Nero Award

2008

Jonathan Santlofer. Anatomy of Fear

Haunted by the death of his father, an NYPD undercover narc, Nate has avoided the action and buried his emotions behind his pads and pencils for years. But that's all about to change. Brought onto the case to draw the face of a man no one has lived to see, Nate is pulled into the dark and twisted mind of a killer. As the portrait comes to Nate in bits and pieces - a face taking shape in his mind and on the page - the killer uses his own talents to shift the focus of the investigation in a startling and unexpected way. Each drawing moves the men ever closer to each other in a terrifying game of cat and mouse with deadly consequences.

2007

Julia Spencer-Fleming. All Mortal Flesh

Police Chief Russ Van Alstyne's first encounter with Clare Fergusson was in the hospital emergency room on a freezing December night. A newborn infant had been abandoned on the town's Episcopal church steps. If Russ had known that the church had a new priest, he certainly would never have guessed that it would be a woman. Or at least not a woman like Clare. That night in the hospital was the beginning of an attraction so fierce, so forbidden, that the only thing that could keep them safe from compromising their every belief was distance - but in a small town like Millers Kill, distance is hard to find.

2006

Tess Gerritsen. Vanish

A blessed event becomes a nightmare for pregnant homicide detective Jane Rizzoli when she finds herself on the wrong side of a hostage crisis in this timely and relentless new thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of Body Double.

2005

Lee Child. The Enemy

Jack Reacher. Hero. Loner. Soldier. Soldier’s son. An elite military cop, he was one of the army’s brightest stars. But in every cop’s life there is a turning point. One case. One messy, tangled case that can shatter a career. Turn a lawman into a renegade. And make him question words like honor, valor, and duty. For Jack Reacher, this is that case. New Year’s Day, 1990.

2004

Walter Mosley. Fear Itself

Paris Minton is a man who would just as soon walk away from trouble as stand up to it. But in 1950s Los Angeles, sometimes trouble just comes and gets you.

2003

S.J. Rozan. Winter and Night

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

2002

Linda Fairstein. The Deadhouse

During the holiday season, Lola Dakota, a respected professor from one of New York's most elite colleges is strangled and dumped in an elevator shaft. A piece of paper in her pocket reads "The Deadhouse ." Assistant DA Alexandrea Cooper uncovers a distressing pattern of betrayal and terror while dealing with the case.

2001

Laura Lippman. The Sugar House

At the annual parish dinner celebrating Sour Beef Day, a Baltimore tradition, Tess's father asks her to help their waitress, Ruthie Dembrow; a year earlier her glue-sniffing brother, having confessed to a "Jane Doe" murder, was stabbed to death in prison. Convinced that the two killings are connected, Ruthie wants Tess to find the true identity of the girl buried in a pauper's grave. Tess's search leads her on a serpentine trail of political corruption and murder through Baltimore's varied and colorful neighborhoods.

2000

Fred Harris. Coyote Revenge

1999

Jeffery Deaver. The Bone Collector

He takes his victims' lives and leaves behind mysterious pieces of a bizarre puzzle. And the only person who may be able to make sense of the serial killer's deranged plan is Lincoln Rhyme, a onetime top homicide investigator. But after a tragic accident changes his life forever, Rhyme can only watch as other cops bungle the case - until he teams up with a young rookie, Amelia Sachs, who bravely searches out the clues that help them solve the case.

1998

Dennis Lehane. Sacred

Dying billionaire Trevor Stone hires Boston private detectives Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gannaro to find his missing daughter. Grief-stricken over the death of her mother and the impending death of her father, Desiree Stone has been missing for three weeks. So has the first investigator hired to find her: Jay Becker, Patrick's mentor.

1997

Michael Connelly. The Poet

Jack is a reporter for the Rocky Mountain News. When his twin brother Sean, a homicide detective, kills himself, Jack begins to research cop suicides for a series of articles he plans to write. It's his way of dealing with the grief. As he delves into the phenomenon, however, a disturbing pattern emerges and he soon suspects a serial killer is at work--a devious cop killer who's left a trail of "suicide" notes drawn from the poems of Edgar Allan Poe.

1996

Laurie R. King. A Monstrous Regiment of Women

A Monstrous Regiment of Women continues Mary Russell's adventures as a worthy student of the famous detective Sherlock Holmes and as an ever more skilled sleuth in her own right.

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

Aaron Elkins. Old Scores

When a well-known French collector donates a Rembrandt to the museum, curator Chris Norgren travels to Europe on a fact-finding trip that takes a sinister turn.

1993

John Dunning. Booked to Die

Convinced that elusive psychopath Jackie Newton is responsible for a rare book dealer's murder, homicide detective Cliff Janeway loses his badge in a act of off-duty justice and infiltrates the rare book underworld.

1992

Robert Barnard. A Scandal in Belgravia

Peter Proctor is a retired British MP attempting to write his memoirs to stave off boredom. Unfortunately they seem to be creating more problems than he anticipated, and not just of the writers-block variety. Peter keeps getting sidetracked by the death of his friend Timothy Wycliffe, which occurred thirty-odd years before. Tim was allegedly beaten to death by his boyfriend in the posh neighborhood of Belgravia, but the case was never solved.

1991

Tony Hillerman. Coyote Waits

Navajo Tribal Police Officers Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn are reunited in this intricately-woven mystery about conspiracy and Navajo witchcraft.

1990

No Award given

1989

No Award given

1988

No Award given

1987

Charlotte MacLeod. The Corpse in Oozak's Pond

From the incomparable Charlotte MacLeod, award-winning author of Rest You Merry and The Plain Old Man, comes the newest Peter Shandy mystery in which the good professor goes digging into the past to discover the bizarre circumstances surrounding a 100-year-old corpse.

1986

Robert Goldsborough. Murder in E Minor

Related by the elephantine genius's faithful assistant Archie Goodwin, this mystery starts when Maria Radovich asks him to intercede for her with Wolfe. She's worried over threats against her great-uncle Milan Stevens, controversial new director of the New York Symphony. Since Stevens, ne Mikos Stefanovic, had saved the detective's life years earlier in Montenegro, Wolfe agrees to take the case. Before he can act, however, someone stabs the musician fatally in his apartment.

1985

Dick Lochte. Sleeping Dog

1984

Jane Langton. Emily Dickinson is Dead

Emily Dickinson noted "death's tremendous nearness" in one of her poems. Of course, she'd been dead 100 years when her admirers came to Amherst to celebrate her at a memorial symposium. Among them was Homer Kelly, distinguished Thoreau scholar and ex-detective, who had himself dealt with murder -- a form of death -- in the past. To his amazement he finds himself once again embroiled in sudden death when murder stalks the symposium.

1983

Martha Grimes. The Anodyne Necklace

Third in the bestselling series. Scotland Yard's Richard Jury solves a bizarre murder in an even stranger town-and follows a treasure map to yet another chilling crime...

1982

Hugh Pentecost. Past, Present and Murder

1981

Amanda Cross. Death in a Tenured Position

When Janet Mandelbaum is made the first woman professor at Harvard's English Department, the men are not happy. They are unhappier still when her tea is spiked and she is found drunk on the floor of the women's room. With a little time, Janet's dear friend and colleague Kate Fansler could track down the culprit, but time is running out....

1980

Helen McCloy. Burn This

1979

Lawrence Block. The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling

In a classic Bernie Rhodenbarr thriller, the burglar-turned-bookseller plots to steal the lost manuscript of a Kipling poem, but an unexpected twist leaves the police hot on his trail.