The Mystery Readers International has announced their nominees for the 2016 Macavity Awards—an annual award for excellence in mysteries, named for the “mystery cat” of T.S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats.
*Follow the linked titles to excerpts or reviews on CrimeHQ!
Best Mystery Novel
Little Black Lies by Sharon Bolton (Minotaur)
The Long and Faraway Gone by Lou Berney (Morrow)
The Hot Countries by Tim Hallinan (Soho)
The Child Garden by Catriona McPherson (Midnight Ink)
Life or Death by Michael Robotham (Mulholland)
The Cartel by Don Winslow (Knopf)
Best First Mystery:
Concrete Angel by Patricia Abbot (Polis)
Past Crimes by Glen Erik Hamilton (Morrow)
The Killing Kind by Chris Holm (Mulholland)
Where All Light Tends to Go by David Joy (Putnam)
The Unquiet Dead by Ausma Zehanat Khan (Minotaur)
On the Road with Del and Louise by Art Taylor (Henery)
Best Critical/Biographical:
The Golden Age of Murder: The Mystery of the Writers Who Invented the Modern Detective Story by Martin Edwards (HarperCollins)
A Is for Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie by Kathryn Harkup (Bloomsbury Sigma)
Meanwhile There Are Letters: The Correspondence of Eudora Welty and Ross Macdonald edited by Suzanne Marrs & Tom Nolan (Arcade)
Forensics: What Bugs, Burns, Prints, DNA, and More Tell Us About Crime by Val McDermid (Grove)
The Lost Detective: Becoming Dashiell Hammett by Nathan Ward (Bloomsbury)
Best Short Story:
“The Little Men” by Megan Abbott (MysteriousPress.com/Open Road)
“On Borrowed Time” by Mat Coward (Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, June 2015)
“Sob Sister” by Loren D. Estleman (Detroit Is Our Beat: Tales of the Four Horsemen, Tyrus)
“A Year Without Santa Claus” by Barb Goffman (Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, January/February 2015)
“Quack and Dwight” by Travis Richardson (Jewish Noir, ed. Kenneth Wishnia, PM Press)
“A Joy Forever” by B.K. Stevens (Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, March 2015)
Sue Feder Historical Mystery Award:
The Masque of a Murderer by Susanna Calkins (Minotaur)
Shelley Freydont: A Gilded Grave by Shelley Freydont (Berkley Prime Crime)
Tom & Lucky by C. Joseph Greaves (and George & Cokey Flo) (Bloomsbury)
The Lady from Zagreb by Philip Kerr (Marian Wood/Putnam)
Secret Life of Anna Blanc by Jennifer Kincheloe (Seventh Street)
Dreaming Spies by Laurie R. King (Bantam)
Congratulations to all of the nominees! Good luck!
Images via mysteryreaders.org