathed.

Winner of the Edgar Award for Best Novel of the Year “You just have to read it . . . . Utterly inventive. . . excruciatingly breathless." —Maureen Corrigan, Washington Post From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins: a riveting story of witness protection, petty thievery, local politics, and murder—set against the turbulent backdrop of the 1980 presidential election It’s the fall of 1980, the last week before the presidential election that pits the downtrodden Jimmy Carter against the suspiciously sunny Ronald Reagan. In a seedy suburban house in Spokane, a small-time crook formerly from New York, Vince Camden, pockets his weekly allotment of stolen credit cards and heads off to his witness-protection job at a donut shop. At the shop he takes a shine to a regular named Kelly, who works for a local politician. Somehow he finds himself and the politician in a parking lot at three in the morning, giving the slip to a couple of menacing thugs. And then he crosses the path of a young detective—and discovers his credit-scam partner, lying dead in his passport-photo office with a Cheerio-size bullet-hole in his head. No one writing crime novels today tells a story or sketches a character with more freshness or élan than Jess Walter. Citizen Vince is his funniest and grittiest book yet.

When the Ottoman Empire of 1836 is shattered by a wave of political murders that threatens to upset the balance of power, eunuch intelligence agent Yashim Togalu conducts an investigation into clues within the empire's once-elite military forces.

Adam Chase has spent the last five years in New York trying to wipe out the memory of his family's rejection. Until a phone call from his best friend Summons him back to Red Water Farm. When he left North Carolina, Adam left for good. Now he has no choice but to return - and being remembered as a murderer doesn't help. Within hours of arriving, Adam is beaten up, accosted and has to face the hostility of those closest to him, including Grace, the young woman he cannot forget. Nothing has changed. And then people start turning up dead. For a man only just acquitted of murder, Adam's homecoming does not go well. And he has a dark streaks, a history of violence. Everyone doubts. No one trusts him. And as the past threatnes to overshadow the present, Adam becomes the prime suspect for the new murders. He alone can clear his name.

A twelve-year-old girl and her younger brother are on the run in the Idaho woods, pursued by four men they have just watched commit murder four men who know exactly who William and Annie are. And where their mother lives. Retired policemen from Los Angeles, the killers easily persuade the local sheriff to let them lead the search for the missing children. Now there's nowhere left for William and Annie to hide and no one they can trust. Until they meet Jess Rawlins. Rawlins, an old-school rancher, knows trouble when he sees it. But he is only one against four men who will stop at nothing to silence their witnesses. What these ex-cops do not know is just how far Rawlins will go to protect William and Annie and see that justice is done.