Barry Best of the Bunch

This has been a big week for Oklahoma City author Lou Berney. His fourth book, November Road, not only won the 2019 Macavity Award for Best Novel, but has now also picked up the Barry Award for Best Novel. The full set of this year’s Barry recipients—announced on Thursday night at Bouchercon in Dallas, Texas—is below.

Best Novel: November Road, by Lou Berney (Morrow)

Also nominated: Dark Sacred Night, by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown); The Shadows We Hide, by Allen Eskens (Mulholland); Depth of Winter, by Craig Johnson (Viking); Leave No Trace, by Mindy Mejia (Atria); and A Necessary Evil, by Abir Mukherjee (Pegasus)

Best First Novel: The Chalk Man, by C.J. Tudor (Crown)

Also nominated: My Sister, the Serial Killer, by Oyinkan Braithwaite (Doubleday); Need to Know, by Karen Cleveland (Ballantine); Dodging and Burning, by John Copenhaver (Pegasus); Sweet Little Lies, by Caz Frear (Harper); and Bearskin, by James A. McLaughlin (Ecco)

Best Paperback Original: The Ruin, by Dervla McTiernan (Penguin)

Also nominated: A Sharp Solitude, by Christine Carbo (Atria);
Dead Pretty, by David Mark (Blue Rider Press); The Hollow of Fear, by Sherry Thomas (Berkley); and Resurrection Bay, by Emma Viskic (Pushkin Vertigo)

Best Thriller: Safe Houses, by Dan Fesperman (Knopf)

Also nominated: The Terminal List, by Jack Carr (Atria); London Rules, by Mick Herron (Soho); Forever and a Day, by Anthony Horowitz (Harper); Light It Up, by Nick Petrie (Putnam); and The King Tides, by James Swain (Thomas & Mercer)

Dan Sandstrom Award for Lifetime Achievement in Mystery
Fandom: Jeff Popple

The Barry Awards have been sponsored, since 1997, by Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine. Previous winners can be found here.

Congratulations to all of this year’s nominees!

(Hat tips to Mystery Fanfare and The Gumshoe Site.)