The first Canadian winner of the Edgar for Best Novel features, perhaps stereotypically, features a Mountie and a librarian politely declining to discuss a murder where they both know whodunnit. The Mountie is Staff Sergeant Karl Alberg, a divorced forty-something who misses his daughters back in Calgary but has no… Read more
Ross Thomas’ Briarpatch won the Edgar Award for Best Novel in 1985, the year my younger brother was born, eight years after my own birthday. Like the protagonist of the novel in relation to his decade-younger sibling, I spent several years being my brother’s de facto parent until he went… Read more
Before I go any further, a confession: This was the first Elmore Leonard novel I’ve ever read. Of course, I knew about Leonard’s work—I’m not a complete philistine. I knew he was the master of fast, authentic dialogue. Crime fiction’s valedictorian of voice. And I’d seen the famous films made… Read more
Billingsgate Shoal launches out of the gates from the first page with one of the best hooks I’ve read in a while. Charles “Doc” Adams introduces himself as a doctor and dental surgeon, with a wife and two college-aged sons. He immediately offers up a juicy tidbit: My most interesting… Read more
A killer is on the loose. Soaring through the skies above Manhattan, one of nature’s most deadly predators, a peregrine falcon, eyes its potential prey on the sidewalks below. A flash of reflective light on the ground marks the target and signals the moment to strike. A beautiful ice skater… Read more
I had my pick of several compelling reads, all past Edgar Award winners, but felt drawn to the novel Whip Hand by Dick Francis. I’ve long been curious about Dick Francis’s stories, though I have never actually read one. I offer this confession willingly and with regret for what I’ve… Read more
Arthur Maling’s 1979 novel The Rheingold Route may hold the dubious distinction of being the least remembered book to ever win the Edgar Award for best novel of the year. It is a challenge to find anyone who has heard of it, let alone read it. A 2019 internet search… Read more
Ken Follett published Eye of the Needle in 1978, and the book achieved a level of success that few other Edgar Award winners have matched; I can only think of a small handful of Edgar winners that ascended to similar heights (The Long Goodbye, The Spy Who Came in from… Read more
Right from the very title, William H. Hallahan has written a book of juxtapositions, a novel that relentlessly compares and contrasts its two main protagonists and the situations and societies in which they find themselves. Ostensibly a spy thriller, Catch Me: Kill Me follows two men who never meet, and… Read more
My mom loves Spenser. She has almost every Spenser book Robert B. Parker wrote. Parker himself wrote nearly 70 books, but his characters are so popular his series continued even after his death in 2010. Years ago, I read a couple of Spenser books because they were on my mom’s… Read more
