Edgar Award Nominees 2012: A List to Die For

Here's the Mystery Writers of America (MWA) press release, which always sends me racing to the shelves, checking off the ones I've already read and enjoyed, and the ones that are "must reads" before the finalists are announced on April 26:

Best Novel: The Ranger by Ace Atkins (G.P. Putnam's Sons); Gone by Mo Hayder (Atlantic Monthly Press); The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino (Minotaur Books); 1222 by Anne Holt (Scribner); Field Gray by Philip Kerr (Marion Wood Books).

Best First Novel by an American Author: Red on Red by Edward Conlon (Spiegel & Grau); Last to Fold by David Duffy (Thomas Dunne Books); All Cry Chaos by Leonard Rosen (The Permanent Press); Bent Road by Lori Roy (Dutton); Purgatory Chasm by Steve Ulfelder (Thomas Dunne Books).

Best Paperback Original: The Company Man by Robert Jackson Bennett (Orbit Books); The Faces of Angels by Lucretia Grindle (Felony & Mayhem Press); The Dog Sox by Russell Hill (Caravel Mystery Books); Death of the Mantis by Michael Stanley (Harper); Vienna Twilight by Frank Tallis (Random House Trade Paperbacks).

Best Fact Crime: The Murder of the Century: The Gilded Age Crime That Scandalized a City and Sparked the Tabloid Wars by Paul Collins (Crown); The Savage City: Race, Murder, and a Generation on the Edge by T.J. English (William Morrow); Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard (Doubleday); Girl, Wanted: The Chase for Sarah Pender by Steve Miller (Penguin Group); The Man in the Rockefeller Suit: The Astonishing Rise and Spectacular Fall of a Serial Imposter by Mark Seal (Viking).

Best Critical/Biographical: The Tattoed Girl: The Enigma of Steig Larsson and the Secrets Behind the Most Compelling Thrillers of our Time by Dan Burstein, Arne de Keijzer and John-Henri Holmberg (St. Martin's Griffin); Agatha Christie: Murder in the Making by John Curran (HarperCollins); On Conan Doyle: Or, the Whole Art of Storytelling by Michael Dirda (Princeton University Press); Detecting Women: Gender and the Hollywood Detective Film by Philippa Gates (SUNY Press); Scripting Hitchcock: Psycho, The Birds and Marnie by Walter Raubicheck and Walter Srebnick (University of Illinois Press).

Best Short Story: "Marley’s Revolution" – Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine by John C. Boland (Dell Magazines); "Tomorrow’s Dead" – Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine by David Dean (Dell Magazines); "The Adakian Eagle” – Down These Strange Streets  by Bradley Denton (Penguin Group USA – Ace Books); "Lord John and the Plague of Zombies" – Down These Strange Streets  by Diana Gabaldon (Penguin Group USA – Ace Books); "The Case of Death and Honey" – A Study in Sherlock by Neil Gaiman (Random House Publishing Group – Bantam Books); “The Man Who Took His Hat Off to the Driver of the Train” – Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine by Peter Turnbull (Dell Magazines).

Best Juvenile: Horton Halfpott by Tom Angleberger (Abrams/Amulet); It Happened on a Train by Mac Barnett (Simon & Schuster); Vanished by Sheela Chari (Disney-Hyperion); Icefall by Matthew J. Kirby (Scholastic Press); The Wizard of Dark Street by Shawn Thomas Odyssey (Egmont USA).

Best Young Adult: Shelter by Harlan Coben (Putnam); The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson (Putnam); The Silence of Murder by Dandi Daley Mackall (Knopf); The Girl Is Murder by Kathryn Miller Haines (Roaring Brook); Kill You Last by Todd Strasser (Egmont USA).

The Simon & Schuster - Mary Higgins Clark Award: Now You See Me by S.J. Bolton (Minotaur Books); Come and Find Me by Hallie Ephron (William Morrow); Death on Tour by Janice Hamrick (Minotaur Books); Learning to Swim by Sara J. Henry (Crown); Murder Most Persuasive by Tracy Kiely (Thomas Dunne Books).