LibGuides: Macavity Awards: Best First Mystery

Macavity Awards

Best First Mystery

2020s

WINNER

One Night Gone by Tara Laskowski

One Night Gone [E-Book] by Tara Laskowski
Call Number: Fiction LASKO T ONG Ebook (OverDrive)
ISBN: 9781488053672
Publication Date: 2019-10-01
It was the perfect place to disappear... One sultry summer, Maureen Haddaway arrives in the wealthy town of Opal Beach to start her life anew—to achieve her destiny. There, she finds herself lured by the promise of friendship, love, starry skies, and wild parties. But Maureen’s new life just might be too good to be true, and before the summer is up, she vanishes. Decades later, when Allison Simpson is offered the opportunity to house-sit in Opal Beach during the off-season, it seems like the perfect chance to begin fresh after a messy divorce. But when she becomes drawn into the mysterious disappearance of a girl thirty years before, Allison realizes the gorgeous homes of Opal Beach hide dark secrets. And the truth of that long-ago summer is not even the most shocking part of all.

FINALISTS

The Ninja Daughter by Tori Eldridge
My Lovely Wife by Samantha Downing
Miracle Creek by Angie Kim
Call Me Evie by J. P. Pomare
American Spy by Lauren Wilkinson

My Lovely Wife [E-Book] by Samantha Downing
Call Number: Ficton D751m Ebook (OverDrive
ISBN: 9780451491749
Publication Date: 2019
Our love story is simple. I met a gorgeous woman. We fell in love. We had kids. We moved to the suburbs. We told each other our biggest dreams, and our darkest secrets. And then we got bored. We look like a normal couple. We're your neighbors, the parents of your kid's friend, the acquaintances you keep meaning to get dinner with. We all have our secrets to keeping a marriage alive. Ours just happens to be getting away with murder.
My Lovely WIfe [Streaming audiobook] by Samantha Downing
Call Number: Fiction D751m Audiobk
ISBN: 9781984846839
Publication Date: 2019

Miracle Creek by Kim, Angie
Call Number: Fiction K489m (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9780374156022
Publication Date: 2019-04-16
How far will you go to protect your family? Will you keep their secrets? Ignore their lies? In a small town in Virginia, a group of people know each other because they're part of a special treatment center, a hyperbaric chamber that may cure a range of conditions from infertility to autism. But then the chamber explodes, two people die, and it's clear the explosion wasn't an accident. A powerful showdown unfolds as the story moves across characters who are all maybe keeping secrets, hiding betrayals. Chapter by chapter, we shift alliances and gather evidence: Was it the careless mother of a patient? Was it the owners, hoping to cash in on a big insurance payment and send their daughter to college? Could it have been a protester, trying to prove the treatment isn't safe?
Miracle Creek [E-Book] by Angie Kim
Call Number: OverDrive
ISBN: 9780374717988
Publication Date: 2019-04-16

Call Me Evie [E-Book] by J. P. Pomare
Call Number: FIC POMAR JP CA Ebook (OverDrive)
ISBN: 9780525538158
Publication Date: 2019
Meet Evie, a young woman who has fled with her uncle to the isolated New Zealand beach town of Maketu. Jim says he's hiding her to protect her, that she did something terrible back home in Melbourne. Something Evie can't remember. But Evie isn't her real name. And Jim isn't really her uncle. In a house that creaks against the wind, Evie pieces together the events that led her here. And as her memories return, she starts to wonder if Jim is really her saviour . . . or her captor.
Call Me Evie [Streaming audiobook] by J. P. Pomare
Call Number: FIC POMAR JP CA Audiobk (OverDrive)
ISBN: 9781984839787
Publication Date: 2019

American Spy by Wiklinson, Lauren
Call Number: Fiction W6869a (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9780812988284
Publication Date: 2020-03-17
1986, the heart of the Cold War. A young black woman working in an old boys' club, Marie Mitchell's FBI career has stalled out and her days are filled with monotonous paperwork. Given the opportunity to join a task force aimed at undermining Thomas Sankara, the charismatic revolutionary president of Burkina Faso whose Communist ideology has made him a target for American intervention, she says yes. In the year that follows Marie observes Sankara, seduces him-- and has a hand in the coup that will bring him down. But doing so will change everything she believes about what it means to be a spy, a lover, a sister, and a good American.

WINNER

Winter Counts by David Heska Wanbli Weiden

Winter Counts [E-Book] : a novel by David Heska Wanbli Weiden
Call Number: FIC WEIDE DAVH WI Ebook (OverDrive)
ISBN: 9780062968968
Publication Date: 2020-08-25
Virgil Wounded Horse is the local enforcer on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota. When justice is denied by the American legal system or the tribal council, Virgil is hired to deliver his own punishment, the kind that's hard to forget. But when heroin makes its way into the reservation and finds Virgil's nephew, his vigilantism suddenly becomes personal. He enlists the help of his ex-girlfriend and sets out to learn where the drugs are coming from, and how to make them stop. They follow a lead to Denver and find that drug cartels are rapidly expanding and forming new and terrifying alliances. And back on the reservation, a new tribal council initiative raises uncomfortable questions about money and power. As Virgil starts to link the pieces together, he must face his own demons and reclaim his Native identity. He realizes that being a Native American in the twenty-first century comes at an incredible cost.

FINALISTS

Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara
Murder in Old Bombay by Nev March
The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
Darling Rose Gold by Stephanie Wrobel

Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara
Call Number: FIC ANAPP DEE DJ (Adult fiction)
ISBN: 9780593129289
Publication Date: 2021-05-11

Murder in Old Bombay by Nev March
Call Number: FIC MARCH NEV MU (Adult fiction)
ISBN: 9781250269546
Publication Date: 2020-11-10

The Thursday Murder Club [E-Book] (Thursday Murder Club #1) by Richard Osman
Call Number: FIC OSMAN RIC T1 Ebook (OverDrive)
ISBN: 9781984880970
Publication Date: 2020
In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet weekly in the Jigsaw Room to discuss unsolved crimes; together they call themselves The Thursday Murder Club. When a local developer is found dead with a mysterious photograph left next to the body, the Thursday Murder Club suddenly find themselves in the middle of their first live case. As the bodies begin to pile up, can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer, before it's too late?.
The Thursday Murder Club [streaming audiobook] (Thursday Murder Club #1) by Richard Osman
Call Number: FIC OSMAN RIC T1 Audiobk
ISBN: 9780593289518
Publication Date: 2020

Darling Rose Gold by Wrobel, Stephanie
Call Number: Fiction W9568d (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9780593100066
Publication Date: 2020-03-17
For the first eighteen years of her life, Rose Gold Watts believed she was seriously ill. She was allergic to everything, used a wheelchair and practically lived at the hospital. Neighbors did all they could, holding fundraisers and offering shoulders to cry on, but no matter how many doctors, tests, or surgeries, no one could figure out what was wrong with Rose Gold. Turns out her mom, Patty Watts, was just a really good liar. After serving five years in prison, Patty gets out with nowhere to go and begs her daughter to take her in. The entire community is shocked when Rose Gold says yes. Patty insists all she wants is to reconcile their differences. She says she's forgiven Rose Gold for turning her in and testifying against her. But Rose Gold knows her mother. Patty Watts always settles a score. Unfortunately for Patty, Rose Gold is no longer her weak little darling... And she's waited such a long time for her mother to come home.
Darling Rose Gold [E-Book] by Stephanie Wrobel
Call Number: FIC WROBE STE D Ebook (OverDrive)
ISBN: 9780593100097
Publication Date: 2020

WINNER

Arsenic and Adobo by Mia P. Manansala

Arsenic and Adobo (Tita Rosie's kitchen mystery #1) by Mia P. Manansala
Call Number: FIC MANAN MIAP T1 (Adult fiction)
ISBN: 9780593201671
Publication Date: 2021-05-04
Arsenic and Adobo [Streaming audioboook] (Tita Rosie's kitchen mystery #1) by Mia P. Manansala
Call Number: FIC MANAN MIAP T1 Audiobk (OverDrive)
ISBN: 9780593347409
Publication Date: 2021

FINALISTS

Who is Maude Dixon? by Alexandra Andrews
Girl A by Abigail Dean
Deer Season by Erin Flanagan
All Her Little Secrets by Wanda M. Morris

Who Is Maud Dixon? by Alexandra Andrews
Call Number: FIC ANDRE ALE WH (Adult fiction)
ISBN: 9780316500319
Publication Date: 2021-03-02
Florence Darrow is a low-level publishing employee who believes that she's destined to be a famous writer. When she stumbles into a job the assistant to the brilliant, enigmatic novelist known as Maud Dixon -- whose true identity is a secret -- it appears that the universe is finally providing Florence's big chance. The arrangement seems perfect. Maud Dixon (whose real name, Florence discovers, is Helen Wilcox) can be prickly, but she is full of pointed wisdom -- not only on how to write, but also on how to live. Florence quickly falls under Helen's spell and eagerly accompanies her to Morocco, where Helen's new novel is set. Amidst the colorful streets of Marrakesh and the wind-swept beaches of the coast, Florence's life at last feels interesting enough to inspire a novel of her own. But when Florence wakes up in the hospital after a terrible car accident, with no memory of the previous night -- and no sign of Helen -- she's tempted to take a shortcut. Instead of hiding in Helen's shadow, why not upgrade into Helen's life? Not to mention her bestselling pseudonym... Taut, twisty, and viciously entertaining, Who is Maud Dixon is a stylish psychological thriller about how far into the darkness you're willing to go to claim the life you always wanted.

__________

Girl A by Abigail Dean
Call Number: FIC DEAN ABI GI (Adult fiction)
ISBN: 9780593295847
Publication Date: 2021-02-02
Lex Gracie doesn't want to think about growing up in her parents' House of Horrors. And she doesn't want to think about her identity as Girl A: the girl who escaped, the eldest sister who freed her older brother and four younger siblings. Her father never made it out of the House of Horrors he created, and her mother spent the rest of her life behind bars. But when her mother dies in prison and leaves Lex and her siblings the family home, she intends to turn the House of Horrors into a force for good. But first she must come to terms with her siblings-- and with the childhood they shared.

__________

_____

Deer Season by Erin Flanagan
Call Number: FIC FLANA ERI DE (Adult fiction)
ISBN: 9781496226815
Publication Date: 2021-09-01
Over a weekend a teenage girl goes missing. Hal, a mentally challenged farmhand, returns from a hunting trip with a flimsy story about the blood in his truck and a dent near the headlight. When the situation escalates from that of a missing girl to something more sinister, Alma Costagan and her husband are forced to confront what Hal might be capable of.
All Her Little Secrets by Wanda M. Morris
Call Number: FIC MORRI WANM AL
ISBN: 9780063082465
Publication Date: 2021-11-02

WINNER

The Maid by Nita Prose

The Maid by Nita Prose
Call Number: FIC PROSE NIT M (Adult fiction)
ISBN: 9780593356159
Publication Date: 2022-01-04
Molly Dunn is not like everyone else. She struggles with social skills and interprets people literally. Her gran used to interpret the world for her, codifying it into simple rules that Molly could live by. Since Gran died a few months ago, twenty-five-year-old Molly has had to navigate life's complexities all by herself. No matter--she throws herself with gusto into her work as a hotel maid. Her unique character, along with her obsessive love of cleaning and proper etiquette, make her an ideal fit for the job. She delights in donning her crisp uniform each morning, stocking her cart with miniature soaps and bottles, and returning guest rooms at the Regency Grand Hotel to a state of perfection. But Molly's orderly life is turned on its head the day she enters the suite of the infamous and wealthy Charles Black, only to find it in a state of disarray and Mr. Black himself very dead in his bed. Before she knows what's happening, Molly's odd demeanor has the police targeting her as their lead suspect and she finds herself in a web of subtext and nuance she has no idea how to untangle. Fortunately for Molly, a medley of friends she didn't realize she had refuses to let her be charged with murder--but will they be able to discover the real killer before it's too late?
The Maid [E-Book] by Nita Prose
Call Number: FIC PROSE NIT M Ebook (OverDrive)
ISBN: 9780593356166
Publication Date: 2022-01-04

FINALISTS

Before You Knew My Name by Jacqueline Bublitz
Five Moves of Doom by A. J. Devlin
Shutter by Ramona Emerson
Devil's Chew Toy by Rob Osler
The Verifiers by Jane Pek

Before You Knew My Name by Jacqueline Bublitz
Call Number: FIC BUBLI JAC BE
ISBN: 9781982198992
Publication Date: 2022-11-01
When she arrived in New York on her eighteenth birthday carrying nothing but $600 cash and a stolen camera, Alice Lee was looking for a fresh start. Now, just one month later, she is the city's latest Jane Doe. She may be dead but that doesn't mean her story is over. Meanwhile, Ruby Jones is also trying to reinvent herself. After travelling halfway around the world, she's lonelier than ever in the Big Apple. Until she stumbles upon a woman's body by the Hudson River, and suddenly finds herself unbreakably tied to the unknown dead woman. Alice is sure Ruby is the key to solving the mystery of her short life and tragic death. Ruby just wants to forget what she saw...but she can't seem to stop thinking about the young woman she found. If she keeps looking, can she give this unidentified Jane Doe the ending and closure she deserves?

_____

Five Moves of Doom by A. J. Devlin
Call Number: FIC DEVLI AJ FI
ISBN: 9781774390559
Publication Date: 2022
Hired by local mixed martial arts trainer Elijah Lennox to find a missing UFC Championship belt, "Hammerhead" Jed must extract answers from the tight-knit MMA community. Still consuming his weight in banana milkshakes, Jed leaves the theatrical confines of the wrestling ring for a world of jewel thieves, bodybuilders, eccentric yoga practitioners, and adorable baby goats. As he infiltrates an exclusive and unique no-holds-barred fight club, Jed might just find himself down for the count... Five Moves of Doom is a high-altitude and high-attitude entry in A.J. Devlin's award-winning mystery series, one that finds its hero pushed to his absolute limit, relying on his closest allies to survive, and making choices he never thought he'd have to make.

_____

Shutter by Ramona Emerson
Call Number: FIC EMERS RAM SH
ISBN: 9781641293334
Publication Date: 2022-08-02
Rita Todacheene is a forensic photographer working for the Albuquerque police force. Her excellent photography skills have cracked many cases-she is almost supernaturally good at capturing details. In fact, Rita has been hiding a secret: she sees the ghosts of crime victims who point her toward the clues that other investigators overlook. As a lone portal back to the living for traumatized spirits, Rita is terrorized by nagging ghosts who won't let her sleep and who sabotage her personal life. Her taboo and psychologically harrowing ability was what drove her away from her hometown on the Navajo reservation, where she was raised by her grandmother. It has isolated her from friends and gotten her in trouble with the law. And now it might be what gets her killed. When Rita is sent to photograph the scene of a supposed suicide on a highway overpass, the furious, discombobulated ghost of the victim-who insists she was murdered-latches onto Rita, forcing her on a quest for revenge against her killers, and Rita finds herself in the crosshairs of one of Albuquerque's most dangerous cartels. Written in sparkling, gruesome prose, Shutter is a blood-chilling debut from one of crime fiction's most powerful new voices.

WINNER

The Peacock and the Sparrow by I. S. Berry

FINALISTS

The Golden Gate by Amy Chua
Scorched Grace by Margot Douaihy
Murder by Degrees by Ritu Jukerji
Dutch Threat by Josh Pachter
Mother-Daughter Murder Night by Nina Simon

The Golden Gate by Amy Chua
Call Number: FIC CHUA AMY GO
ISBN: 9781250903600
Publication Date: 2023-09-19
Rebel surfer-turned-field ops specialist Sydney finds herself in hot water while undercover on a marine research vessel, while her City Spies teammates investigate a suspected mole.
Mother-Daughter Murder Night by Nina Simon
Call Number: FIC SIMON NIN MO
ISBN: 9780063315044
Publication Date: 2023-09-05
Nothing brings an estranged family together like a murder next door. High-powered businesswoman Lana Rubicon has a lot to be proud of: her keen intelligence, impeccable taste, and the L.A. real estate empire she's built. But when she finds herself trapped 300 miles north of the city, convalescing in a sleepy coastal town with her adult daughter Beth and teenage granddaughter Jack, Lana is stuck counting otters instead of square footage - and hoping that boredom won't kill her before cancer does. Then Jack - tiny in stature but fiercely independent - stumbles upon a dead body while kayaking near their bungalow. Jack quickly becomes a suspect in the homicide investigation, and the Rubicon women are thrown into chaos. Beth thinks Lana should focus on recovery, but Lana has a better idea. She'll pull on her wig, find the true murderer, protect her family, and prove she still has power. With Jack and Beth's help, Lana uncovers a web of lies, family vendettas, and land disputes lurking beneath the surface of a community populated by folksy conservationists and wealthy ranchers. But as their amateur snooping advances into ever-more dangerous territory, the headstrong Rubicon women must learn to do the one thing they've always resisted: depend on each other.

1980s-2010s

The Macavity Award for Best First Novel has been awarded since 1987.

1987 (tie)

The Ritual Bath by Faye Kellerman

A Case of Loyalties by Marilyn Wallace

1988

The Monkey's Raincoat by Robert Crais

1989

The Killings at Badger's Drift by Caroline Graham

The Killings at Badger's Drift (Inspector Barnaby #1) by Graham, Caroline
Call Number: FIC GRAHA CAR B1 (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9781933397047
Publication Date: 2005-06-01
Badger's Drift is an ideal English village, complete with vicar, bumbling local doctor, and kindly spinster with a nice line in homemade cookies. But when the spinster dies suddenly, her best friend kicks up an unseemly fuss, loud enough to attract the attention of Detective Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby. And when Barnaby and his eager-beaver deputy start poking around, they uncover a swamp of ugly scandals and long-suppressed resentments seething below the picture-postcard prettiness.

1990

Grime and Punishment by Jill Churchill

1991

Postmortem by Patricia Cornwell

Postmortem [CD] (Kay Scarpetta #1) by Patricia Cornwell; C. J. Critt (Narrated by)
Call Number: CD Fiction CO S1
ISBN: 9780788744631
Publication Date: 2002-01-07
Medical examiner Kay Scarpetta is trying to unmask a serial killer, but someone is sabotaging her investigation. Worse yet, someone wants her dead.

1992 (tie)

Murder on the Iditarod Trail by Sue Henry

Zero at the Bone by Mary Willis Walker

1993

Blanche on the Lam by Barbara Neely

1994

Death Comes as Epiphany by Sharan Newman

1995

Do Unto Others by Jeff Abbott

1996

The Strange Files of Fremont Jones by Dianne Day

1997

Death in Little Tokyo by Dale Furutani

1998

Dead Body Language by Penny Warner

1999

Sympathy for the Devil by Jerrilyn Farmer

2000

Inner City Blues by Paula L. Woods

Inner City Blues (Charlotte Justice novel #1) by Woods, Paula L.
Call Number: FIC WOODS PAUL J1 (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9780393338379
Publication Date: 2009-07-01
Meet Detective Charlotte Justice, a black woman in the very white, very male, and sometimes very racist Los Angeles Police Department. The time is 48 hours into the epochal L.A. riots and she and her fellow officers are exhausted. She saves the curfew-breaking black doctor Lance Mitchell from a potentially lethal beating from some white officers—only to discover nearby the body of one-time radical Cinque Lewis, a thug who years before had murdered her husband and young daughter. Was it a random shooting or was Mitchell responsible? And what had brought Lewis back to a city he'd long since fled? Charlotte's quest for the truth behind Cinque's death will set her at odds with the LAPD hierarchy, plunge her into the intricacies of everything from L.A.'s gang-banging politics to its black blue-bloods, and lead her into deep emotional waters with Mitchell's partner (and her old flame), Dr. Aubrey Scott.

2001

A Conspiracy of Paper by David Liss

A Conspiracy of Paper : a novel by David Liss
Call Number: Fiction L772d (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9780375502927
Publication Date: 2000-02-01
Benjamin Weaver is an outsider in eighteenth-century London: a Jew among Christians; a ruffian among aristocrats; a retired pugilist who, hired by London's gentry, travels through the criminal underworld in pursuit of debtors and thieves. Weaver investigates a crime of the most personal sort: the mysterious death of his estranged father, a notorious stockjobber. To find the answers, Weaver must contend with a desperate prostitute who knows too much about his past, relatives who remind him of his alienation from the Jewish faith, and a cabal of powerful men in the world of British finance who have hidden their business dealings behind an intricate web of deception and violence.

2002

Open Season by C. J. Box

Open Season [Kindle] (Joe Pickett #1) by C. J. Box
Call Number: FIC BOX CJ P1 Kindle (Request at circulation desk)
ISBN: 9780425185469
Publication Date: 2002-05-07
"When a high-powered bullet hits living flesh, it makes a distinctive -pow-WHOP-sound that is unmistakable even at tremendous distance." And so it begins for Joe Pickett, a Wyoming game warden who, with the shot of a rifle, is thrust into a race to save not only an endangered species, but also the life and family he loves.

2003

In the Bleak Midwinter by Julia Spencer-Fleming

In the Bleak Midwinter (Clare Fergusson & Russ Van Alstyne mystery #1) by Spencer-Fleming, Julia
Call Number: FIC SPENC JUL F1 (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9781250006516
Publication Date: 2012-01-03
Clare Fergusson, the first female priest of an Episcopal church in Millers Kill, New York, finds herself immersed in murder when a newborn baby is abandoned and a young mother is brutally slain, forcing her to dig deeply into the town's secrets.

2004

Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear

Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear
Call Number: Fiction W776L v.1 (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9781569473306
Publication Date: 2003-07-01
Maisie Dobbs isn't just any young housemaid. Through her own natural intelligence - and the patronage of her benevolent employers - she works her way into college at Cambridge. After the War I and her service as a nurse, Maisie hangs out her shingle back at home: M. DOBBS, TRADE AND PERSONAL INVESTIGATIONS. But her very first assignment, seemingly an ordinary infidelity case, soon reveals a much deeper, darker web of secrets, which will force Maisie to revisit the horrors of the Great War and the love she left behind.
Maisie Dobbs [E-Book] by Jacqueline Winspear
Call Number: OverDrive E-Book
ISBN: 9781569477229
Publication Date: 2003

2005

Dating Dead Men by Harley Jan Kozak

2006

Immoral by Brian Freeman

Immoral (Jonathan Stride #1) by Freeman, Brian
Call Number: FIC FREEM BRI S1 (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9781250054739
Publication Date: 2006-06-27
Lieutenant Jonathan Stride knows it's not a moral world. One teenage girl has already disappeared on his watch, leaving behind no body, no killer, and no justice. Now, when another girl goes missing on a cold night in Minnesota, Stride must relive his worst nightmare.

2007

Mr. Clarinet by Nick Stone

Mr. Clarinet (Max Mingus thriller #1) by Stone, Nick
Call Number: FIC STONE NIC M1 (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9780060897338
Publication Date: 2008-12-02
Hired by a powerful white Haitian family to find their young son, who has been missing for two years, Max Mingus struggles to set aside painful memories and tackles a web of local corruption that threatens his tenacious hold on sanity.

2008

In the Woods by Tana French

In the Woods [Streaming Audio] by Tana French
Call Number: OverDrive Audiobook)
ISBN: 9781456100704
Publication Date: 2011-03-28
After a 12-year-old Irish lad and his two pals fail to return from a day in the woods, searchers find only the terrified sixth grader; with blood-filled shoes and no memory of what happened. Now 32, the tragedy's sole survivor Rob Ryan is a detective on Dublin's Murder Squad. A current investigation takes Rob to the exact site of his childhood trauma. With the present case chillingly similar to his 20-year-old nightmare, Rob hopes to unlock the shrouded secrets of his past.

2009

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson; Reg Keeland (Translator)
Call Number: Fiction L335g v.1 (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9780307269751
Publication Date: 2008-09-16
It's about the disappearance 40 years ago of Harriet Vanger, a young scion of one of the wealthiest families in Sweden...and about her octogenarian uncle, determined to know the truth about what he believes was her murder. It's about Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently at the wrong end of a libel case, hired to get to the bottom of Harriet's disappearance...and about Lisbeth Salander, a 24-year-old, pierced and tattooed genius hacker possessed of the hard-earned wisdom of someone twice her age, who assists Blomkvist with the investigation. This unlikely team discovers a vein of nearly unfathomable iniquity running through the Vanger family, astonishing corruption in the highest echelons of Swedish industrialism - and an unexpected connection between themselves.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo [CD] by Stieg Larsson; Reg Keeland (Translator); Martin A. Wenner (Read by)
Call Number: CD Fiction LA G1a
ISBN: 9780739370643
Publication Date: 2008-09-16
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo [E-Book] by Stieg Larsson; Reg Keeland (Translator)
Call Number: OverDrive E-Book
ISBN: 9780307272119
Publication Date: 2008-09-16
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo [Streaming Audio] by Stieg Larsson
Call Number: OverDrive Audiobook
ISBN: 9781415957806
Publication Date: 2008

2010

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie [Kindle] by Alan Bradley
Call Number: Kindle-0191 (Request at CIrculation Desk)
ISBN: 9780385342308
Publication Date: 2009-04-28
Eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison, must exonerate her father of murder. Armed with more than enough knowledge to tie two distant deaths together and examine new suspects, she begins a search that will lead her all the way to the King of England himself.
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie [E-Book] : Flavia de Luce mystery series, Book 1 by Alan Bradley
Call Number: OverDrive E-Books
ISBN: 9780440338468
Publication Date: 2009

2011

Rogue Island by Bruce DeSilva

Rogue Island (Liam Mulligan #1) by DeSilva, Bruce
Call Number: FIC DESIL BRU M1 (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9780765329813
Publication Date: 2011-06-21
When journalist Liam Mulligan realizes that someone is systematically burning down his childhood neighborhood in Providence, Rhode Island, he ignores his bosses and his budding relationship to figure out the firebug's identity.

2012

All Cry Chaos by Leonard Rosen

All Cry Chaos [E-Book] (Henri Poincare mystery #1) by Leonard Rosen
Call Number: (OverDrive)
ISBN: 9781579622671
Publication Date: 2012
The action begins when mathematician James Fenster is assassinated on the eve of a long-scheduled speech at a World Trade Organization meeting. The hit is as elegant as it is bizarre. Fenster's Amsterdam hotel room is incinerated, yet the rest of the building remains intact. The murder trail leads veteran Interpol agent Henri Poincaré on a high- stakes, world-crossing quest for answers. Together with his chain-smoking, bon vivant colleague Serge Laurent, Poincaré pursues a long list of suspects: the Peruvian leader of the Indigenous Liberation Front, Rapture-crazed militants, a hedge fund director, Fenster's elusive ex-fiancée, and a graduate student in mathematics. Poincaré begins to make progress in America, but there is a prodigious hatred trained on him—some unfinished business from a terrifying former genocide case—and he is called back to Europe to face the unfathomable. Stripped down and in despair, tested like Job, he realizes the two cases might be connected—and he might be the link.
All Cry Chaos [Streaming Audio] by Leonard Rosen
Call Number: (OverDrive)
ISBN: 9781481588676
Publication Date: 2011

2013

Don't Ever Get Old by Daniel Friedman

Don't Ever Get Old [Kindle] by Daniel Friedman; Nick Sullivan (Narrated by)
Call Number: Kindle-0580 (Request at Circulation Desk)
ISBN: 9781470829087
Publication Date: 2012-09-01
This is the first in a one-of-a-kind, spectacularly well-written mystery series featuring Buck Schatz, an eighty-seven-year-old retired Memphis cop with a know-it-all, plugged-in grandson as his sidekick.When Buck learns that an old adversary may have escaped Germany with a fortune in stolen gold, he decides to hunt down the fugitive and claim the loot...

2014

A Killing at Cotton Hill by Terry Shames

2015

Invisible City by Julia Dahl

Invisible City by Julia Dahl
Call Number: Fictino D131i (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9781250043399
Publication Date: 2014-05-06
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. In her riveting debut, journalist Julia Dahl introduces a compelling new character in search of the truth about a murder and an understanding of her own heritage.

2016

Past Crimes by Glen Erik Hamilton

2017

IQ by Joe Ide

IQ [E-Book] by Joe Ide
Call Number: OverDrive E-Book
ISBN: 9780316269803
Publication Date: 2016
A resident of one of LA's toughest neighborhoods uses his blistering intellect to solve the crimes the LAPD ignores. East Long Beach. The LAPD is barely keeping up with the neighborhood's high crime rate. Murders go unsolved, lost children unrecovered. But someone from the neighborhood has taken it upon himself to help solve the cases the police can't or won't touch. They call him IQ. He's a loner and a high school dropout, his unassuming nature disguising a relentless determination and a fierce intelligence. He charges his clients whatever they can afford, which might be a set of tires or a homemade casserole. To get by, he's forced to take on clients that can pay. This time, it's a rap mogul whose life is in danger. As Isaiah investigates, he encounters a vengeful ex-wife, a crew of notorious cutthroats, a monstrous attack dog, and a hit man who even other hit men say is a lunatic. The deeper Isaiah digs, the more far reaching and dangerous the case becomes.

2018

The Lost Ones by Sheena Kamal

The Lost Ones by Kamal, Sheena
Call Number: FIC KAMAL SHE L (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9780062565907
Publication Date: 2017-07-25
It begins with a phone call that Nora Watts has dreaded for fifteen years--since the day she gave her newborn daughter up for adoption. Bonnie has vanished. The police consider her a chronic runaway and aren't looking, leaving her desperate adoptive parents to reach out to her birth mother as a last hope.

2019

Dodging and Burning by John Copenhaver

Dodging and Burning by John Copenhaver
Call Number: Fiction C7826d (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9781643131559
Publication Date: 2019-08-13
In the summer of 1945, Ceola Bliss is a lonely twelve-year-old tomboy, mourning the loss of her brother, Robbie, who was declared missing in the Pacific. She tries to piece together his life by rereading his favorite pulp detective story "A Date with Death" and spending time with his best friend, Jay Greenwood, in Royal Oak, VA.

Macavity Awards

2020s

WINNER

One Night Gone by Tara Laskowski

FINALISTS

The Ninja Daughter by Tori Eldridge

My Lovely Wife by Samantha Downing

Miracle Creek by Angie Kim

Call Me Evie by J. P. Pomare

American Spy by Lauren Wilkinson

WINNER

Winter Counts by David Heska Wanbli Weiden

FINALISTS

Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara

Murder in Old Bombay by Nev March

The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman

Darling Rose Gold by Stephanie Wrobel

WINNER

Arsenic and Adobo by Mia P. Manansala

FINALISTS

Who is Maude Dixon? by Alexandra Andrews

Girl A by Abigail Dean

Deer Season by Erin Flanagan

All Her Little Secrets by Wanda M. Morris

WINNER

The Maid by Nita Prose

FINALISTS

Before You Knew My Name by Jacqueline Bublitz

Five Moves of Doom by A. J. Devlin

Shutter by Ramona Emerson

Devil's Chew Toy by Rob Osler

The Verifiers by Jane Pek

WINNER

The Peacock and the Sparrow by I. S. Berry

FINALISTS

The Golden Gate by Amy Chua

Scorched Grace by Margot Douaihy

Murder by Degrees by Ritu Jukerji

Dutch Threat by Josh Pachter

Mother-Daughter Murder Night by Nina Simon

1980s-2010s

1987 (tie)

The Ritual Bath by Faye Kellerman

A Case of Loyalties by Marilyn Wallace

1988

The Monkey's Raincoat by Robert Crais

1989

The Killings at Badger's Drift by Caroline Graham

1990

Grime and Punishment by Jill Churchill

1991

Postmortem by Patricia Cornwell

1992 (tie)

Murder on the Iditarod Trail by Sue Henry

Zero at the Bone by Mary Willis Walker

1993

Blanche on the Lam by Barbara Neely

1994

Death Comes as Epiphany by Sharan Newman

1995

Do Unto Others by Jeff Abbott

1996

The Strange Files of Fremont Jones by Dianne Day

1997

Death in Little Tokyo by Dale Furutani

1998

Dead Body Language by Penny Warner

1999

Sympathy for the Devil by Jerrilyn Farmer

2000

Inner City Blues by Paula L. Woods

2001

A Conspiracy of Paper by David Liss

2002

Open Season by C. J. Box

2003

In the Bleak Midwinter by Julia Spencer-Fleming

2004

Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear

2005