Crime Writers of Canada Awards of Excellence Winners

The Crime Writers of Canada Awards of Excellence recognize the best in mystery, crime, suspense fiction, and crime nonfiction by Canadian authors.

Updated April 29, 2024
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The push : a novel
Audrain, Ashley
Paper Book
INSTANT INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER WINNER of the 2022 Crime Writers of Canada Best First Crime Novel SHORTLISTED for the 2022 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize "Utterly addictive." --Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train...
The Delicate Storm
Blunt, Giles
Paper Book
Book 2 in the John Cardinal series When the dismembered corpse of an American tourist turns up half-eatenby bears near Algonquin Bay, Detective John Cardinal is assigned to thecase. Without a solid lead, and with the RCMP and CSIS involved,Cardinal is forced to band together with...
Until the night
Blunt, Giles.
Paper Book
It's not unusual for John Cardinal to be hauled out of a warm bed on a cold night in Algonquin Bay to investigate a murder. And at first this dead body, sprawled in the parking lot of Motel 17, looks pretty run of the mill: the corpse has a big bootprint on his neck, and the likely suspect is his...
La mariée de corail : la deuxième enquête de Joaquin Moralès
Bouchard, Roxanne
Paper Book
Red Light
Bourassa, Marie-Ève
Paper Book
A colder kind of death
Bowen, Gail
Paper Book
When a prisoner is shot to death in a Saskatchewan penitentiary, Joanne Kilbourn finds herself haunted by a part of her past she wished had never happened. The dead prisoner is Kevin Tarpley, the man who six years earlier had brutally killed her politician husband, Ian, in a seemingly senseless act....
The sweetness at the bottom of the pie
Bradley, C. Alan
Paper Book
Winner of the 2007 Crime Writers' Association Debut Dagger A delightfully dark English mystery, featuring precocious young sleuth Flavia de Luce and her eccentric family. The summer of 1950 hasn't offered up anything out of the ordinary for eleven-year-old Flavia de...
A siege of bitterns : a birder murder mystery
Burrows, Steve
Paper Book
Newly appointed police inspector Domenic Jejeune doesn't mind ruffling a few feathers to flush out suspects in the brutal murder of a renowned ecological activist. 2015 Arthur Ellis Award -- Winner, Best First Novel * Globe and Mail 100: Best Books of 2014 * 2015...
Full curl
Butler, Dave
Paper Book
Winner of the 2018 Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Crime Novel! When her park is threatened, warden Jenny Willson takes it very personally. Jenny Willson is a hard-edged, caustic-witted warden from Banff National Park who...
Mafiaboy : how I cracked the Internet and why it's still broken
Calce, Michael.
Paper Book
In early 2000, the websites of CNN, Yahoo, E*Trade, Dell, Amazon, and eBay ground to a halt for several hours, causing panic everywhere from the White House to suburbia and around the world. After 2 months and hundreds of hours of wiretapping, the FBI and RCMP staged a late-night raid to apprehend...
The last amigo : Karlheinz Schreiber and the anatomy of a scandal
Cameron, Stevie.
Paper Book
A briefcase full of cash is handed to the treasurer of a federal political party, but the donation is never registered on the party's books. A public prosecutor investigates a case that implicates influential business figures, but he dies in a car accident before charges are laid. At the height of...
On the farm : Robert William Pickton and the tragic story of Vancouver's missing women
Cameron, Stevie.
Paper Book
Verteran investigative journalist Stevie Cameron first began following the story of missing women in 1998, when the odd newspaper piece appeared chronicling the disappearances of drug-addicted sex trade workers from Vancouver's notorious Downtown Eastside. It was not until February 2002 that pig...
L'affaire Myosotis
Chartrand, Luc
Paper Book
Greenwood
Christie, Michael
Paper Book
WINNER OF THE ARTHUR ELLIS AWARD LONGLISTED FOR THE 2019 SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE A CBC BOOKS "BEST CANADIAN FICTION" TITLE OF THE YEAR NATIONAL BESTSELLER From the award-winning author of If I Fall, If I Die comes a propulsive, multigenerational family story,...
The Whisky King : the remarkable true story of Canada's most infamous bootlegger and the undercover Mountie on his trail
Cole, Trevor
Paper Book
"True-crime writing at its finest." --Dean Jobb, author of Empire of Deception A rich and fascinating history of Canada's first celebrity mobster, Rocco Perri--King of the Bootleggers--and the man who pursued him, Canada's first undercover Mountie, for readers of Erik Larson, Dean Jobb and...
Trial of passion
Deverell, William
Paper Book
Winner of the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Mystery Novel, 1998 Winner of the Dashiell Hammett Award, 1998 Arthur Beauchamp, one of Vancouver's most heralded criminal lawyers, has moved to a quiet island off the British Columbia coast. He's trying to recover from a...
Cobra clutch
Devlin, A. J.
Paper Book
Winner of the Best First Crime Novel at the 2019 Arthur Ellis Awards!Nominated for a Lefty for Best Debut Mystery Novel!"Hammerhead" Jed Ounstead thought he'd traded the pro-wrestling world for the slightly less dangerous one of a bar bouncer and errand boy for his father's detective agency, but...
Funeral songs for dying girls
Dimaline, Cherie
Paper Book
After inadvertently starting rumors of a haunted cemetery, a teen befriends a ghost in this brand-new young adult novel exploring grief and belonging by the critically acclaimed and bestselling author of The Marrow Thieves series. Winifred has lived in the apartment above the...
What's the matter with Mary Jane? : another postmodern mystery, by the numbers
Dorsey, Candas Jane
Paper Book
A wise-cracking, grammar-obsessed, pansexual amateur sleuth is thrust into the world of the uber-rich when her enigmatic, now-famous childhood friend breezes back into her life begging for help with a dangerous stalker Our nameless postmodern amateur sleuth is still recovering from...
Though the heavens fall
Emery, Anne ;
Paper Book
Winner of the 2019 Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Novel "Emery populates 1995 Belfast so conscientiously and evokes its atmosphere so faithfully ..." -- Kirkus Reviews As 1995 dawns in the North of Ireland, Belfast is a city of army patrols, bombed-out buildings, and "peace walls" segregating one...
Sign of the cross : a mystery
Emery, Anne.
Paper Book
Winner of the Arthur Ellis Award, Best First Novel Father Brennan Burke is the main suspect in the murder of a young woman. Defense attorney Monty Collins steps up to defend him, but realizes the only way to exonerate him is to dive into the secrets of his past ... Be...
The finder
Ferguson, Will
Paper Book
From the Scotiabank Giller Prize-winning novelist of 419 comes a spellbinding literary adventure novel about precious objects lost and found. The world is filled with wonders, lost objects--all real--all still out there, waiting to be found: · the missing...
Honour among men
Fradkin, Barbara Fraser
Paper Book
Inspector Green is coping with an office job, still eager to get back into the day-to-day fray of policing. His chance comes when an unidentified woman is drowned in the Ottawa River. In her possession is a Medal for Bravery from a peacekeeping mission. As Green and his team dig deeper into the...
The Massey murder : a maid, her master, and the trial that shocked a country
Gray, Charlotte
Paper Book
A Globe & Mail 100 Selection and longlisted for the 2014 RBC Taylor Prize! A scandalous crime, a sensational trial, a surprise verdict--the true story of Carrie Davies, the maid who shot a Massey In February 1915, a member of one of Canada's wealthiest families was shot and killed...
Murdered Midas : a millionaire, his gold mine, and a strange death on an island paradise
Gray, Charlotte
Paper Book
A Globe and Mail Top 100 Book of the Year In this "engrossing must-read" by "Canada's most accomplished popular historian" (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine), the glittering life and brutal murder of Sir Harry Oakes is newly investigated. Murdered Midas is "superior true-crime writing" (The...
Red Fox Road
Greenslade, Frances
Paper Book
A thirteen-year-old girl on a family vacation becomes stranded alone in the wilderness when the family's GPS leads them astray. A compelling survival story for ages 10 to 14, for fans of Hatchet and The Skeleton Tree. Francie and her parents are on a spring road...
A daughter's deadly deception : the Jennifer Pan story
Grimaldi, Jeremy
Paper Book
Now a Netflix Documentary What Jennifer Did * A sinister plot by a young woman left her mother dead and her father riddled with bullets. "The book is pure story: chronological, downhill, fast." -- Globe and Mail From the outside looking in,...
The devil's making : a mystery
Haldane, Seaan.
Paper Book
Winner of the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel In the ramshackle capital of one of the last colonies in North America, a few thousand settlers aspire to the values of the Victorian age while coexisting beside a population of native Indians that vastly outnumbers them. Their cautious peace...
The Irish Game: A True Story of Crime and Art
Hart, Matthew
Paper Book
Even amongst the crowded annals of spectacular art thefts, no one heist has matched the sheer criminal panache of the raid at Russborough House, Ireland, in May 1986. This is the story of how the Garda were led on an international chase to snare the Dublin gangster who remained at large for many...
The Beatle Bandit : a serial bank robber's deadly heist, a cross-country manhunt, and the insanity plea that shook the nation
Hendley, Nate
Paper Book
The sensational true story of how a bank robber killed a man in a wild shootout, sparking a national debate around gun control and the death penalty. WINNER of the 2022 Brass Knuckles Award for Best Nonfiction Crime Book On July 24, 1964,...
Plague
Humphreys, C. C.
Paper Book
WINNER 2015--Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Novel London, 1665. A serial killer stalks his prey, scalpel in his hand and God's vengeance in his heart.       Five years after his restoration to the throne, Charles II leads his citizens by...
Empire of deception : the incredible story of a master swindler who seduced a city and captivated the nation
Jobb, Dean
Paper Book
In the tradition of bestselling books like The Devil in the White City and The Man in the Rockefeller Suit, Empire of Deception combines investigative journalism and captivating storytelling to examine one of the greatest con men of the twentieth century It was a time...
Under an outlaw moon : a novel
Kalteis, Dietrich
Paper Book
"Kalteis breathes life into these fearless, larger-than-life fugitives." -- Publishers Weekly, starred review Meet Depression-era newlyweds Bennie and Stella. He's reckless, she's naive. Longing for freedom from tough times, they rob a bank, setting off a series of events...
The unquiet dead
Khan, Ausma Zehanat.
Paper Book
"Khan is a refreshing original, andThe Unquiet Dead blazes what one hopes will be a new path guided by the author's keen understanding of the intersection of faith and core Muslim values, complex human nature and evil done by seemingly ordinary people. It is these qualities that make...
On Finit Toujours Par Payer
Lemieux, Jean
Paper Book
Hunting humans : the rise of the modern multiple murderer
Leyton, Elliott
Paper Book
A completely revised and expanded edition of a classic study from the authority on serial killers. Hunting Humans is Elliott Leyton’s classic study of six of the world’s most notorious serial killers. It established him as a leading authority on one of crime’s...
The devil's cinema : the untold story behind Mark Twitchell's kill room
Lillebuen, Steve.
Paper Book
Reality and fantasy collide with shocking results in this riveting account of the notorious case of Mark Twitchell - and the police investigation into one of the most bizarre murders in recent memory. In October 2008, Johnny Altinger, a 38-year-old Edmonton man, was on his way to a...
Conspiracy of Brothers: A True Story of Bikers, Murder and the Law
Lowe, Mick
Paper Book
To coincide with Random House Canada's publication of the groundbreaking book Unrepentant by Peter Edwards and biker Lorne Campbell, Vintage Canada updates and reissues the award-winning true crime classic that tells the complete and scandalous story in the most gut-wrenching chapter of...
La sainte paix
Marois, Andr
Paper Book
The spinster & the prophet : Florence Deeks, H.G. Wells, and the mystery of the purloined past
McKillop, A. B.
Paper Book
Winner of the UBC Medal for Biography and shortlisted for the Drainie-Taylor Biography Prize. The prolific novelist and social prophet H.G. Wells had a way with words, and usually he had his way with women. That is, until he encountered the feisty Toronto spinster Florence Deeks. In 1925 Miss Deeks...
Tempêtes
Michaud, Andrée A.
Paper Book
The fortunate brother
Morrissey, Donna
Paper Book
Winner of the 2017 Arthur Ellis Awards for Excellence in Canadian Crime Writing, Best Novel Winner of the 2017 Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award A powerful tale of a family reeling from the tragic loss of a son, while facing a mysterious murder on their doorstep-...
Midnight Cab
Nichol, James W.
Paper Book
Hailing from a small Northern Ontario town, Walker Devereaux, age nineteen, is in Toronto to discover the truth behind the harrowing circumstances of his early life. At age three, he was found, he was found abandoned on a country road, terrified and clinging to a wire fence. Walker finds a job...
High : confessions of an international drug smuggler
O'Dea, Brian.
Paper Book
In the early 1980s, Brian O’Dea was operating a $100 million a year, 120-man drug smuggling business, and had developed a terrifying cocaine addiction. Under increasing threat from the DEA in 1986 for importing seventy-five tons of marijuana into the United States, he quit the trade–and...
Stay where I can see you
Onstad, Katrina
Paper Book
A NOW Magazine Best Book of the Year In a family, is anything forgivable?  A penetrating new novel from the bestselling, Scotiabank Giller Prize-longlisted author of Everybody Has Everything The Kaplan family has just won 10 million dollars in the lottery. But...
En Plein Cur
Penny, Louise
Paper Book
Still Life: A Chief Inspector Gamache Mystery, Book 1
Penny, Louise
Paper Book
The CWA Dagger-winning first novel from New York Times bestseller Louise Penny 'Chief Superintendent Armand Gamache of the Quebec police isone of the most interesting detectives in crime fiction' The Times The discovery of a...
Bury your dead
Penny, Louise.
Paper Book
As Quebec City shivers in the grip of winter, its ancient stone walls cracking in the cold, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache plunges into the most unusual case of his celebrated career. A man has been brutally murdered in one of the city's oldest buildings - a library where the English citizens of...
Enterrez vos morts
Penny, Louise.
Paper Book
The Berry Pickers: A Novel
Peters, Amanda
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER WINNER 2023 BARNES & NOBLE DISCOVER PRIZE WINNER of the ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL for EXCELLENCE in FICTION WINNER Best First Novel, Crime Writers of Canada Award WINNER Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction FINALIST Amazon First Novel Award ...
Beneath Her Skin: A Kes Morris File
Porter, C. S.
Paper Book
A literary crime thriller from a mysterious new voice in Atlantic fiction She knew her process. Knew the itch in her nerves. The cold hardness creeping in. She was pulling on the killer's skin too fast. Something wild flickered across her heart. When she fully donned it,...
The Mystery Guest: A Maid Novel
Prose, Nita
Paper Book
INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICE WINNER OF THE CRIME WRITERS OF CANADA WHODUNIT AWARD FOR BEST TRADITIONAL MYSTERY BOOK 2 OF 2: MOLLY THE MAID "Prepare to be swept away again into the wonderfully...
Lost girls
Pyper, Andrew
Paper Book
Bartholomew Christian Crane is a criminal defence lawyer who wins. Thirty-three, silver-tongued and driven by a moral code that preaches, "There are no such things as lies, only misperceptions," Barth is ripe for the first murder trial of his career. Two fourteen-year old girls have gone missing...
Murder among the pines
Reynolds, John
Paper Book
Small-town police chief Maxine "Max" Benson is just settling into her new life when her ex appears on the scene. Apparently, he and his new young lover just happen to be visiting her area on holiday. Max left her marriage and the Toronto police to become chief in Port Ainslie, where she runs a three...
Before the poison
Robinson, Peter
Paper Book
From bestselling author Peter Robinson comes this atmospheric, suspenseful, and thrilling standalone novel Through the years of success in Hollywood composing film scores, Chris always promised his wife they'd return to the Yorkshire Dales one day. Now a widower, Chris feels he must not...
Sleeping in the ground
Robinson, Peter
Paper Book
DSI Alan Banks is determined to track down a gunman after a mass shooting in the thrilling new instalment of Peter Robinson's internationally bestselling series. Detective Superintendent Alan Banks is called in to lead the investigation after a shocking mass murder occurs during...
Stung: The Incredible Obsession of Brian Molony
Ross, Gary
Paper Book
The traitor's blade
Sands, Kevin
Paper Book
Christopher's homecoming takes a sinister turn when a murderous conspiracy is uncovered in this fifth novel of the award-winning Blackthorn Key series. Christopher, Tom, and Sally are back in London at last. Everyone is relieved at their return--the plague has ended, and the king...
Les Tricoteuses
Saur, Marie
Paper Book
Flots
Senécal, Patrick
Paper Book
One child at a time : the global fight to rescue children from online predators
Sher, Julian
Paper Book
From a renowned investigative reporter, the true story behind a horrifying Internet abuse epidemic - and the heroes who are out to stop it. The Internet has helped make child abuse terrifyingly common - it is the new face of crime in the 21st century. There are tens, probably hundreds of thousands...
Swann
Shields, Carol
Paper Book
Carol Shields's award-winning and critically acclaimed "literary mystery," first published in 1987. Swann is the story of four individuals who become entwined in the life of Mary Swann, a rural Canadian poet whose authentic and unique voice is discovered only hours before her...
Buffalo jump
Shrier, Howard.
Paper Book
Toronto investigator Jonah Geller is at a low point in his life. A careless mistake on his last case left him with a bullet in his arm, a busted relationship and a spot in his boss's doghouse. Then he comes home to find notorious contract killer Dante Ryan in his apartment -- not to kill him for...
High Chicago
Shrier, Howard.
Paper Book
After his successful debut, Buffalo Jump, Howard Shrier is back with High Chicago, the next in the Jonah Geller series. Toronto investigator Jonah Geller has opened his own agency, World Repairs, and he and his partner, Jenn Raudsepp, are immediately drawn into investigating the...
Cowboys and Indians : the shooting of J.J. Harper
Sinclair, Gordon
Paper Book
When J.J. Harper of the Island Lake Tribal Council was fatally shot on a wintry Winnipeg street in 1988, the city police department was quick to absolve the officer involved from all blame. Less than a day after the shooting, Police Chief Herb Stephen announced that Harper had died during a struggle...
A Canadian Tragedy: JoAnn and Colin Thatcher - a Story of Love and Hate
Thatcher, JoAnn
Paper Book
When this book was first published in 1985, it became an instant bestseller and the basis for the popular CBC-TV series "Love and Hate." It's easy to see why, when this true story reads like a crime thriller. Colin Thatcher was a golden boy, growing up the son of Saskatchewan's Premier Ross Thatcher...
Wild Hope : A Novel
Thomas, Joan.
Paper Book
A CBC Books and Winnipeg Free Press Best Book of the Year From the Governor General's Award-­winning author of Five Wives, a thrilling contemporary novel about how the past never lets us go   Isla and Jake are a couple drifting apart. She is a chef and co-owner of a farm-to...
The real Lolita : the kidnapping of Sally Horner and the novel that scandalized the world
Weinman, Sarah
Paper Book
A gripping true-crime investigation of the 1948 abduction of Sally Horner and how it inspired Vladimir Nabokov's classic novel Lolita. Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita is one of the most beloved and notorious novels of all time, selling over sixty million copies worldwide...
The maid's diary : a novel
White, Loreth Anne
Paper Book
A cunning, twisty, and unsettling novel of psychological suspense with a startling conclusion by Loreth Anne White, the Amazon Charts and Washington Post bestselling author of The Patient's Secret. Kit Darling is a maid with a snooping problem. She's the "invisible...
Never going back
Wiebe, Sam
Paper Book
Before she went to prison, Alison Kidd was the best thief in the city. But Ali has changed. All she wants now is to clean up her act and work in her brother Dean's restaurant. She never wants to go back inside. On the day she gets out, Dean is supposed to pick her up. But he never shows....
Strange things done
Wild, Elle
Paper Book
2017 Arthur Ellis Award, Best First Novel -- WinnerA dark and suspenseful noir thriller, set in the Yukon.As winter closes in and the roads snow over in Dawson City, Yukon, newly arrived journalist Jo Silver investigates the dubious suicide of a local politician and quickly discovers...

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