* Bold records denote winners
| Award Year | Award Category | Title | Author's Name | Publisher/Producer | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Perplexing Plots: Popular Storytelling and the Poetics of Murder | David Bordwell | Columbia University Press | |
| 2024 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction | Max Allan Collins & James L. Traylor | Penzler Publishers - Mysterious Press | |
| 2024 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | A Mystery of Mysteries: The Death and Life of Edgar Allan Poe | Mark Dawidziak | Macmillan Publishing - St. Martin's Press | |
| 2024 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Fallen Angel: The Life of Edgar Allan Poe | Robert Morgan | LSU Press | |
| 2024 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Love Me Fierce In Danger - The Life of James Ellroy | Steven Powell | Bloomsbury Publishing - Bloomsbury Academic | |
| 2023 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and Their Creators | Martin Edwards | HarperCollins - Collins Crime Club | |
| 2023 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | The Bloomsbury Handbook to Agatha Christie | Mary Anna Evans & J.C. Bernthal | Bloomsbury - Bloomsbury Academic | |
| 2023 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | The Crime World of Michael Connelly: A Study of His Works and Their Adaptations | David Geherin | McFarland | |
| 2023 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | The Woman Beyond the Attic: The V.C. Andrews Story | Andrew Neiderman | Simon & Schuster - Gallery Books | |
| 2023 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman | Lucy Worsley | Pegasus Books - Pegasus Crime | |
| 2022 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Agatha Christie's Poirot: The Greatest Detective in the World | Mark Aldridge | HarperCollins Publishers - Harper360 | |
| 2022 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | The Unquiet Englishman: A Life of Graham Greene | Richard Greene | W.W. Norton & Company | |
| 2022 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Tony Hillerman: A Life | James McGrath Morris | University of Oklahoma Press | |
| 2022 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | The Reason for the Darkness of the Night: Edgar Allan Poe and the Forging of American Science | John Tresch | Farrar, Straus and Giroux | |
| 2022 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | The Twelve Lives of Alfred Hitchcock: An Anatomy of the Master of Suspense | Edward White | W.W. Norton & Company | |
| 2021 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Howdunit: A Masterclass in Crime Writing by Members of the Detection Club | Martin Edwards | HarperCollins Publishers - Harper360/Collins Crime Club | |
| 2021 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Phantom Lady: Hollywood Producer Joan Harrison, the Forgotten Woman Behind Hitchcock | Christina Lane | Chicago Review Press | |
| 2021 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Ian Rankin: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction | Erin E. MacDonald | McFarland | |
| 2021 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Guilt Rules All: Irish Mystery, Detective, and Crime Fiction | Elizabeth Mannion & Brian Cliff | Syracuse University Press | |
| 2021 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | This Time Next Year We'll Be Laughing | Jacqueline Winspear | Soho Press | |
| 2020 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Hitchcock and the Censors | John Billheimer | University Press of Kentucky | |
| 2020 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Beyond the Thirty-Nine Steps: A Life of John Buchan | Ursula Buchan | Bloomsbury Publishing | |
| 2020 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | The Hooded Gunman: An Illustrated History of Collins Crime Club | John Curran | Collins Crime Club | |
| 2020 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Medieval Crime Fiction: A Critical Overview | Anne McKendry | McFarland | |
| 2020 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | The Mutual Admiration Society: How Dorothy L. Sayers and her Oxford Circle Remade the World for Women | Mo Moulton | Hachette Book Group - Basic Books | |
| 2019 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | The Metaphysical Mysteries of G.K. Chesterson: A Critical Study of the Father Brown Stories and Other Detective Fiction | Laird R. Blackwell | McFarland Publishing | |
| 2019 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession | Alice Bolin | HarperCollins Publishers - William Morrow Paperbacks | |
| 2019 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Classic American Crime Fiction of the 1920s | Leslie S. Klinger | Pegasus Books | |
| 2019 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Mark X: Who Killed Huck Finn’s Father? | Yasuhiro Takeuchi | Taylor & Francis - Routledge | |
| 2019 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Agatha Christie: A Mysterious Life | Laura Thompson | Pegasus Books | |
| 2018 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | From Holmes to Sherlock: The Story of the Men and Women Who Created an Icon | Mattias Bostrom | Grove/Atlantic - The Mysterious Press | |
| 2018 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Manderley Forever: A Biography of Daphne du Maurier | Tatiana de Rosnay | St. Martin's Press | |
| 2018 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Murder in the Closet: Essays on Queer Clues in Crime Fiction Before Stonewall | Curtis Evans | McFarland Publishing | |
| 2018 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Chester B. Himes: A Biography | Lawrence P. Jackson | W.W. Norton & Company | |
| 2018 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Arthur and Sherlock: Conan Doyle and the Creation of Holmes | Michael Sims | Bloomsbury USA | |
| 2017 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Alfred Hitchcock: A Brief Life | Peter Ackroyd | Penguin Random House - Nan A. Talese | |
| 2017 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Enclyclopedia of Nordic Crime: Works and Authors of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden since 1957 | Mitzi M. Brunsdale | McFarland & Company | |
| 2017 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life | Ruth Franklin | W.W. Norton - Liveright | |
| 2017 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Something in the Blood: The Untold Story of Bram Stoker, the Man Who Wrote Dracula | David J. Skal | W.W. Norton - Liveright | |
| 2016 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | The Golden Age of Murder | Martin Edwards | HarperCollins Publishers - HarperCollins | |
| 2016 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | The Outsider: My Life in Intrigue | Frederick Forsyth | Penguin Random House - G.P. Putnam's Sons | |
| 2016 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Meanwhile There are Letters: The Correspondence of Eudora Welty and Ross Macdonald | Suzanne Mars & Tom Nolan | Arcarde Publishing | |
| 2016 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Goldeneye: Where Bond Was Born: Ian Fleming's Jamaica | Matthew Parker | Pegasus Books | |
| 2016 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | The Lost Detective: Becoming Dashiell Hammett | Nathan Ward | Bloomsbury Publishing - Bloomsbury USA | |
| 2015 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | The Figure of the Detective: A Literary History and Analysis | Charles Brownson | McFarland & Company | |
| 2015 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | James Ellroy: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction | Jim Mancall | McFarland & Company | |
| 2015 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Kiss the Blood Off My Hands: Classic Film Noir | Robert MIklitsch | University of Illinois Press | |
| 2015 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Judges & Justice & Lawyers & Law: Exploring the Legal Dimensions of Fiction and Film | Francis M. Nevins | Perfect Crime Books | |
| 2015 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Poe-Land: The Hallowed Haunts of Edgar Allan Poe | J.W. Ocker | W.W. Norton - Countryman Press | |
| 2014 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | America is Elsewhere: The Noir Tradition in the Age of Consumer Culture | Erik Dussere | Oxford University Press | |
| 2014 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Ian Fleming | Andrew Lycett | St. Martin's Press | |
| 2014 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Maigret, Simenon and France: Social Dimensions of the Novels and Stories | Bill Alder | McFarland & Co. | |
| 2014 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Middlebrow Feminism in Classic British Detective Fiction | Melissa Schaub | Palgrave Macmillan | |
| 2014 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Pimping Fictions: African American Crime Literature and the Untold Story of Black Pulp Publishing | Justin Gifford | Temple University Press | |
| 2013 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | The Scientific Sherlock Holmes: Cracking the Case with Science and Forensics | James O'Brien | Oxford University Press | |
| 2013 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Books to Die For: The World's Greatest Mystery Writers on the World's Greatest Mystery Novels | Declan Burke, John Connolly | Simon & Schuster - Aria Books/Emily Bestler Books | |
| 2013 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | In Pursuit of Spenser: Mystery Writers on Robert B. Parker and the Creation of and American Hero | Otto Penzler | Smart Pop | |
| 2013 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe: The Hard-Boiled Detective Transformed | John Paul Athanasourelis | McFarland & Co. | |
| 2012 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | On Conan Doyle: Or, the Whole Art of Storytelling | Michael Dirda | Princeton University Press | |
| 2012 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Agatha Christie: Murder in the Making | John Curran | HarperCollins | |
| 2012 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Detecting Women: Gender and the Hollywood Detective Film | Philippa Gates | SUNY Press | |
| 2012 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Scripting Hitchcock: Psycho, The Birds and Marnie | Walter Raubicheck, Walter Srebnick | University of Illinois Press | |
| 2012 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | The Tattooed Girl: The Enigma of Stieg Larsson and the Secrets Behind the Most Compelling Thrillers of our Time | Dan Burstein, Arne de Keijzer, John-Henri Holmberg | St. Martin's Griffin | |
| 2011 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and this Rendezvous with American History | Yunte Huang | W.W. Norton & Co. | |
| 2011 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks: Fifty Years of Mysteries in the Making | John Curran | HarperCollins | |
| 2011 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Sherlock Holmes for Dummies | David A. Crowder, Steven Doyle | Wiley Publishing | |
| 2011 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | The Wire: Truth Be Told | Rafael Alvarez | Grove Atlantic - Grove Press | |
| 2011 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Thrillers: 100 Must Reads | David Morrell, Hank Wagner | Oceanview Publishing | |
| 2010 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | The Lineup: The Worlds Greatest Crime Writers Tell the Inside Story of Their Greatest Detectives | Otto Penzler | Little, Brown and Company | Comment: Edited By Otto Penzler |
| 2010 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Haunted Heart: The Life and Times of Stephen King | Lisa Rogak | Thomas Dunne Books | |
| 2010 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Talking About Detective Fiction | P.D. James | Random House/Alfred A. Knopf | |
| 2010 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | The Stephen King Illustrated Companion | Bev Vincent | Fall River Press | |
| 2010 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith | Joan Schenkar | St. Martin's Press | |
| 2009 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Edgar Allan Poe: An Illustrated Companion to His Tell-Tale Stories | Dr. Harry Lee Poe | Sterling Publishing - Metro Books | |
| 2009 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | African American Mystery Writers: A Historical and Thematic Study | Frankie Y. Bailey | McFarland & Co. | |
| 2009 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Hard-Boiled Sentimentality: The Secret History of American Crime Stories | Leonard Cassuto | Columbia University Press | |
| 2009 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Scene of the Crime: The Importance of Place in Crime and Mystery Fiction | David Geherin | McFarland & Co. | |
| 2009 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | The Rise of True Crime | Jean Murley | Greenwood Publishing - Praeger Publishers | |
| 2008 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters | Charles Foley, Jon Lellenberg, Daniel Stashower | The Penguin Press | |
| 2008 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | A Counter-History of Crime Fiction: Supernatural, Gothic, Sensational | Maurizio Ascari | Palgrave Macmillan | |
| 2008 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Deviance in Contemporary Crime Fiction | Christiana Gregoriou | Palgrave Macmillan | |
| 2008 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | The Triumph of the Thriller: How Cops, Crooks and Cannibals Captured Popular Fiction | Patrick Anderson | Random House | |
| 2007 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | The Science of Sherlock Holmes: From Baskerville Hall to the Valley of Fear | E.J. Wagner | John Wiley & Sons | |
| 2007 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Unless the Threat of Death is Behind Them: Hard-Boiled Fiction and Film Noir | John T. Irwin | Johns Hopkins University Press | |
| 2006 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her | Melanie Rehak | Harcourt, Inc. | |
| 2006 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Behind the Mystery: Top Mystery Writers Interviewed | Stuart M. Kaminsky | Hot House Press | Comment: photos by Laurie Roberts |
| 2006 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Discovering the Maltese Falcon and Sam Spade: The Evolution of Dashiell Hammett's Masterpiece | Richard Layman | Vince Emery Productions | Comment: Including John Huston's Movie with Humphrey Bogart |
| 2006 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes: The Novels | Leslie S. Klinger | W.W. Norton & Co. | |
| 2006 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Writing and Selling Your Mystery Novel: How to Knock 'em Dead with Style | Hallie Ephron | Writer's Digest Books | |
| 2005 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Short Stories | Leslie S. Klinger | W.W. Norton & Co. | |
| 2005 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Booze and the Private Eye: Alcohol in the Hard-Boiled Novel | Rita Elizabeth Rippetoe | McFarland & Co. | |
| 2005 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Latin American Mystery Writers: An A-to-Z Guide | Darrell B. Lockhart | Greenwood Press | |
| 2005 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | The Life of Graham Greene | Norman Sherry | Viking | Volume: Vol. 3: 1956-1991 |
| 2004 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith | Andrew Wilson | Bloomsbury | |
| 2004 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light | Patrick McGilligan | HarperCollins | |
| 2004 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Amelia Peabody's Egypt: A Compendium | Elizabeth Peters, Kristen Whitbread | Wm. Morrow | |
| 2004 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Mystery Women, Volume 3 | Colleen Barnett | Poisoned Pen Press | |
| 2004 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | The American Police Novel: A History | Leroy Lad Panek | McFarland | |
| 2003 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Mammoth Encyclopedia of Modern Crime Fiction | Mike Ashley | Carroll & Graf | |
| 2003 | Best Critical/Biographical Work | Art of Noir | Eddie Muller | Overlook Press |