Honor roll:Mystery/Suspense books of the 1980s
From AwardAnnals
Each of these Mystery/Suspense books has received at least one award nomination in the 1980s. They are ranked by honors received.
See also:
- Honor roll:Mystery/Suspense books: 1990s, full list.
- Honor roll:Mystery/Suspense authors.
- Category:Mystery/Suspense book awards.
- Works 1–10 of 185
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The Silence of the Lambs: A Novel
A serial murderer known only by a grotesquely apt nickname—Buffalo Bill—is stalking women. He has a purpose, but no one can fathom it, for the bodies are discovered in different states. Clarice Starling, a young trainee at the FBI Academy, is surprised to be summoned by Jack Crawford, chief of the Bureau’s Behavioral Science section. Her assignment: to interview Dr. Hannibal Lecter—Hannibal the Cannibal—who is kept under close watch in the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.
Dr. Lecter is a former psychiatrist with a grisly history, unusual…
- 1983 Philip K Dick citation
- 1984 Hugo-Novel nominee
- 1984 WFA–Novel nominee
- 1983 Nebula nominee
- Score: 26.33
Martha Macnamara knows that her daughter Elizabeth is in trouble, she just doesn’t know what kind. Mysterious phone calls from San Francisco at odd hours of the night are the only contact she has had with Elizabeth for years. Now, Elizabeth has sent her a plane ticket and reserved a room for her at San Francisco’s most luxurious hotel. Yet she has not tried to contact Martha since she arrived, leaving her lonely, confused and a little bit worried.
Into the story steps Mayland Long, a distinguished-looking and wealthy Chinese man who lives at the hotel and is…
Grime and Punishment: A Jane Jeffry Mystery
It’s So hard to Kill Good Help These Days…
With three kids to raise on her own, Jane Jeffry sometimes needs a hand with the housework. But many of her complaining neighbors believe that the “Happy Helper” cleaning lady they all share wouldn’t know a dustball if she was choking on it. That hardly seems reason enough, however, to do the disreputable domestic in.
So when the charwoman in question is discovered strangled to death with a vacuum cleaner cord, Jane decides to dig up the real dirt—if the tenacious single mom can find any time to spare between…
To this day, the low, thin wail of an infant can be heard in Keldale’s lush green valleys. Three hundred years ago, as legend goes, the frightened Yorkshire villagers smothered a crying babe in Keldale Abbey, where they’d hidden to escape the ravages of Cromwell’s raiders.
Now into Keldale’s pastoral web of old houses and older secrets comes Scotland Yard Inspector Thomas Lynley, the eighth earl of Asherton. Along with the redoubtable Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers, Lynley has been sent to solve a savage murder that has stunned the peaceful countryside.…
Something Wicked: A Death on Demand Mystery
Something has poisoned a local summer stock production of Arsenic and Old Lace as cast members stab each other in the back and props are sabotaged. Worst of all, the star, an aging Hollywood beach-blanket hunk, butchers his lines—while getting top billing in bed with wives and teenage daughters around town. No wonder someone decides to draw his final curtain. A pompous prosecutor tries to pin the murder on Max, Annie Laurance’s own leading man. Unless Annie can prove Max’s innocence, their wedding date’s off. Annie checks the greasepaint and glitter of backstage…
When Ellen Lang’s husband disappears with their son, she hires Elvis Cole to track him down. A quiet and seemingly submissive wife, Ellen can’t even write a check without him. All she wants is to get him and her son back—no questions asked.
The search for Ellen’s errant husband leads Elvis into the seamier side of Hollywood. He soon learns that Mort Lang is a down-on-his-luck talent agent who associates with a schlocky movie producer, and the last place he was spotted was at a party thrown by a famous and very well-connected ex-Matador. But no one has seen…
“B” is for Burglar: A Kinsey Millhone Mystery
Beverly Danziger looked like an expensive, carefully wrapped package from a good but conservative shop. Only her compulsive chatter hinted at the nervousness beneath her cool surface. It was a nervousness out of all proportion to the problem she placed before Kinsey Millhone. There was an absent sister. A will to be settled—a matter of only a few thousand dollars. Mrs. Danziger did not look as if she needed a few thousand dollars. And she didn’t seem like someone longing for a family reunion.
Still, business was slow, and even a private investigator has bills…
When the Bough Breaks: An Alex Delaware Novel
In the first Alex Delaware novel, Dr. Morton Handler practiced a strange brand of psychiatry. Among his specialties were fraud, extortion, and sexual manipulation. Handler paid for his sins when he was brutally murdered in his luxurious Pacific Palisades apartment. The police have no leads, but they do have one possible witness: seven-year-old Melody Quinn.
It’s psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware’s job to try to unlock the terrible secret buried in Melody’s memory. But as the sinister shadows in the girl’s mind begin to take shape, Alex discovers that…
Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number
The bestselling, classic personal chronicle of the Argentine publisher’s ordeal at the hands of the Argentine government—imprisoned and tortured as a dissenter and as a Jew—that aroused the conscience of the world.
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