Crime Fiction Superlatives: The Best and Most of 2018

There are many ways to measure a crime novel, and we’ve already given you our list our favorite crime novels of the year, the best crime novels of the year (yup, they’re different lists), and innumerable roundups of sub-genres (so many great books), but we’re not done yet! Today, we take a trip back to yearbook days to award superlatives for all the books who did what they intended to do very well. Thanks to all the authors out there keeping crime fiction diverse and ultra-specific. Keep doing what you’re doing, and we’ll keep reading what we’re reading.

Most Mysterious Vanishing: Maria Hummel’s Still Lives

Honorable Mention: Wendy Heard, Hunting Annabelle, Natasha Bell, Exhibit Alexandra 

Best Trap Laid: Lucy Atkins, The Night Visitor

Honorable Mention: Margot Hunt, For Better and Worse

Hardest Boiled: Alan Parks, Bloody January

Honorable Mention: Jean-Patrick Manchette, Ivory Pearl

Kim Philby Award for the Most Complicated Double Cross: Daniel Silva, The Other Woman

Honorable Mention: Rosalie Knecht, Who Is Vera Kelly?

Best Title: Oyinkan Braithwaite, My Sister, the Serial Killer

Honorable Mention: Jonathan Lethem, The Feral Detective, Helene Tursten, An Elderly Lady Is Up To No Good; Araminta Hall’s Our Kind of Cruelty

Most Studious: The Annotated Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler, annotated and edited by Owen Hill, Pamela Jackson, and Anthony Rizzuto

Honorable Mention: Classic American Crime Fiction of the 1920s, edited by Leslie Klinger and Laurie R. King

Best Couple: Laura Lippman’s Sunburn

Honorable Mention: Yasmina Reza, Babylon

Best Conspiracy:  Lou Berney, November Road

Honorable Mention: Katrina Carrasco, The Best Bad Things

Best Use of New Media: Alison Gaylin’s If I Die Tonight

Honorable Mention: T. M. Logan, Lies, Nic Joseph, The Night in Question

Rotary Club Award for New Small Business Owners: Joe Ide’s Wrecked

Honorable Mention: Sara Paretsky, Shell Game 

Most Artistic: Natasha Bell, Exhibit Alexandra

Honorable Mention: Erica Wright, The Blue Kingfisher; Maria Hummel, Still Lives 

Best New PI: Tracy Clark, Borrowed Time

Honorable Mention: Jonathan Lethem, The Feral Detective

Best Road Trip: Julia Heaberlin, Paper Ghosts

Honorable Mention: Lou Berney, November Road, Sara Gran, The Infinite Blacktop; Jonathan Lethem, The Feral Detective, Gina Wohlsdorf’s Blood Highway

Best Use of Gaslighting: Araminta Hall, Our Kind of Cruelty

Honorable Mention: Joanna Luloff, Tell Me Again What Happened, Alice Feeney, Sometimes I Lie

Best Departure by an Iconic Author: Tana French, The Witch Elm

Honorable Mention: John Grisham, The Reckoning

Most Rousing Speech / Call to Action: Eva Dolan, This is How It Ends

Honorable Mention: Ausma Zehanat Khan, A Dangerous Crossing

“Homecoming” King: Lee Child, Past Tense: A Jack Reacher Novel

Honorable Mention: Lori Rader-Day, Under A Dark Sky

Most Complicated Friendship: Tara Isabella Burton, Social Creature

Honorable Mention: Megan Abbott, Give Me Your Hand

Most Delightfully Explicit Sex Scene(s): Chloe Esposito, Bad

Honorable Mention: Laura Lippman, Sunburn

Most Delicious: Ed Lin, 99 Ways to Die

Honorable Mention: Martin Walker, A Taste For Vengeance

Best Vengeance Quest: Sara Gran, The Infinite Blacktop

Honorable Mention: Amina Akhtar, #Fashion Victim, Jane Harper, Force of Nature

Best Series Crossover: Michael Connelly, Dark Sacred Night

Most Florida: Alex Segura, Blackout

Honorable Mention: Tim Dorsey, The Pope of Palm Beach

Best Historical Cameo: Cole Porter in Laurie R. King’s The Island of the Mad

Honorable Mention: Graham Greene in The Prague Coup, by Jean-Luc Fromental

Best Dressed: Cara Black’s Murder on the Left Bank

Honorable Mention: Kellye Garrett, Hollywood Ending

Best Conclusion to a Series: Naomi Hirahara’s Hiroshima Boy

Honorable Mention: Rob Hart, Potter’s Field