Annal:2004 Edgar Allan Poe Award® for Best First Novel

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Results of the Edgar Allan Poe Award® in the year 2004. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:

Death of a Nationalist

Rebecca Pawel

Madrid 1938. Carlos Tejada Alonso y Leon is a Sergeant in the Guardia Civil, a rank rare for a man not yet thirty, but Tejada is an unusual recruit. The bitter civil war between the Nationalists and the Republicans has interrupted his legal studies in Salamanca. Second son of a conservative Southern family of landowners, he is an enthusiast for the Catholic Franquista cause, a dedicated, and now triumphant, Nationalist.

This war has drawn international attention. In a dress rehearsal for World War II, fascists support the Nationalists, while Communists have…

 

12 Bliss Street: A Novel

Martha Conway

Nicola is having a really bad day. She’s tired of her job, her boss, and even her San Francisco apartment, which she’s just heard she’s being evicted from anyway. Her life’s only excitement is fueled by fantasy – about the expensive lingerie she wears under her business suits, about a man she sees at lunch every day, a darkly handsome man she calls Chorizo, after the kind of pizza he orders. She’s flat-out tired of her life, and nothing brings it home more than running into her annoying but harmless ex-husband, Scooter, on the way to work.

But if ever anyone…

 

The Night of the Dance: A Mystery

James Hime

Sissy Fletcher, the preacher’s daughter, disappeared on the night of the Rodeo Dance ten years ago and has been missing ever since. Until now, that is—a team drilling an oil well has made a grisly discovery in an isolated pasture. Seeing as how it’s an election year, finding her killer is a bigger priority than it might usually be in sleepy Washington County, Texas, where not much ever happens anyway.

Though it’s becoming clear that the town isn’t quite as sleepy as it seems. Martin Fletcher, Sissy’s brother, seems to believe he’s on a mission from God to…

 

Offer of Proof: A Novel

Robert Heilbrun

A beautiful businesswoman is robbedand murdered. With her last breath, she identifies her assailant. Or does she? Damon Tucker, a young kid from Harlem, is quickly charged with the murder. He maintains his innocence from the beginning despite some incredibly damning evidence. Soon the only person standing between Damon and a possible death sentence is his public defender, Arch Gold, a tough courtroom veteran who knows every move in the game of criminal justice in New York City. But in this case Gold quickly discovers that nothing is what it seems and the rules of…

 

The Bridge of Sighs: A Novel

Olen Steinhauer

It’s August, 1948, three years after the Russians “liberated” the nation from German Occupation. But the Red Army still patrols the capital’s rubble-strewn streets, and the ideals of the Revolution are but memories. Twenty-two-year-old Detective Emil Brod finally gets his chance to serve his country, investigating murder for the People’s Militia.

The first victim is a state songwriter, but the facts point to a political motive. Emil would like to investigate further, but his colleagues in Homicide are suspicious or silent: He is on his own in this new,…

 
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