Barry Awards 2020

About the Barry Awards

Barry Awards, voted by readers of Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine and presented at Bouchercon. Year is the year presented at Bouchercon; books were published the prior year. Primary source is Deadly Pleasures' own Barry Awards page, cited via the archive.org snapshot of 13 Sep 2026 because the live page is http only. Title casing comes from Stop You're Killing Me, since Deadly Pleasures prints titles in capitals; Wikipedia was a second cross-check. Kept: Best Novel, Best First Novel, Best Paperback Original, Best Thriller (Best Action Thriller in 2025), Best British Crime Novel (2006-2012), and Best Mystery/Crime Novel of the Decade (2010, 2020). Category names follow Deadly Pleasures' label for each year. Dropped: Best Short Story and the Don Sandstrom fan award. 2013 dropped British and Short Story; 2023 had no Paperback Original category. Where US and UK titles differ, the first-listed (US) title is used. Repairs: 2024 Best Thriller winner is The Secret Hours per Deadly Pleasures (SYKM marks Going Zero); 2020 Novel of the Decade nominee is The Cartel per Deadly Pleasures (SYKM and Wikipedia list The Border); obvious spelling slips on the Deadly Pleasures page (e.g. If the Dead Not Rise, Fever at the Bone, Who Is Maude Dixon?) use the published titles.

Organization: Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine. Years are award years, which can differ from publication years. Official site (opens in a new tab)