Edgar Award Winners-- Best Novel
Discover the best Edgar Award-winning novels, from Frederick Forsyth's *The Day of the Jackal* to James Lee Burke's *Black Cherry Blues*. Explore classic and modern masters of mystery, crime, and suspense in this curated list of must-read fiction.
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California Girl
by T. Jefferson Parker
In 1960's California, the Becker brothers are forced to confront their past when they discover the body of an old friend in an old orange-packing plant.
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Winter and Night
by S. J. Rozan
Private detective Bill Smith is hurtled headlong into the most provocative-and personal-case of his career when he receives a chilling late night telephone call from the NYPD, who are holding his fifteen-year-old nephew Gary. But before he can find out what's going on, Gary escapes Bill's custody and disappears into the dark and unfamiliar streets... Bill and his partner, Lydia Chin, try to find the missing teen and uncover what it is that has led him so far from home. Their search takes them to Gary's family in a small town in New Jersey, where they discover that one of Gary's classmates was murdered. Bill and Lydia delve into the crime-only to find it eerily similar to a decades-old murder-suicide... Now, with his nephew's future-and perhaps his very life-at stake, Bill must unravel a long-buried crime and confront the darkness of his own past... Winter and Night is the winner of the 2003 Edgar Award for Best Novel.
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The Bottoms
by Joe R. Lansdale
In Depression-era East Texas, young Harry Crane discovers the body of a mutilated woman. As his father, the town constable investigates, Harry and his sister Tom think it was the work of the legendary Goat Man.
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Cimarron Rose
by James Lee Burke
Texas attorney and former Texas Ranger Billy Bob Holland has many secrets in his dark past. Among them is Vernon Smothers' son Lucas, a teenaged boy about whom only Vernon and Billy Bob know the truth. Lucas is really Billy Bob's illegitimate son, and when Lucas is arrested for murder, Billy Bob knows that he has no choice but to confront the past and serve as the boy's criminal attorney. During Lucas's trial, Billy Bob realizes that he will have to bring injury upon Lucas as well as himself in order to save his son. And as a result, Billy Bob creates enemies that are far more dangerous than any he had faced as a Texas Ranger.
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Black Cherry Blues
by James L. Burke
Ex-cop Dave Robicheaux: His wife had been murdered ... Now they're after his little girl... From the Louisiana bayou to Montana's tribal lands,he's running front the bottle, a homicide rap, aprofessional killer ... and the demons of his past.
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Eye of the Needle
by Ken Follett
An enemy spy code named "The Needle" knows the vital secret of the Allies deception and holds the key to Nazi victory.
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Promised Land
by Robert B. Parker
Spenser is good at finding things. But this time he has a client out on Cape Cod who is in over his head. Harvey Shepard has lost his pretty wife -- and a very pretty quarter million bucks in real estate. Now a loan shark is putting on the bite.Spenser finds himself doing a slow burn in the Cape Cod sun. The wife has turned up as a hot suspect in a case of murder one...the in-hock hubby has 24 hours before the mob makes him dead...and suddenly Spenser is in so deep that the only way out is so risky it makes dying look like a sure thing. "Spenser is the sassiest, funniest, most-enjoyable-to-read private eye around today." (The Cincinnati Post)
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The Day of the Jackal
by Frederick Forsyth
The Jackal. A tall, blond Englishman with opaque, gray eyes. A killer at the top of his profession. A man unknown to any secret service in the world. An assassin with a contract to kill the world's most heavily guarded man. One man with a rifle who can change the course of history. One man whose mission is so secretive not even his employers know his name. And as the minutes count down to the final act of execution, it seems that there is no power on earth that can stop the Jackal.
