Honor roll:Barry Award for Best Paperback Original P.I. Novel
From AwardAnnals
Each of these books has been nominated for a Barry Award for Best Paperback Original P.I. Novel. They are ranked by honors received.
You may also enjoy these honor rolls:
- Barry Award for Best Paperback Original P.I. Novel authors
- Mystery/Suspense books
- Mystery/Suspense authors
- Works 1–10 of 58
- Show titles only
- Next 10 –>
The James Deans: A Moe Prager Mystery
- 2006 Anthony-Paperback winner
- 2006 Barry-Paperback winner
- 2006 Shamus-Paperback winner
- 2006 Edgar-Paperback nominee
- 2006 Macavity-Novel nominee
- Score: 42.56
It’s 1983 and Reaganomics is in full swing. But beneath the facade of junk bonds and easy money, New York remains a gritty metropolis offering Nirvana with one hand and desolation with the other. Moe Prager, ex-NYPD cop turned reluctant P.I. is too busy reeling from a family tragedy to see what’s coming. He’s about to be sucked into a case that might deliver him what he’s always wanted or plunge him into purgatory.
Two years earlier, Moira Heaton, a young intern for an up-and-coming politico, vanished without a trace. Although there is no evidence supporting…
- 2001 Anthony-Paperback winner
- 2001 Barry-Paperback nominee
- 2001 Macavity-1st Novel nominee
- 2000 Agatha–1st Novel nominee
- Score: 28.51
Kelly Ryan has just moved to the Caribbean island of St. Chris to run a top-rated radio station. She knew that her new life would be full of adventure—but she never expected murder…
- 1998 Anthony-Paperback winner
- 1998 Shamus-1st Novel winner
- 1998 Barry-Paperback nominee
- Score: 26.48
Everything in Texas is bigger…even murder.
Meet Tres Navarre…tequila drinker, Tai Chi master, unlicensed P.I., with a penchant for Texas-size trouble.
Jackson “Tres” Navarre and his enchilada-eating cat, Robert Johnson, pull into San Antonio and find nothing waiting but trouble. Ten years ago Navarre left town and the memory of his father’s murder behind him. Now he’s back, looking for answers. Yet the more Tres digs, trying to put his suspicions to rest, the fresher the decade-old crime looks: Mafia connections, construction site payoffs, and slick…
Fade Away: A Myron Bolitar Mystery
The home was top-notch New Jersey suburban. The living room was Martha Stewart. The basement was Legos—and blood. For sports agent Myron Bolitar, the disappearance of a man he’d once competed against was bringing back memories—of the sport he and Greg Downing had both played and the woman they both loved. Now, among the stars, the wanna-bes, the gamblers and groupies, Myron is unraveling the strange, violent life of a sports hero gone wrong, and coming face-to-face with a past he can’t relive, and a present he may not survive.
In novels that crackle with wit…
Queenpin: A Novel
- 2008 Edgar-Paperback winner
- 2008 Anthony-Paperback nominee
- 2008 Barry-Paperback nominee
- Score: 22.58
A young woman hired to keep the books at a down-at-the-heels nightclub is taken under the wing of the infamous Gloria Denton, a mob luminary who reigned during the Golden Era of Bugsy Siegel and Lucky Luciano. Notoriously cunning and ruthless, Gloria shows her eager young protégée the ropes, ushering her into a glittering demimonde of late-night casinos, racetracks, betting parlors, inside heists, and big, big money. Suddenly, the world is at her feet—as long as she doesn’t take any chances, like falling for the wrong guy. As the roulette wheel turns, both mentor and protégée scramble to stay one step ahead of their bosses and each other.
The Kidnapping of Rosie Dawn: A Joe Barley Mystery
- 2001 Barry-Paperback winner
- 2001 Anthony-Paperback nominee
- 2001 Edgar-Paperback nominee
- Score: 22.51
Joe Barley, a part-time lecturer in English Literature and part-time security guard, is alerted by his maid to the disappearance of another of her employers, Rosie Dawn, a student of classics who is working her way through school by being an exotic dancer and the mistress of a fast-food entrepreneur. The novel also involves campus politics—a student tries to exploit the nervous administration over its minority policies.
- 1998 Macavity-1st Novel winner
- 1998 Barry-Paperback nominee
- 1997 Agatha–1st Novel nominee
- Score: 22.48
Thirty-seven year old journalist, Connor Westphal, has relocated from San Francisco to Flat Skunk, a mining-turned-tourist town in the foothills of the Sierras, to start up her own weekly paper. Suddenly, dead bodies begin turning up in the most unusual places, setting Connor on a hunt for a killer. You might say Connor has a sixth sense when it comes to investigating…but she only has four of the usual five senses. Connor Westphal is deaf. But being hearing impaired doesn’t stop Connor from pursuing the murderer. Without sound to distract her, she attends to…
- 1997 Agatha–1st Novel winner
- 1998 Barry-Paperback nominee
- 1998 Macavity-1st Novel nominee
- Score: 22.47
Japanese-American Rei Shimura is a 27-year-old English teacher living in one of Tokyo’s seediest neighborhoods. She doesn’t make much money, but she wouldn’t go back home to California even if she had a free ticket (which, thanks to her parents, she does.) Her independence is threatened however, when a getaway to an ancient castle town is marred by murder.
Rei is the first to find the beautiful wife of a high-powered businessman, dead in the snow. Taking charge, as usual, Rei searches for clues by crashing a funeral, posing as a bar-girl, and somehow ending up…
Six Bad Things: A Novel
- 2006 Anthony-Paperback nominee
- 2006 Barry-Paperback nominee
- 2006 Edgar-Paperback nominee
- Score: 18.56
Hank Thompson is living off the map in Mexico with a bagful of cash that the Russian mafia wants back and many, many secrets. So when a Russian backpacker shows up in town asking questions, Hank tries to play it cool. But he knows the jig is up when the backpacker mentions the money…and the family Hank left behind. Suddenly Hank’s in a desperate race to get to his parents in California before anyone can harm them. Along the way he’ll face Federales and Border Patrol, mafiosi and vigilantes, extortionists and drug dealers, and a couple of psychotic surf bums with…
Dealing in Murder: A Molly Doyle Mystery
- 2004 Anthony-Paperback nominee
- 2004 Barry-Paperback nominee
- 2003 Agatha–1st Novel nominee
- Score: 18.54
Elizabeth Porter was a top-of-the-lineManhattan antiques dealer until her ex-husband and his lover’s flagrantly criminal scam left her reputation in tatters. Now, using a new name, Molly Doyle, she’s starting over a continent away in a rundown antiques shop in cozy Carmel, California. Molly is determined to make the best of it. But the early antiques bird sometimes gets more than the worm, and one prompt arrival places her at a murder site with a corpse in her arms. After she turns up at a second seemingly unrelated death, the abrasive new police chief considers…
- Works 1–10 of 58
- Show titles only
- Next 10 –>

