At a ceremony Wednesday in New York, the Mystery Writers of America announced the winners of the 2026 Edgar Allan Poe Awards, honoring “the best in mystery fiction, nonfiction and television published or produced in 2025.”
Robert Crais won the best novel award for The Big Empty, his 20th book featuring Los Angeles detectives Elvis Cole and Joe Pike. In a starred review, a critic for Kirkus called it a “potent and surprising novel by the ever-reliable Crais.” The author has been a finalist for the prize twice before.
The award for best first novel by an American author went to Jakob Kerr for Dead Money, while Vikki Wakefield won the best paperback original prize for The Backwater.
Caroline Fraser won the best fact crime award for Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers, which was previously named a finalist for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for excellence in nonfiction. Richard Kopley took home the best critical/biographical prize for Edgar Allan Poe: A Life.
Tiffany D. Jackson won in the juvenile category for Blood in the Water, while Libba Bray was awarded the best young adult prize for Under the Same Stars. The best short story prize went to Dave Zeltserman for “Julius Katz Draws a Straight Flush,” published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, and Dan Fogelman won the best television episode teleplay prize for the pilot episode of Paradise, which streams on Hulu.
The Simon & Schuster Mary Higgins Clark Award went to All This Could Be Yours by Hank Phillippi Ryan, and Joanna Schaffhausen took home the G.P. Putnam’s Sons Sue Grafton Memorial Award for Gone in the Night. Winning the Lilian Jackson Braun Memorial Award was Gwen Florio for A Senior Citizen’s Guide to Life on the Run, and Billie Kay Fern won the Robert L. Fish Memorial Award for the story “How It Happened,” published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.
Authors Donna Andrews and Lee Child were recognized as Grand Masters of the organization; those honors were previously announced in January.
The Edgar Awards were established in 1946. Previous winners include Raymond Chandler for The Long Goodbye, Michael Crichton for A Case of Need, and Attica Locke for Bluebird, Bluebird.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
