Category List – Best Critical / Biographical Work

* Bold records denote winners

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Total Records Found: 220, showing 100 per page
Award YearAward CategoryTitleAuthor's NamePublisher/ProducerNotes
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