2014 Edgar Award Winners

 

It was an exciting night in New York when the winners of the 2014 Edgar Awards were announced by the Mystery Writers of America at a gala celebration last month. Acclaimed mystery writers Robert Crais and Carolyn Hart received the Grandmasters Award, and the Egdars also heralded the arrival of some exciting new voices in mystery fiction. If you’re looking for great thrillers to add to your summer reading list, check out these notable 2014 Edgar Award winners.

This year, the 2014 Edgar Award winner for Best Novel was awarded to William Kent Kruger for his thriller Ordinary Grace. You may know Kruger for his New York Times bestselling mystery series featuring Cork O’Connor, and his stand-alone crime novel is just as exciting. Part thriller, part coming of age story, Ordinary Grace looks back through the eyes of a middle age man remembering how murder and mystery changed his life one shocking summer in 1961. Along with the Edgar, the New York Times bestselling thriller also took home the 2014 Dilys Award. Whether you’re already a fan or you’re reading Kruger for the first time, this 2014 Edgar Award winner is a safe bet for a fantastic summer read.

If you love fast-paced, action-packed thriller in the tradition of John LaCarre, check out the 2014 Edgar Award winner for Best First Novel by an American Author, Red Sparrow. Written by ex-CIA intelligence officer Jason Matthews, this thrilling spy novel follow two spies – one American, one Russian – and as they track each other from Moscow to Helsinki to the halls of the US Capitol building. Loaded with international intrigue and the kind of realism only an inside operative could provide, Red Sparrow announces the arrival of an exciting new voice in espionage thrillers. Fans of Fleming’s James Bond spy novels definitely want to put Matthews on the must-read mystery list.

For Best Paperback Original, the 2014 Edgar Award winner was The Wicked Girls by Alex Marwood – a pseudonym for journalist and author of the thriller The Temp, Serena Mackesy. This is the same category in which the Lou Mason thriller The Last Witness was nominated for the 2003 Edgar Award, and it’s definitely a paperback worth checking out. One of Stephen King’s Ten Best Books of the Year, The Wicked Girls follows two women who committed a brutal crime together as children and are reunited by a series of murders in a dilapidated seaside amusement park in Britain. With unexpected twists and turns, Marwood’s award-winning mystery is sure to give you chills now matter how it gets this summer.

Any one of these 2014 Edgar Award winning mysteries is a guaranteed great summer read. Check them out, and who knows – you may just discover a new favorite mystery writer!