Best Mystery for 2010--Edgar Award Winner Announced

The Mystery Writers of America announced the 2010 Edgar Award Winner on Thursday evening, April 29, 2010. The novel to read for 2010 is:

The Last Child by John Hart
After his twin sister Alyssa disappears, thirteen year-old Johnny Merrimon is determined to find her. When a second girl disappears from his rural North Carolina town, Johnny makes a discovery that sends shock waves through the community in this multi-layered tale of broken families and deadly

Other nominees included:

The Missing by Tim Gautreaux
The author of "The Clearing" returns with the story of a man fighting to redeem himself after World War I, of parents coping with horrific loss, and of others for whom kidnapping is only a job, in this novel that brings to vivid life the exotic world of steamboats and shifting currents and rough crowds.


The Odds by Kathleen George.
A police procedural focusing on four children recently abandoned who try to help a wounded man they find in a warehouse with a dead man who is being hunted by a drug dealer and the police.


Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston
Based in Los Angeles, a man suffering from post traumatic stress takes a job cleaning up crime scenes. As he is finishing a suicide scene, he receives a call from the dead man's daughter wanting him to clean up another scene for her and her thug brother. He is drawn in by her womanly wiles and finds that he is in way over his head with this family.


Nemesis by Jo Nesbo
Oslo Police Detective Harry Hole is assigned to investigate a series of bank robberies of unparalleled savagery while at the same time absolving himself of the murder of his former girlfriend in a criminal investigation led by his longtime adversary Tom Waaler and Waaler's vigilante police force.


A Beautiful Place to Die by Malla Nunn
Jacob's Rest, a tiny town on the border between South Africa and Mozambique, 1952. An Afrikaner police officer is found dead. Detective Emmanuel Cooper, an Englishman, begins investigating the murder following a trail of clues that lead him to uncover a shocking forbidden love and the imperfect life of one Captain Pretorius. SH