Mystery Readers International announced the finalists for the 2022 Macavity Awards on July 25.

The Macavity Award is named for the “mystery cat” of T.S. Eliot (Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats). Each year the members of Mystery Readers International nominate and vote for their favorite mysteries in five categories.

BEST MYSTERY NOVEL

• Michael Connelly: The Dark Hours (Little, Brown and Co.)
• S.A. Cosby: Razorblade Tears (Flatiron Books)
• Val McDermid: 1979 (Atlantic Monthly)
• Alan Parks: Bobby March Will Live Forever (World Noir)
• Chris Whitaker: We Begin at the End (Henry Holt)
• Colson Whitehead: Harlem Shuffle (Doubleday)

BEST FIRST MYSTERY

• Alexandra Andrews: Who is Maude Dixon? (Little, Brown)
• Abigail Dean: Girl A (Viking)
• Erin Flanagan: Deer Season (University of Nebraska Press)
• Mia P. Manansala: Arsenic and Adobo (Berkley)
• Wanda M. Morris: All Her Little Secrets (William Morrow)

BEST MYSTERY SHORT STORY

• Tracy Clark: “Lucky Thirteen” (Midnight Hour, Crooked Lane Books)
• Richard Helms: “Sweeps Week” (EQMM, July/August 2021)
• Steve Hockensmith: “Curious Incidents” (EQMM, January/February 2021)
• R.T. Lawton: “The Road to Hana” (AHMM, May/June 2021)
• G.M. Malliet: “The White Star” (EQMM, July/August 2021)
• Gigi Pandian: “The Locked Room Library” (EQMM, July/August 2021)
• Dave Zeltserman: “Julius Katz and the Two Cousins” (EQMM, July/August 2021)

BEST NONFICTION/CRITICAL

• Mark Aldridge: Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Greatest Detective in the World (HarperCollins)
• Lee Child with Laurie R. King, editors: How to Write a Mystery: A Handbook from Mystery Writers of America (Scribner)
• Margalit Fox: The Confidence Men: How Two Prisoners of War Engineered the Most Remarkable Escape in History (Random House)
• Richard Greene: The Unquiet Englishman: A Life of Graham Greene (W.W. Norton)
• James McGrath Morris: Tony Hillerman: A Life (University of Oklahoma)
• John Tresch: The Reason for the Darkness of the Night: Edgar Allan Poe and the Forging of American Science (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
• Edward White: The Twelve Lives of Alfred Hitchcock: An Anatomy of the Master of Suspense (W.W. Norton)

SUE FEDER MEMORIAL AWARD FOR BEST HISTORICAL MYSTERY

• Rhys Bowen: The Venice Sketchbook (Lake Union)
• Naomi Hirahara: Clark and Division (Soho Crime)
• Susan Elia MacNeal: The Hollywood Spy (Bantam)
• Sujata Massey: The Bombay Prince (Soho Crime)
• Silvia Moreno-Garcia: Velvet was the Night (Del Rey)
• Lori Rader-Day: Death at Greenway (William Morrow)