The Edgar Awards - Best Novel

Winner of the Edgar award for best novel

Evil crept into Dave Robicheaux's bayou world one night and destroyed the woman he loved. Now it's threatening the life of his innocent child.

Framed for murder, the Cajun ex-cop is traveling far from his Louisiana home to clear his name, to help a friend, to save what remains of his family—seeking justice and revenge in the Big Sky Country of Montana.

There is no accolade or major mystery award that has not already been bestowed upon Lawrence Block. His acclaimed crime novels are asintelligent, provocative, and emotionally complex as they are nerve-tighteningly intense. And perhaps the most respected of his myriad works are the Matthew Scudder books -- masterworks of suspenseful invention featuring a remarkable protagonist rich in conscience and character, with all the flaws that his humanity entails. This is the detective novel as high art.

In Matt Scudder's mind, money, power, and position elevate nobody above morality and the law. Now the ex-cop and unlicensed p.i. has been hired to prove that socialite Richard Thurman orchestrated the brutal murder of his beautiful, pregnant wife. During Scudder's hard drinking years, he left a piece of his soul on every seedy corner of the Big Apple. But this case is more depraved and more potentially devastating than anything he experienced while floundering in the urban depths. Because this investigation is leading Scudder on a frightening grand tour of New York's sex-for-sale underworld -- where an innocent young life is simply a commodity to be bought and perverted ... and then destroyed.

Edgar® Award Winner for Best Novel and Winner of the PNBA Best Fiction Book of the Year

"As thrilling as it is unnerving . . . Could have been written by Dashiell Hammett or James Crumley--at their best."--Greil Marcus, Esquire

St. Paul, Minnesota, 1939. A grisly discovery is made. On a hillside, the dead body of a beautiful dime-a-dance girl is found, and an investigation opens. Assigned to the case is Police Lieutenant Wesley Horner, a man troubled and alone after his wife's recent death, a man with his own demons. He soon narrows his sights on Herbert White, an eccentric recluse and hobby photographer with a fondness for snapping suggestive photographs of the dime-a-dance girls. As Horner discovers, White is also a man with no memory, who must record his life in detailed journal entries and scrapbooks. For every interrogation Horner has, Herbert White has few answers, pushing the murder investigation into unknown territory and illuminating the complex relationship between truth and fiction, past and present, faith and memory.

The times they are a-changin' . . .

The Orange County, California, that the Becker brothers knew as boys is no more—unrecognizably altered since the afternoon in 1954 when Nick, Clay, David, and Andy rumbled with the lowlife Vonns, while five-year-old Janelle Vonn watched from the sidelines. The new decade has brought about the end of the orange groves and the birth of suburban sprawl. It is the era of Johnson, hippies, John Birchers, and LSD. Clay becomes a casualty of a far-off jungle war. Nick becomes a cop, Andy a reporter, David a minister. And the decapitated corpse of teenage beauty queen Janelle Vonn is discovered in an abandoned warehouse.

A hideous crime has touched the Beckers in ways that none of them could have anticipated, setting three brothers on a dangerous collision course that will change their family—and their world—forever.

At 1:59 a.m. in Spokane, Washington—eight days before the 1980 presidential election—Vince Camden pockets his stash of stolen credit cards and drops by an all-night poker game before heading to his witness-protection job dusting crullers at Donut Make You Hungry. Along with a neurotic hooker girlfriend, this is the total sum of Vince's new life. But when a familiar face shows up in town, Vince realizes his sordid past is still too close behind him. During the next unforgettable week, he'll negotiate a coast-to-coast maze of obsessive cops, eager politicians, and assorted mobsters—only to find that redemption might exist, of all places, in the voting booth.

Winner of the Edgar Award for Best Novel

It is 1836. Europe is modernizing and the Ottoman Empire must follow suit. But just before the sultan announces sweeping changes, a wave of murders threatens the fragile balance of power in his court. Who is behind them? Only one intelligence agent can be trusted to find out: Yashim, a man both brilliant and near-invisible in this world, an investigator who can walk with ease in the great halls of the empire, in its streets, and even within its harems--because, of course, Yashim is a eunuch. His investigation points to the Janissaries, who, for four hundred years were the empire's elite soldiers. Crushed by the sultan, could they now be staging a brutal comeback? And can they be stopped without throwing Istanbul into political chaos?

This first book in the Investigator Yashim series is a richly entertaining tale, full of exotic history and intrigue.

A powerful, heart-pounding thriller from the unparalleled New York Times bestselling and two-time Edgar Award-winning author of The Last Child and The King of Lies, Down River will haunt your thoughts long after the last page is turned.

Adam Chase has a violent streak, and for good reason. As a boy, he saw things no child should witness, suffered wounds that left him misunderstood―a fighter. Even grown, he remains dangerous and unpredictable, so that when he narrowly beats a murder charge, he's hounded out of town, exiled for a sin he did not commit. For five long years, he disappears. But now he's back, and no one knows why - not his family or the cops, not the enemies he left behind. But Adam has his reasons. Attacked within hours of his return, the tone of his homecoming is set. As bodies turn up and the town rises in anger, Adam again finds himself in the fight of his life, not just to prove his innocence, but to reclaim the only life he's ever wanted. Secrets build on secrets, emotions tear, and more than one person crosses the brink as Hart examines the lengths to which people will go for money, family, and revenge.
Praise for John Hart and Down River:

"[Hart] combines gripping plots with a wonderful gift for prose, making his books literary crowd-pleasers that appeal to the brain as well as the emotions. There are few books published that can legitimately be called "a must-read," but this is one of them." --Chicago Sun Times

"If you value Harper Lee, James Lee Burke, Truman Capote, and Michael Malone… it's time to add John Hart to your bookshelves." --Otto Penzler, The New York Sun

"An artist adding layers of paint ... Hart takes his time, snaring the reader with evocative storytelling and lush prose along with the usual quota of conflict and murder." --The Boston Globe

"[A] complex, emotionally charged novel… Down River is a beautifully constructed story of personal redemption, family secrets, and murder…. A truly splendid novel with a deep emotional core." --Booklist (starred)

"The thrills come fast and furious." ―Washington Post

"Nail-biting suspense." –Raleigh News and Observer

"Richly atmospheric… should settle once and for all the question of whether thrillers and mysteries can also be literature." –Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Falls squarely in the league of the best of Southern novels." --South Florida Sun Sentinel

A twelve-year-old girl and her younger brother are on the run in the Idaho woods, pursued by four men they have just watched commit murder―four men who know exactly who William and Annie are. And where their mother lives.

Retired policemen from Los Angeles, the killers easily persuade the local sheriff to let them lead the search for the missing children. Now there's nowhere left for William and Annie to hide…and no one they can trust. Until they meet Jess Rawlins.

Rawlins, an old-school rancher, knows trouble when he sees it. He is only one against four men who will stop at nothing to silence their witnesses. But in this thrilling mystery novel from C.J. Box, these ex-cops don't know just how far Rawlins will go to protect William and Annie…and see that justice is done.

Blue Heaven is the winner of the 2009 Edgar Award for Best Novel.