Anthony Accolades

 

The winners were announced for the Anthony Awards at an awards ceremony on October 24, 2026. These literary awards for excellence in crime fiction have been presented at the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention since 1986 and are named for the author, critic, and editor, Anthony Boucher (1911–1968). Congratulations to all the winners and finalists!

Best Hardcover Novel:  The Black Wolf by Louise Penny, Minotaur Books

Other finalists:

• All This Could Be Yours by Hank Phillippi Ryan, Minotaur Books
• Crooks by Lou Berney, William Morrow & Company
• Death of an Ex by Delia Pitts, Minotaur Books
• King of Ashes by S.A. Cosby, Flatiron Books: Pine and Cedar
  
  

Best First Novel:  Mask of the Deer Woman by Laurie L. Dove, Berkley Books

Other finalists:

• History Lessons by Zoe B. Wallbrook, Soho Crime
• Julie Chan is Dead by Liann Zhang, Atria Books,
• The Retirement Plan by Sue Hincenbergs, William Morrow & Company
• Voices of the Elysian Fields by Michael Rigg, Level Best Books
• Whiskey Business by Adrian Andover, Chestnut Avenue Press
  
  

Best Paperback Original/E-Book/Audiobook Original:  Edge by Tracy Clark, Thomas & Mercer

Other finalists:

• Crimson Thaw by Bruce Robert Coffin, Severn River Publishing
• River of Lies by James L'Etoile, Oceanview Publishing
• This Violent Heart by Heather Levy, Montlake
• Tricks of Fortune by Lina Chern, Bantam
  
  

Best Short Story:  "AITA for Using My Husband's Hobby to Teach Him a Lesson", by Mindy Carlson, in Myopic Duplicity: Do the Ends Ever Justify the Means?, Kindle/Audible

Other finalists:

• "Brotherly Love", by Cheryl A. Head, in Every Day a Little Death: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Stephen Sondheim, Level Short
• "Finding Jimmy Baldwin", by Cheryl A. Head, in Crime Ink: Iconic: An Anthology of Crime Fiction Inspired by Queer Icons, Bywater Books
• "Hollywood Prometheus", by Christa Faust, in Crime Ink: Iconic: An Anthology of Crime Fiction Inspired by Queer Icons, Bywater Books
• "Six-Armed Robbery" by Ashley-Ruth M. Bernier, in Donna Andrews Presents Malice Domestic: Mystery Most Humorous, Wildside Press
• "The Skies Are Red", by Richie Narvaez, in On Fire and Under Water: A Climate Change Crime Fiction Anthology, Rock and a Hard Place Press
  
  

Best Juvenile or YA:  Death in the Cards by Mia P. Manansala, Delacorte Press

Other finalists:

• Miles in Time by Lee Matthew Goldberg, Wise Wolf Books
• Risky Pursuit by Nancy G. West, Fire & Ice Young Adult Books
• The Scammer by Tiffany D. Jackson, Quill Tree Books
• Well-Behaved Children Seldom Make History by Chris Chan, Level Best Books
  
  

Best Critical or Nonfiction Work:  Vacations Can Be Murder: A True Crime Lover's Travel Guide to New England by Dawn M. Barclay, Level Tru

Other finalists:

• Bone Valley: A True Story of Injustice and Redemption in the Heart of Florida by Gilbert King, Flatiron Books
• L.A. Coroner: Thomas Noguchi and Death in Hollywood by Anne Soon Choi, Third State Books
• Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers by Caroline Fraser, Penguin Press
• The Secret History of the Rape Kit: A True Crime Story by Pagan Kennedy, Vintage
  
  

Best Anthology or Collection:  On Fire and Under Water: A Climate Change Crime Fiction Anthology, Curtis Ippolito et al., Rock and a Hard Place Press

Other finalists:

• Blood on the Bayou: Case Closed: Bouchercon Anthology, Don Bruns (ed.), Down & Out Books
• Crime Ink: Iconic: An Anthology of Crime Fiction Inspired by Queer Icons, John Copenhaver (ed.) and Salem West (ed.), Bywater Books
• Hollywood Kills: An Anthology, Adam Meyer (ed.) and Alan Orloff (ed.), Level Short
• Whatever Kills the Pain by C.W. Blackwell, Rock and a Hard Place Press

Sunday Music Treat

Erik Satie (1866-1925) was an eccentric French composer, pianist and writer. His works have bits and pieces of Impressionism, Surrealism, and Dadaism, and his compositional style influenced Debussy and Ravel. Since he worked for a while as a music hall pianist in various Montmartre cafes and also writing music for the Rosicrusianism religious sect, you can often hear some strains of that in his works, too. He's best known for his short piano pieces, and you've probably heard one of them but didn't know who wrote it. Here's the lilting and slightly melancholy Gymnopédie No.1:

 

 

Scandinavians Supreme

 

Euro Crime's Karen Meeks revealed this year's winner of the Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year is Ørjan Karlsson’s Into Thin Air (Orenda). The judges also highly commended Broken, "the dark and compulsive police procedural" by Jón Atli Jónasson, which is translated by Quentin Bates and published by Corylus Books.

The Petrona Award was established to celebrate the work of Maxine Clarke, one of the first online crime fiction reviewers and bloggers, who died in December 2012. Maxine, whose online persona and blog was called Petrona, was passionate about translated crime fiction but in particular that from the Scandinavian countries. The award is open to crime fiction in translation, either written by a Scandinavian author or set in Scandinavia and published in the UK in the previous calendar year.

 

Here are the other shortlisted titles:

 

• Snæbjörn Arngrímsson - One True Word tr. Larissa Kyzer (Pushkin Vertigo, Iceland)
• Stella Blómkvist - Murder Tide tr. Quentin Bates (Corylus Books, Iceland)
• John Ajvide Lindqvist - The Writing in the Water tr. Michael Meigs (Amazon Crossing, Sweden)
• Satu Rämö - The Grave in the Ice tr. Kristian London (Zaffre, Finland)
• Antti Tuomainen - The Winter Job tr. David Hackston (Orenda Books, Finland)

Quote of the Week

 

The Barry Best Revealed

Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine revealed the winners of the 2026 Barry Awards at the Bouchercon conference opening ceremonies in Calgary, Canada, last night. The awards are named after reviewer Barry Gardner, which celebrate the best works being published in the field of crime fiction each year. Congratulations to all the winners and finalists!

Best Mystery:  King Of Ashes, S. A. Cosby (Flatiron Books)

Other Finalists:

The Impossible Thing, Belinda Bauer (Atlantic Monthly)
Crooks, Lou Berney (William Morrow)
The Black Wolf, Louise Penny (Minotaur Books)
The White Crow, Michael Robotham (Scribner)
Presumed Guilty, Scott Turow (Grand Central)

Best First Mystery:  The Vanishing Place, Zoe Rankin (Berkley)

Other Finalists: 

Leverage, Amran Gowani (Atria Books)
All The Other Mothers Hate Me, Sarah Harman (Putnam)
Dead Money, Jakob Kerr (Bantam)
Stillwater, Tanya Scott (Atlantic Monthly)
Julie Chan Is Dead, Liann Zhang (Atria Books)

Best Paperback Original Mystery:  The Dentist, Tim Sullivan (Atlantic Crime)

Other Finalists: 

Crimson Thaw, Bruce Robert Coffin (Severn River)
Splintered Justice, Kim Hays (Seventh Street Books)
Making A Killing, Cara Hunter (William Morrow)
If Two Are Dead, Rick Mofina (MIRA)
Wolf Six, Alex Shaw (Boldwood Books)

Best Thriller:  Midnight Black, Mark Greaney (Berkley)

Other Finalists: 

Witness 8, Steve Cavanagh (Atria Books)
The Oligarch’s Daughter, Joseph Finder (Harper)
Clown Town, Mick Herron (Soho Crime)
Head Cases, John McMahon (Minotaur Books)
The Mailman, Andrew Welsh-Huggins (Mysterious Press)

Gumshoe Glory

The winners of this year's Private Eye Writers Of America Shamus Awards, for private eye novels and short stories first published in the United States in 2025, were revealed last night at the 2026 Bouchercon's Opening Ceremonies in Calgary, Alberta. Congratulations to all!
 

Best P.I. Hardcover:  The Big Empty by Robert Crais (G.P. Putnam’s Son)

Other finalists:

• Photograph by Brian Freeman (Blackstone Publishing)
• Hatchet Girls by Joe R. Lansdale (Little, Brown and Company)
• Gray Dawn by Walter Mosley (Little, Brown and Company)
• Mirage City by Lev AC Rosen (Minotaur Books)
  
  

Best First P.I. Novel:  Where the Bones Lie by Nick Kolakowski (Datura Books)

Other finalists:

• Chase Harlem by Elise Burke Brown (Rising Action Publishing)
• Miles in Time by Lee Mathew Goldberg (Wise Wolf Books)
• Shadow of the Eternal Watcher by Josh Mendoza (Inkshares)
• The Witch’s Orchard by Archer Sullivan (Minotaur Books)
  
  

Best Original Paperback P.I. Novel:  Midnight Streets by Phil Lecomber (Titan Books)

Other finalists:

• The Hook and the Eye by Raymond Benson (Ian Fleming Publications)
• Sunday or the Highway by Cindy Fazzi (Thomas & Mercer)
• City Lights by Claire M. Johnson (Level Best Books)
• Catch Me on a Blue Day by M.E. Proctor (Shotgun Honey Books)
  
  

Best P.I. Short Story:  “The Roosevelt Affair” by Adam Meyer (Crimeucopia: Not So Frail Detective Agency)

Other finalists: 

• “The One Cry” by F.H. Batacan (Accidents Happen, Soho Crime)
• “Dr. Bones” by Libby Cudmore (May/June 2025, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine)
• “Hours on the Phone” by Gregory Fallis (July/August 2025, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine)
• “The Shadows” by Charles John Harper (May/June 2025, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine)

Friday's "Forgotten" Books - Bouchercon Revisited Edition

In honor of the current Bouchercon mystery conference, instead of choosing just one "forgotten" book as usual this week, I thought I'd step back in time to almost 30 years ago and take a look at books honored with Anthony Awards at an earlier Boucheron, which have fallen off the radar.

Bouchercon XXVIII was held in 1997 in Monterey, California. The Guest Of Honor that year was Sara Paretsky, Toastmaster was Julie Smith, and the Lifetime Achievement Award was given to Donald Westlake. When the Anthony Awards were announced, there was a tie for Best First Novel between Death In Little Tokyo by Dale Furutani and Somebody Else's Child by Terris McMahan Grimes (the latter of which also won the Best Paperback Original Award). The Best Critical/Biographical award that year went to Detecting Women II by Willetta Heising. (Best novel, by the way, went to a book by that guy you might have heard a thing or two about, Michael Connelly, for The Poet.)

Death in Little Tokyo, Furutani's first novel, not only won the Anthony in 1997, that same year it won a Macavity Award as well as being nominated for an Agatha. It introduced Ken Tanaka, the first Japanese-American amateur sleuth mystery series written by a Japanese-American. Tanaka isn't a real P.I. but poses as one for his weekend mystery club, printing up phony business cards, renting a storefront office, and buying a trench coat and fedora, until he gets some real business in the form of a woman who offers him $500 to help extricate her from a blackmail scheme. Little Tokyo was one of only two novels in that series, although Furutani went on to write the Samurai Mystery Trilogy, the last of which was published in 2000.

Somebody Else's Child, by Terris McMahan Grimes, introduced Theresa Galloway, the plus-sized "intrepid soul sister," state employee and married mother of two. When amateur sleuth Galloway learns of a murder and kidnapping in her elderly mother's hometown, she's goaded by her mother into prowling the streets of Sacramento in search of the killer and the dead woman's missing grandchild. Grimes published two additional titles in the Galloway series in 1997 and 2000, and has remained active in literacy programs in her home state of California.

Willetta Heising's Detecting Women II was the latest in a series of mystery reader's guides by Heising, which also included the first Detecting Women, as well as the later books Detecting Men, Willetta's Guide to Private Eye Series, and Wiletta's Guide to Police Detective Series. Detecting Women II is a database of mystery series written by women (up to that point, of course), with a list of more than 500 authors, 675 series characters and 3,600 titles. There's a short biography and bibliography for each writer, a brief description of detectives in each series, publication dates and awards won. Another section of the book provides lists by mystery type (police procedural, amateurs, or PIs), character, setting, title, and author pseudonym. 

This year's Anthony Awards will be handed out in Calgary, Canada on Saturday, and for a reminder of all the nominees, check out this conference link.