Macavity Award for Best Mystery Novel

2008

Laura Lippman. What the Dead Know

A 30-year-old missing persons case becomes more mysterious when a woman, claiming to be one of a pair of missing sisters, suddenly reappears.

2007

Nancy Pickard. The Virgin of Small Plains

Small Plains, Kansas, January 23, 1987: In the midst of a deadly blizzard, eighteen-year-old Rex Shellenberger scours his father's pasture, looking for helpless newborn calves. Then he makes a shocking discovery: the naked, frozen body of a teenage girl, her skin as white as the snow around her. Even dead, she is the most beautiful girl he's ever seen. It is a moment that will forever change his life and the lives of everyone around him. The mysterious dead girl - the "Virgin of Small Plains" - inspires local reverence: In the two decades following her death, strange miracles visit those who faithfully tend to her grave; some even believe that her spirit can cure deadly illnesses. Slowly, word of the legend spreads.

2006

Michael Connelly. The Lincoln Lawyer

Los Angeles criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller signs on to defend young real estate agent Louis Roulet against charges of assault. Roulet's imperious mother will spend any amount to prove her son's innocence. But probing the details of the case, Mickey and private investigator Raul Levin dig up a far darker picture of Roulet's personality and his past. Levin's murder and a new connection to the Menendez case, which he mishandled, make Mickey wonder if he's in over his head, and his defense of Roulet becomes a question of morality as well as a test of his own survival.

2005

Ken Bruen. The Killing of the Tinkers

"With his second Jack Taylor crime novel (after 2003's "The Guards"), Irish author Bruen confirms his rightful place among the finest noir stylists of his generation. The P.I. is sinking back into alcoholic oblivion when an Irish Gypsy, Sweeper, approaches Jack for help in solving the murders of a number of young men in his clan."--Publishers Weekly.

2004

Peter Lovesey. The House Sitter

The corpse of a beautiful woman, clad only in a bathing suit, is found on a popular Sussex beach at the end of a hot, sunny day. Apparently, she was murdered in full view of dozens of other holiday makers. Establishing the victim's identity is difficult but when it is finally learned that she was a Bath resident, Inspector Peter Diamond is called in.

2003

S.J. Rozan. Winter and Night

An explosive, breakout novel about the corrosive power of secrets and corruption in a small town.

2002

Laurie R. King. Folly

Rae Newborn is a woman on the edge: on the edge of sanity, on the edge of tragedy, and now on the edge of the world. She has moved to an island at the far reaches of the continent to restore the house of an equally haunted figure, her mysterious great-uncle--an ambitious undertaking which may transform her life, or end it.

2001

Val McDermid. A Place of Execution

Winter 1963: two children have disappeared off the streets of Manchester. In December, another child goes missing. For the young George Bennett, a newly promoted inspector, it is the beginning of his most difficult and harrowing case. Decades later, Journalist Catherine Heathcote is forced to reinvestigate the past when Bennett pulls the plug on a book about the case. The results of her investigation turn the world upside down.

2000

Sujata Massey. The Flower Master

Rei Shimura is a half-American, half-Japanese antiques dealer who's all sleuth when it comes to crime. At her aunt's bidding, Rei signs up for a course in Japanese flower arranging, but before she's even finished her first lesson, one of her teachers is brutally murdered.

1999

Michael Connelly. Blood Work

Former FBI agent Terry McCaleb is enjoying a quiet retirement following his heart transplant operation, when he meets the sister of the woman whose heart now beats in his chest and learns that the donor wasn't killed in an accident, but was murdered, leading McCaleb to embark on an investigation of the donor's murder.

1998

Deborah Crombie. Dreaming of the Bones

When talented and tormented poet Lydia Brooke dies, it is assumed that she has taken her own life. Now obsession has taken hold of Victoria McClellan. A feminist biographer at Cambridge, Vic finds herself immersed in the poet's world. Uneasy about the manner of Lydia's death, Vic calls on her ex-husband, Scotland Yard Superintendent Duncan Kincaid, for help. But before he can take action, Vic herself is dead--and there's no question that this one is murder.

1997

Peter Lovesey. Bloodhounds

Assigned to investigate the theft of a priceless stamp from a local museum, detective Peter Diamond of the Bath police department soon stumbles upon a homicide linked to the theft and must use all his sleuthing skills to uncover a multiple murderer.

1996

Mary Willis Walker. Under the Beetle's Cellar

An Austin school bus driver and eleven of his young charges are kidnapped by religious fanatics and held in their fortified compound for 46 days.

1995

Sharyn McCrumb. She Walks These Hills

The Appalachian community of Dark Hollow face two fears: a roaming ghost and a released convicted murderer returning to find his ex-wife.

1994

Minette Walters. The Sculptress

Roz Leigh, an author embittered by the tragic death of a child and a split from her husband, agrees to write the story of Olive Martin, a grossly fat, untidy woman serving a long prison sentence for the particularly grisly murder of her mother and sister. Visiting Olive in jail, Roz finds herself drawn to the woman, and despite the fact that ``the sculptress'' readily confessed to the crime, she begins to find odd discrepancies in the evidence against her.

1993

Margaret Maron. Bootlegger's Daughter

Unconventional, North Carolina attorney Deborah Knott has done the unthinkable: tossed her hat into the heated race for district judge of old-boy-ruled Colleton County. While she's defending indigent clients and reeling in voters, the young daughter of Janie Whitehead begs her to investigate her mother's never-solved eighteen-year-old murder. Deborah takes on the case: following twisted Southern bloodlines; turning up dangerous, decades-old secrets; and inspiring someone to go on an all-out campaign to derail her future . . .

1992

Nancy Pickard. I.O.U.

Amateur sleuth Jenny Cain examines her deceased mother's insanity, investigates the bankruptcy of her family's business and reckons with an attempt on her own life.

1991

Sharyn McCrumb. If Ever I Return, Pretty Peggy-O

Returning to her home town seeking a career comeback, 1960s folksinger Peggy Muryan contacts sheriff Spencer Arrowood after receiving a threatening postcard, and when a Peggy look-alike disappears, Spencer is sure there is a connection.

1990

Carolyn Hart. A Little class on Murder

What better place for a murder than a college campus? When Annie Laurance teaches a course on the three great ladies of mystery--Christie, Mary Roberts Rhinehart, and Dorothy Sayers--she quickly learns that murder is a subject most academic!

1989

Tony Hillerman. A Thief of Time

When two corpses appear amid stolen goods and bones at an ancient burial site, Navajo Tribal Policemen Lt. Joe Leaphorn and Officer Jim Chee must plunge into the past to unearth the astonishing truth behind a mystifying series of horrific murders.

1988

Nancy Pickard. Marriage is Murder

Jenny Cain and police detective Geof Bushfield already had pre-nuptial jitters. Then a sudden wave of domestic violence puts their future together in jeopardy. The curious thing is that none of the wives are confessing--and none of the murder weapons can be found.

1987

P.D. James. A Taste for Death

Two men lie dead in the vestry of a London church, their throats cut with brutal precision. One is Sir Paul Berowne--rich, cultivated, elegant; the other, an alcoholic tramp. Enter Adam Dalgliesh: inspired, sardonic and complicated--and P.D. James' most beloved investigator of human fallibility.