The 79th Edgars Awards, held last night at Manhattan's Marriott Marquis in Times Square, featured a mix of humor and gravitas, as the Mystery Writers of America honored two new Grand Masters, Laura Lippman and John Sandford; presented 15 awards, mostly to emerging authors; and announced that the 2026 ceremonies would include the debut of a new Hall of Fame award, honoring writers who died before they could be honored as Grand Masters.
The evening's top prize, for best novel, went to Charlotte Vassel's The In Crowd. In addition, two special awards—the Raven Award, for contributions to the mystery genre; and the Ellery Queen Award, for achievement in the publishing industry—went to Face in a Book Bookstore & Gifts in El Dorado Hills, Calif., and Peter Wolverton, VP and executive editor at St. Martin’s Press, respectively.
An opening video, surveying treatments of the genre on the big and small screen, was narrated by a creepy AI version of Humphrey Bogart, complete with imperfect lip-syncing, later followed by one featuring an even creepier, black cat-holding, artificially-generated Edgar Allan Poe. The introduction of AI into the Edgars was noted by Scott Frank, who'd previously taken home an Edgar in 1999 for his screenplay of Elmore Leonard's Out Of Sight, and was a cowinner of the award for best television episode teleplay Award Thursday night, along with Tom Fontana, for the first episode of AMC's Monsieur Spade. Frank commented, to some nervous laughter, that "AI will be taking all our jobs soon."
A more serious note was sounded by Lippman, who'd spent two decades as a reporter, mostly in Baltimore, and who expressed gratitude for having been born into a family that included a writer, a bookseller, and a librarian. Lippman said she considers crime fiction to be the best fiction because in it, "every death matters"—an aspect that she linked to John Donne's poem, "For Whom the Bell Tolls," in which Donne writes: "Each man's death diminishes me, For I am involved in mankind." Lippman asserted that, although it was counterintuitive, she regarded the violence-filled genre that she's specialized in as one of the most hopeful ones, because it offered a different kind of escapism, a view of the world in which individual deaths were treated seriously, and characters devoted themselves to seeking justice.
A complete list of winners and honorees is below:
Best Novel: The In Crowd by Charlotte Vassell (Doubleday)
Best First Novel by an American Author: Holy City by Henry Wise (Atlantic Monthly)
Best Paperback Original: The Paris Widow by Kimberly Belle (Park Row)
Best Fact Crime: The Infernal Machine: A True Story of Dynamite, Terror, and the Rise of the Modern Detective by Steven Johnson (Crown)
Best Critical/Biographical: James Sallis: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction by Nathan Ashman (McFarland)
Best Short Story: "Eat My Moose," Conjunctions: 82, Works & Days by Erika Krouse (Bard College)
Best Juvenile: Mysteries of Trash and Treasure: The Stolen Key by Margaret Peterson Haddix (Quill Tree Books)
Best Young Adult: 49 Miles Alone by Natalie D. Richards (Sourcebooks Fire)
Best Television Episode Teleplay: “Episode One” – Monsieur Spade, written by Tom Fontana & Scott Frank (AMC)
Robert L. Fish Memorial Award: “The Jews on Elm Street,” Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Sept.–Oct. 2024, by Anna Stolley Persky (Dell Magazines)
The Simon & Schuster Mary Higgins Clark Award: The Mystery Writer by Sulari Gentill (Poisoned Pen Press)
The G.P. Putnam’s Sons Sue Grafton Memorial Award: The Comfort of Ghosts by Jacqueline Winspear (Soho Crime)
The Lilian Jackson Braun Memorial Award: The Murders in Great Diddling by Katarina Bivald (Poisoned Pen Press)
Special Awards
Grand Master: Laura Lippman, John Sandford
Raven Award: Face in a Book Bookstore & Gifts, El Dorado Hills, Calif.
Ellery Queen Award: Peter Wolverton, St. Martin’s Press
