Conor Kerr, Louise Penny and Tanya Talaga among finalists for Canadian crime writing awards
Other shortlisted writers include Susan Juby and John MacLachlan Gray
Conor Kerr, Louise Penny and Tanya Talaga are among the writers shortlisted for the 2025 Crime Writers of Canada Awards.
The annual awards, created by the Crime Writers of Canada in 1984, highlight the best in mystery, crime, suspense fiction and crime nonfiction by Canadian authors.
Kerr is a finalist for the $1,000 Miller-Martin Award for best crime novel for Prairie Edge.
In Prairie Edge, Isidore (Ezzy) Desjarlais and Grey Ginther live together in Grey's uncle's trailer, passing their time with cribbage and cheap beer. Grey is cynical of what she feels is a lazy and performative activist culture, while Ezzy is simply devoted to his distant cousin. So when Grey concocts a scheme to set a herd of bison loose in downtown Edmonton, Ezzy is along for the ride — one that has devastating, fatal consequences.
Prairie Edge was shortlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize and for the 2024 Atwood Gibson fiction prize.
- How an escaped Albertan bison herd inspired Conor Kerr's latest novel about resisting colonial structures
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Kerr is a Métis/Ukrainian writer who has lived in a number of prairie towns and cities, including Saskatoon. He now lives in Edmonton. A 2022 CBC Books writer to watch, his previous works include the novels Old Gods and Avenue of Champions, which was longlisted for the 2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize, and won the ReLit award the same year. Kerr currently teaches creative writing at the University of Alberta.
Louise Penny's The Grey Wolf is also nominated for the Miller-Martin Award for best crime novel.
In the 19th instalment of the Inspector Armand Gamache series, The Grey Wolf follows Chief Inspector Gamache and his allies as they pursue a deadly threat from Three Pines, Quebec, across the province and beyond.
What starts as one murder evolves into a desperate mission to track a creature that has the potential to devastate cities and towns including Three Pines. Dealing with betrayal, suspicion and loyalty, Gamache must rely on his instincts to unravel the mystery before it's too late.
Louise Penny is a former CBC broadcaster and journalist. She is now the author of the Inspector Armand Gamache mystery series and recipient of the 2020 Agatha Award for best contemporary novel for the 16th installment in the series, All the Devils are Here. She collaborated with former U.S. secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton to write the political thriller State of Terror. Penny was named to the Order of Canada in 2013.
Penny won the 2024 Silver Bullet Award presented by International Thriller Writers
Tanya Talaga's The Knowing is a finalist for the $300 Brass Knuckles Award for best nonfiction crime book. In The Knowing, Tanya Talaga retells her family story to explore Canada's history with an Indigenous lens. The Knowing starts with the life of Talaga's great-great grandmother Annie Carpenter and charts the violence she and her family experienced for decades at the hands of the Church and the government.
Talaga is a writer and journalist of Anishinaabe and Polish descent. She is a member of Fort William First Nation. Her book Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death and Hard Truths in a Northern City won the RBC Taylor Prize, the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing and the First Nation Communities Read: Young Adult/Adult Award. Her book All Our Relations: Finding the Path Forward was the basis for the 2018 CBC Massey Lectures.
Susan Juby and John MacLachlan Gray are other notable authors who have made the shortlists.
Susan Juby's A Meditation on Murder is nominated for the $500 Whodunit Award for best traditional mystery. A Meditation on Murder is the sequel to mystery novel Mindful of Murder. Butler and detective Helen Thorpe are tasked with helping influencer Cartier Hightower with a rebrand.
When a series of accidents kill Cartier's fellow influencers and they're followed by a murderer, Helen must do everything she can to keep Cartier on track and out of harm's way.
Susan Juby is a Nanaimo-based author whose book Mindful of Murder was nominated for the 2023 Leacock Medal for Humour. Her novel Republic of Dirt won the 2016 Leacock Medal. Her other books include Getting the Girl, Another Kind of Cowboy and the Alice MacLeod series.
John MacLachlan Gray's Mr. Good-Evening is a finalist for the $1000 Miller-Martin Award for best crime novel. Mr. Good-Evening is the third book in the Raincoast Noir mysteries. It joins journalist Ed McCurdy, inspector Calvin Hook and Miss. Dora Decker in 1920s Vancouver as they are entwined in the case of the Fatal Flapper, a murderer who just killed Decker's employer.
As the mystery starts to unravel, Decker must fight for her innocence, McCurdy fears for his life and Hook pieces together clues that cross continents.
John MacLachlan Gray is a Vancouver-based writer-composer-performer for stage, film, television, radio and print. He is an officer of the Order of Canada and the author of seven crime novels, including The White Angel and Vile Spirits.
The winners will be announced on May 30, 2025. The complete lists of nominees are below:
The finalists for the $1,000 Miller-Martin Award for best crime novel are:
- Wild Houses by Colin Barrett
- The Specimen by Jaima Fixsen
- Prairie Edge by Conor Kerr
- Mr. Good-Evening by John MacLachlan Gray
- The Grey Wolf by Louise Penny
The finalists for the $1,000 prize for best crime first novel are:
- The Burden of Truth by Suzan Denoncourt
- The Roaring Game Murders by Peter Holloway
- Altered Boy by Jim McDonald Marianne
- We Were the Bullfighters by K. Miller
- Twenty-Seven Minutes by Ashley Tate
The finalists for the $500 best crime novel set in Canada are:
- Fatal Harvest by Brenda Chapman
- The War Machine by Barry W. Levy
- As We Forgive Others by Shane Peacock
- Who By Fire by Greg Rhyno
- The Call by Kerry Wilkinson
The English finalists for the $500 Whodunit Award for best traditional mystery are:
- The Corpse with the Pearly Smile by Cathy Ace
- The Dead Shall Inherit by Raye Anderson
- A Meditation on Murder by Susan Juby
- Black Ice by Thomas King
- Concert Hall Killer by Jonathan Whitelaw
The finalist for the $200 best crime novella are:
- Chuck Berry is Missing by Marcelle Dubé
- Mrs. Claus and the Candy Corn Caper by Liz Ireland
- The Windmill Mystery by Pamela Jones
- A Rock by A.J. McCarthy
- Aim by Twist Phelan
The finalists for the prize for best crime short story are:
- Farmer Knudson by Catherine Astolfo
- Hatcheck Bingo by Therese Greenwood
- Houdini Act by Billie Livingston
- The Electrician by Linda Sanche
- The Longest Night of the Year by Melissa Yi
The finalists for the $250 prize for best juvenile or YA crime book are:
- Shock Wave by Sigmund Brouwer
- The Time Keeper by Meagan Mahoney
- Snowed by Twist Phelan
- The Dark Won't Wait by David A. Poulsen
- The Red Rock Killer by Melissa Yi
The finalists for the $300 Brass Knuckles Award for best nonfiction crime book are:
- Out of Darkness: Rumana Monzur's Journey through Betrayal, Tyranny and Abuse by Denise Chong
- Atrocity on the Atlantic: Attack on a Hospital Ship During the Great War by Nate Hendley
- The Rest of the [True Crime] Story by John L. Hill
- A Gentleman and a Thief: The Daring Jewel Heists of a Jazz Age Rogue by Dean Jobb
- The Knowing by Tanya Talaga
The finalists for the $500 award for the best unpublished crime novel manuscript are:
- The Man in The Black Hat by Robert Bowerman
- Govern Yourself Accordingly by Luke Devlin
- Dark Waters by Delee Fromm
- A Trail's Tears by Lorrie Potvin
- Predators in the Shadows by William Watt
