Last week the Mystery Writers of America announced the nominees for the 2015 Edgar Awards.
In this post, we're presenting the five titles nominated for the Simon & Schuster — Mary Higgins Clark Award. Which is your favorite to win?
A Dark and Twisted Tide by Sharon Bolton
A Lacey Flint Mystery (4th in series)
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Lacey Flint has been living in a houseboat on the River Thames, and she's becoming a part of London's weird and wonderful riverboat community. Against her friends' better judgment, she's taken up swimming in the Thames, and she feels closer than ever to Detective Mark Joesbury, despite his involvement in a complicated undercover case. For the first time in her life, as she recovers from the trauma of the last few months, Lacey begins to feel almost happy.
Then, at dawn one hot summer morning while swimming down the river, Lacey finds the body of a shrouded young woman in the water. She assumes it was chance — after all, she's recently joined the marine policing unit, and she knows how many dead bodies are pulled out of the river every year, most the result of tragic accidents. But further investigation leads her policing team to suspect the woman's body was deliberately left for Lacey to find. Lacey's no longer a homicide detective, but as she begins to notice someone keeping a strangely close eye on her, she's inexorably drawn into the investigation.
— A Dark and Twisted Tide by Sharon Bolton
The Stranger You Know by Jane Casey
A Maeve Kerrigan Mystery (4th in series)
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Read our review of The Stranger You Know by Jane Casey on Mysterious Reviews.
He meets women. He gains their trust. He kills them. That's all London police detective Maeve Kerrigan knows about the man she is hunting. Three women have been strangled in their homes, and it appears to be the work of the same sadistic killer. With no sign of break-ins, every indication shows that the women let their attacker in willingly. The victims' neighbors and friends don't seem to remember anything unusual or suspicious, and Maeve is almost at a loss about how to move forward with the investigation.
Then the evidence starts to point to a shocking suspect: DCI Josh Derwent, Maeve's partner on the police force. Maeve refuses to believe he could be involved, but how well does she really know him? Secrets Derwent has long kept locked away are coming back to haunt him, and the more Maeve learns about her partner's past, the more difficult it is to dismiss him as a suspect. After all, this is hardly the first time Derwent's been accused of murder.
— The Stranger You Know by Jane Casey
Invisible City by Julia Dahl
A Rebekah Roberts Mystery (1st in series)
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Just months after Rebekah Roberts was born, her mother, an Hasidic Jew from Brooklyn, abandoned her Christian boyfriend and newborn baby to return to her religion. Neither Rebekah nor her father have heard from her since. Now a recent college graduate, Rebekah has moved to New York City to follow her dream of becoming a big-city reporter. But she's also drawn to the idea of being closer to her mother, who might still be living in the Hasidic community in Brooklyn.
Then Rebekah is called to cover the story of a murdered Hasidic woman. Rebekah's shocked to learn that, because of the NYPD's habit of kowtowing to the powerful ultra-Orthodox community, not only will the woman be buried without an autopsy, her killer may get away with murder. Rebekah can't let the story end there. But getting to the truth won't be easy — even as she immerses herself in the cloistered world where her mother grew up, it's clear that she's not welcome, and everyone she meets has a secret to keep from an outsider.
— Invisible City by Julia Dahl
Summer of the Dead by Julia Keller
A Bell Elkins Mystery (3rd in series)
Publisher: Minotaur Books
High summer in Acker's Gap, West Virginia — but no one's enjoying the rugged natural landscape. Not while a killer stalks the small town and its hard-luck inhabitants.
County prosecutor Bell Elkins and Sheriff Nick Fogelsong are stymied by a murderer who seems to come and go like smoke on the mountain. At the same time, Bell must deal with the return from prison of her sister, Shirley — who, like Bell, carries the indelible scars of a savage past.
— Summer of the Dead by Julia Keller
The Black Hour by Lori Rader-Day
A Novel of Suspense
Publisher: Seventh Street Books
Read our review of The Black Hour by Lori Rader-Day on Mysterious Reviews.
For Chicago sociology professor Amelia Emmet, violence was a research topic — until a student she'd never met shot her.
He also shot himself. Now he's dead and she's back on campus, trying to keep up with her class schedule, a growing problem with painkillers, and a question she can't let go: Why?
All she wants is for life to get back to normal, but normal is looking hard to come by. She's thirty-eight and hobbles with a cane. Her first student interaction ends in tears (hers). Her fellow faculty members seem uncomfortable with her, and her ex — whom she may or may not still love — has moved on.
Enter Nathaniel Barber, a graduate student obsessed with Chicago's violent history. Nath is a serious scholar, but also a serious mess about his first heartbreak, his mother's death, and his father's disapproval. Assigned as Amelia's teaching assistant, Nath also takes on the investigative legwork that Amelia can't do. And meanwhile, he's hoping she'll approve his dissertation topic, the reason he came to grad school in the first place: the student attack on Amelia Emmet.
Together and at cross-purposes, Amelia and Nathaniel stumble toward a truth that will explain the attack and take them both through the darkest hours of their lives.
— The Black Hour by Lori Rader-Day
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