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
