Annal:2004 Macavity Award for Best Mystery Novel
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Macavity Award in the year 2004. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
- 2004 Macavity-Novel winner
- 2004 Barry-British nominee
- 2003 LATimes–Mystery finalist
- Score: 22.54
When a woman is found strangled to death on a popular beach in Sussex, the police have a hard time identifying her. It takes twelve days to discover she was a top psychological profiler for the National Crime Faculty. Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond is called in because the victim lived in Bath. He must coordinate his efforts with those of Henrietta Mallin, the original senior investigating officer, as well as try to cooperate with the cocky young officer charged with investigating the bizarre murder that the victim had been working on.
Oddly, the…
- 2004 Anthony-Novel nominee
- 2004 Macavity-Novel nominee
- 2003 Hammett nominee
- Score: 18.54
The third week in January in Algonquin Bay: A freak warm front has rolled in, making it feel like April and enticing the locals into shedding their down parkas and strolling the streets. But the warm weather has also brought the bears out of hibernation, and they have come out hungry. Suddenly the stakes turn ugly when an auto mechanic discovers a mauled human arm in his yard, and the cops determine that its owner was dead before the bears got to him. A search of the surrounding woods turns up body parts placed exactly where the bears were most likely to find…
For the Love of Mike: A Molly Murphy Mystery
- 2004 Anthony-Historical winner
- 2004 Macavity-Novel nominee
- Score: 16.54
Molly Murphy is starting to think the cards are stacked against her. She’s determined to be a private detective, but hampering her investigations is the fact that she’s finding many places in turn-of-the-century New York City where women are not welcome, something that’s as frustrating to her fiery Irish pride as it is to her rapidly emptying pocketbook.
Then two business opportunities pop up simultaneously. An aristocratic family in Dublin fears their daughter has fled to the New World with her unsavory boyfriend, and they hire Molly to track the two down…
- 2004 Shamus-Novel winner
- 2004 Barry-Novel nominee
- 2004 Edgar–Novel nominee
- 2004 Macavity-Novel nominee
- Score: 28.54
Still stinging from his unceremonious ouster from the Garda SÌoch·na—the Guards, Ireland’s police force—and staring at the world through the smoky bottom of his beer mug, Jack Taylor is stuck in Galway with nothing to look forward to. In his sober moments Jack aspires to become Ireland’s best private investigator, not to mention its first—Irish history, full of betrayal and espionage, discourages any profession so closely related to informing. But in truth Jack is teetering on the brink of his life’s sharpest edges, his memories of the past cutting deep into his…
Done for a Dime: A Novel
- 2004 Macavity-Novel nominee
- Score: 6.54
Back in the day, Raymond “Strong” Carlisle made his mark as an ace sideman blowing baritone sax alongside all the biggest names in R&B. Now he lies in the grass outside his home, shot dead from behind and pelted by the heedless rain that mingles with his own blood. He is the first official casualty of a dirty war being lethally waged for control of Rio Mirada: a low-rent, “city in transition” of clashing subcultures at the northern tip of the San Francisco Bay, beset by drug dealers, arsonists, squatters…and now murder.
Detective Dennis Murchison–white,…
