Friday, January 24, 2025

Sampling the Edgars



On January 22 the Mystery Writers of America announced the 2025 Edgar Allen Poe Award nominations. The complete list can be found at this link:

MWA Announces the 2025 Edgar Award Nominations - Mystery Writers of America

The winners will be announced May 1, 2025.

The "Edgars" are the most prestigious awards in crime fiction, and achieving "finalist" status is an enviable accomplishment. Of course, winning an Edgar is over the moon, as they say.  Without attempting to be complete -- there are more than a dozen categories with at least fifty finalists -- I've pulled together a few of the finalists for a taste of today's crime fiction literature.

Best Paperback Original

A Forgotten Kill
Isabella Maldonado


[from the publisher]
FBI Special Agent Daniela “Dani” Vega was seventeen when her mother murdered her father. Ten years after Dani’s own damning eyewitness testimony sealed her mother’s fate, she’s starting to have doubts. What if she got it all wrong?

A veteran NYPD homicide detective agrees to reopen the closed case on one condition―Dani must help him find a serial killer who’s been operating throughout New York City for the past decade. If anyone can decipher his patterns, and his riddles, it’s a trained codebreaker like Dani. The killer knows this too. And his next riddle―and victim―is meant just for her.

For Dani, stopping a killer―and learning what really happened to her father―becomes more personal and more dangerous with each new twist. As secrets of the past are unearthed, the truth could forever change Dani’s life…and the lives of everyone she loves.


Best First Novel By An American Author


Kerri Hakoda

[from the publisher]
When the body of a barista is found in the once-pristine Alaskan snow, Anchorage homicide detective DeHavilland Beans is gutted to recognize the young woman, Jolene. He’d bought coffee from her every morning and knew her as a bright college student working her way through school. Devastated by the murder and by the life cut short, Beans vows to find the killer.

Since scavengers damaged the body, obtaining any usable evidence is impossible, even with the assistance of wildlife expert Raisa Ingalls, Beans’s ex. When the body of another woman is found, a serial killer is suspected and the FBI joins the hunt.

After a third body turns up, Beans is desperate to find the killer—especially when another woman goes missing. With the murderer moving so quickly, Beans and his team are determined to stop the spree and catch the killer before it’s too late.

Best Novel

Nicolás Ferraro

[from the publisher]
A teenage girl and her gangster father embark on a road trip toward revenge in this award-winning coming-of-age Argentinian noir.

Fifteen-year-old Ámbar has never known any parent other than her father, Víctor Mondragón, nor any life other than his. On any given Friday night, Ámbar longs to be at the arcade or a rock concert, but she’s more likely to be patching up Víctor’s latest bullet hole in a dingy motel or creating a new set of fake identities for the both of them.

When a tattooed mercenary kills Víctor’s best friend and vows that Víctor is next, father and daughter set off on a joyride across Argentina in search of bloody retribution. But Ámbar’s growing pains hurt worse than her beloved sawed-off shotgun’s kickback as she begins to question the structure of her world. How much is her father not telling her? Could her life ever be different? And will she survive long enough to find out?

It’s kill or be killed in this gritty, devastating coming-of-age thriller from the king of Argentine neo-noir.

Later.

Manuel Ramos writes crime fiction.




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