Which writer won the Edgar Award for Best Novel in 2020 for 'The Stranger Diaries'?

Elly Griffiths won the 2020 Edgar Award for Best Novel for The Stranger Diaries.

The award-winning novel is a Gothic-tinged mystery about Clare Cassidy, an English teacher and expert on the fictional writer R. M. Holland. When Clare’s friend is murdered, a line from Holland’s story “The Stranger” appears beside the body, linking the crime to the literature Clare teaches and studies.

The novel was first published in 2018 and combines police investigation, academic mystery, diaries, and a story-within-a-story structure. It was Griffiths’s first standalone novel and launched the series centered on Detective Sergeant Harbinder Kaur. The Edgar Awards are presented by the Mystery Writers of America and honor work published or produced in the preceding year, so the 2020 award recognized a novel originally published in 2018 but considered in the relevant awards cycle. Griffiths is also widely known for her Ruth Galloway mysteries.