Edgar Award Winners 
 
Honoring the best mystery fiction sponsored
by the Mystery Writers of  America.      
Best Novel 
2022
 
Five Decembers
by James Kestrel

As the Japanese fleet heads undetected towards Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Honolulu police detective Joe McGrady is assigned to a homicide case that will take him across the pacific and change his life forever.
 2021
 
Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line
by Deepa Anappara

In an award-winning debut based on true events, a 9-year-old reality-television enthusiast in India uses crime-show approaches to investigate the disappearance of a classmate, before additional abductions shatter life in his sprawling city home.
 2020
 
The Stranger Diaries
by Elly Griffiths

A first stand-alone mystery by the author of the Ruth Galloway series finds a high school English teacher chronicling her suspicions about the murder of a colleague before discovering a sinister message in her own diary. 
2019
 
Down the River Unto the Sea
by Walter Mosley

Framed by corrupt enemies within the NYPD and forced to serve a decade in prison, private detective Joe King Oliver receives a confession from a woman who helped set him up, a situation that compels him to investigate his own case at the same time he assists a black radical journalist who has been wrongly accused of murdering two corrupt cops. 
2018
 
Bluebird, Bluebird
by Attica Locke

Forced by duty to return to his racially divided East Texas hometown, an African-American Texas Ranger risks his job and reputation to investigate a highly charged double murder case involving a black Chicago lawyer and a local white woman.
 2017
 
Before the Fall
by Noah Hawley

The stories of the wealthy victims of a plane crash intertwine with those of a down-on-his-luck painter and a four-year-old boy, the tragedy's only survivors, as odd coincidences surrounding the crash point to a possible conspiracy
Best First Novel 
2022
 
Deer season
by Erin Flanagan

Over a weekend a teenage girl goes missing. Hal, a mentally challenged farmhand, returns from a hunting trip with a flimsy story about the blood in his truck and a dent near the headlight. When the situation escalates from that of a missing girl to something more sinister, Alma Costagan and her husband are forced to confront what Hal might be capable of
2021
 
Please see us
by Caitlin Mullen

Two young women become unlikely friends during one fateful summer in Atlantic City as mysterious disappearances hit dangerously close to home.
2020 
 
Miracle Creek
by Angie Kim

A dramatic murder trial in the aftermath of an experimental medical treatment and a fatal explosion upends a rural Virginia community where personal secrets and private ambitions complicate efforts to uncover what happened. 
2019
 
Bearskin 
by James A. McLaughlin

Hiding out from the Mexican drug cartels he betrayed in Arizona, Rice More, while protecting a remote forest preserve in Virginian Appalachia, exposes a bear-poaching scheme that revelas his location to the criminals he was running from in the first place. 
2018
 
She Rides Shotgun
by Jordan Harper

Fresh out of jail, Nate thrusts his 11-year-old daughter into a world of robbery and violence in an effort to keep her safe from the prison gang that has put a bounty on his head and murdered her mother.
2017
 
Under the Harrow
by Flynn Berry

When Nora travels from London to visit her sister in the countryside, she finds her sister has been brutally murdered. Haunted by the murder and the secrets that surround it, Nora is under the harrow: distressed and in danger. As fear turns to obsession, Nora becomes as unrecognizable as the sister her investigation uncovers.
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