Check out some of this year’s fiction nominees for the 2012 Edgar Allan Poe Awards by the Mystery Writers of America: 
BEST NOVEL
The Ranger by Ace Atkins
From an acclaimed, award-winning author comes an
extraordinary new series about a real hero, and the real Deep South.
“With terrific, inflected characters, and a dark, subtle sense of place
and history, “The Ranger” is an exceptional novel.”–John Sandford.
Gone by Mo Hayder
A carjacking goes from bad to horrifying in
Hayder’s gripping fifth thriller featuring Bristol Det. Insp. Jack
Caffery and Sgt. Phoebe “Flea” Marley.
The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino
One of Japan’s best-selling crime novelists makes
his American debut in an atmospheric thriller about a desperate woman,
Yasuko, who, craving a peacefull life with her daughter, Misato, kills
her abusive lout of an ex-husband.
1222 by Anne Holt
From Norway’s bestselling crime writer comes a
suspenseful locked-room mystery set in an isolated hotel where guests
who are stranded during a monumental snowstorm begin turning up dead.
Field Gray by Phillip Kerr
Kerr’s seventh Bernie Gunther thriller, starring
the cop turned PI in 1930s Germany who landed in Argentina and then Cuba
after the war, finally answers in full the question that has been
hovering around the edges of the series all along: What did you do
during the war, Bernie?
BEST FIRST NOVEL BY AN AMERICAN AUTHOR
NYPD detective Conlon follows up his first-class
memoir, Blue Blood, with this superb first novel. Set in upper
Manhattan’s Dominican-dominated Washington Heights, it is a police
procedural with a potent mix of strong story line, police jargon, crisp
dialog, black humor, bleakness, gangs, drugs, shootings, murders, and
suicide, with complicated romances thrown in.
Last to Fold by David Duffy
Duffy’s promising debut introduces Turbo Vlost, a
gulag survivor who later worked as an undercover man for the KGB until
the Soviet Union’s breakup. Now living in New York City, Vlost works at
finding things for people.
All Cry Chaos by Leonard Rosen
This startling novel opens on an aging Interpol
agent taking his heart medicine and thinking of retirement. But Henri
Poincare can’t resist one more case: a mathematician is killed in a
puzzling explosion in an Amsterdam hotel.
Bent Road by Lori Roy
Set in the mid ’60s, Roy’s outstanding debut melds strong characters and an engrossing plot with an evocative sense of place.
Purgatory Chasm by Steve Ulfelder
Ulfelder couples precise, evocative prose with an original private investigator in his compelling hard-boiled debut.
For a list of all nominees, please see their press release (pdf).
marlise
