First, a confession: My absolute favorite protagonist is a tough and quirky private investigator who defies common sense in her foolhardy quest to solve the mystery and bring a measure of justice.
Not surprisingly, three of my four GOAT female sleuths are PIs: V. I. Warshawski, Kinsey Millhone and Tess Monoghan.
Why, then, did it take me so long to discover the Shamus Awards doled out annually by the Private Eye Writers of America? No idea, but I’m here to rectify that lapse, pronto.
Winners of the 2026 Shamus Awards, honoring private eye novels and short stories first published in the U.S. in 2025, will be announced at the 2026 Bouchercon mystery fan conference in October.
Here are the five finalists in each of the four categories. Per usual, I’m highlighting female protagonists, a surprisingly small number, given that female readers make up the majority of readers across mystery genres.
BEST PI HARDCOVER
- The Big Empty by Robert Crais
- Photograph by Brian Freeman – sole female protagonist in this category
- Hatchet Girls by Joe R. Lansdale
- Gray Dawn by Walter Mosley
- Mirage City by Lev AC Rosen
Photograph is by Brian Freeman, a veteran thriller author. Here’s the synopsis from his publisher:
Shannon Wells is a private investigator who helps women with nowhere else to go. Last year, a woman named Faith Selby came to Shannon with a strange request: Find out who I really am.
Shannon soon discovered that Faith was hiding a whole other life, but was unable to penetrate the web of mystery the woman had built around her past. Now Faith is dead. The only clue to who she was and why she was murdered is an old photograph of a little girl in the rain outside a Midwestern motel.
The hunt for answers takes Shannon from the hot beaches of Florida to a remote small town in Michigan as she peels away layer after layer of a shocking cold case that has rippled violently into the present. With each secret she uncovers, the danger around her grows—and forces Shannon to confront the demons hiding in her own past.
BEST FIRST P.I. NOVEL
- Chase Harlem by Elise Burke Brown
- Miles in Time by Lee Mathew Goldberg
- Where the Bones Lie by Nick Kolakowski
- Shadow of the Eternal Watcher by Josh Mendoza
- The Witch’s Orchard by Archer Sullivan
Chase Harlem is Elise Burke Brown’s debut PI novel but she’s had a number of short stories and poetry published as well as winning an a Killer Nashville Award for best unpublished manuscript. From her publisher:
In the colorful chaos of New Orleans, Chase Harlem has three essentials for happiness: her trusted red Converse, a reliable taser, and a good sense of humor to survive it all. All she wants is a simple life – morning jogs in cemeteries, jazz that soothes the soul, and enough quirky cases to pay the bills without summoning her FBI past.
But when a priest waltzes into her office with a divine mandate to crack a grisly double homicide involving an LSU football star and his actress girlfriend, Chase’s plans for peace get thrown out like last week’s gumbo, especially when the priest’s estranged son lands square in the NOPD’s crosshairs.
With her best friend, a “maybe” boyfriend, and a teenage neighbor who’s too curious for her own good, Chase dives headfirst into a case that reminds her why she took up drinking in the first place.
The Witch’s Orchard is by Archer Sullivan, a ninth-generation Appalachian who’s had a number of short stories published. Her debut synopsis:
Former Air Force special investigator Annie Gore joined the military right after high school to escape the fraught homelife of her childhood. Now, she’s getting by as a private investigator, and her latest case takes her to an Appalachian holler not unlike the one where she grew up.
Ten years ago, three little girls went missing from their tiny mountain town. While one was returned, the others were never seen again. After all this time without answers, the brother of one of the girls wants to hire an outsider, and he wants Annie. While she may not be from his town, she gets mountain towns. Mountain people. Driving back into the hills for a case this old—it might be a fool’s errand. But Annie needs to put money in the bank and she can’t turn down a case. Not even one that dredges up her own painful past.
In the shadow of the Blue Ridge, Annie begins to track down the truth, navigating a decade’s worth of secrets, folklore of witches and crows, and a whole town that prefers to forget. But while the case may have been forgotten, echoes of the past linger. And Annie’s arrival stirs someone into action.
BEST ORIGINAL PAPERBACK P.I. NOVEL
- The Hook and the Eye by Raymond Benson
- Sunday or the Highway by Cindy Fazzi
- City Lights by Claire M. Johnson
- Midnight Streets by Phil Lecomber
- Catch Me on a Blue Day by M.E. Proctor
City Lights is by Claire M. Johnson, whose first book, Beat Until Stiff, was nominated for the Agatha Award for Best First Novel in 2003. City Lights is the second in her Fog City series. The synopsis:
Word spreads that Nick Moore has left San Francisco for good, leaving Maggie Laurent struggling to keep the Moore Detective Agency afloat. Cops, the D.A., and the other private detectives in town all predict she’ll be out of business by Christmas, and she’s not sure they aren’t right. Then one day, her silent partner, Dickie Vance, invites her to lunch. He has a job for her. Find out what’s going on with Herman Peters, Dickie’s favorite cab driver and one of the “Nob Hill Irregulars” that feeds him gossip on the city’s elite.
During their weekly boxing lesson, Maggie learns that Herman’s fiancée, Vera Kowalski, has dumped him and tasks Maggie with finding out why. This simple request leads Maggie deep into the world of labor unrest, the IWW, the Sedition Act, and into the arms of one of Herman’s friends, a charming-as-hell Irishman. As the state gubernatorial election draws near, the city brass will pull out the stops to ensure that San Francisco remains peaceful for the next few months, even as the aftermath of the stock market crash begins to bite-and bite hard. Banks start foreclosing on homes, families sleep in their cars, men sleep on the sidewalks, soup lines begin to form, and the rumblings of union busting get louder.
When this powder keg of unrest explodes with the arrival of Pinkerton operatives, the chain reaction of murder and violence threatens the lives of union members, cops-and Maggie herself.
BEST P.I. SHORT STORY
- “The Roosevelt Affair” by Adam Meyer
- “The One Cry” by F.H. Batacan
- “Dr. Bones” by Libby Cudmore
- “Hours on the Phone” by Gregory Fallis
- “The Shadows” by Charles John Harper
Short stories can be harder to track down. While three of the five nominated stories appear in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, perhaps the most prestigious short-story publication, the two featuring female protagonists do not.
“The Roosevelt Affair,” by Adam Meyer, is in Crimecopia: The Not So Frail Detective Agency. Synopsis:
It’s Albany, New York, 1932. Rosie Perkins, private eye, gets a mysterious and not too friendly summons to the governor’s mansion. Seems the great man was indiscreet with another woman and he and his aides are desperate to learn who took the photographs and get them back. This is crucial because the governor has big plans for the coming year.
His name, of course, is Franklin Roosevelt.
Rosie meets with him, then with wife Eleanor who seems less concerned about her husband’s infidelity than his possibly damaged electability.
“The One Cry” by F.H. Batacan is in Batacan’s short-story collection, Accidents Happen. It features journalist Joanna Bonifacio, who first appeared in Batacan’s novel, Smaller and Smaller Circles. Synopsis:
F.H. Batacan’s first novel, Smaller and Smaller Circles, was an instant classic when it was published in 1999, a masterpiece of Filipino crime fiction that won the Philippine National Book Award. In this extraordinary and far-ranging story collection, she explores the darkest corners of human experience, depicting with pitch-black humor the systems of class and politics that her characters are trapped in and the moments of violence—accidental or otherwise—that can, at any moment, shatter their lives. In particular, Batacan shines an unsparing light on the epidemic of violence against women in the Philippines.
A note: As an aspiring mystery writer, I’ve come to appreciate the value and labor that goes into short stories. If you’re also seeking to publish as a mystery writer, I highly recommend checking out short story collections such as Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, and others.
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