Nero Award

The Nero Award is given by the Nero Wolfe fan club, The Wolfe Pack. It is presented each year at the Black Orchid Banquet, which commemorates a dinner which took place in one of the Nero Wolfe novels. The Award is given to the best American mystery novel written in the year previous to the year the award is given. Publishing houses nominate up to three books which they published in the given year and send copies of the books to the club where they are read by a panel of judges. The award itself is a statuette of Nero Wolfe.

Below is a list of those books which have won the Nero.

• 2004 Fear Itself by Walter Mosley
• 2003 Winter and Night by S. J. Rozan
• 2002 The Deadhouse by Linda Fairstein
• 2001 Sugar House by Laura Lippman
• 2000 Coyote Revenge by Fred Harris
• 1999 The Bone Collector by Jeffery Deaver
• 1998 Sacred by Dennis Lehane
• 1997 The Poet by Michael Connelly
• 1996 A Monstrous Regiment of Women by Laurie R. King
• 1995 She Walks These Hills by Sharyn McCrumb
• 1994 Old Scores by Aaron Elkins
• 1993 Booked To Die by John Dunning
• 1992 A Scandal in Belgravia by Robert Barnard
• 1991 Coyote Waits by Tony Hillerman
• 1990 No award
I contacted the Wolfe Pack to ask why no awards were given in these years. They replied that the Wolfe Pack is a voluntary organization, and during these years the person responsible "sort of let things slip."
• 1989 No award
• 1988 No award
• 1987 The Corpse in Oozak’s Pond by Charlotte MacLeod
• 1986 Murder in E Minor by Robert Goldsborough
• 1985 Sleeping Dog by Dick Lochte
• 1984 Emily Dickinson is Dead by Jane Langton
• 1983 The Anodyne Necklace by Martha Grimes
• 1982 Past, Present and Murder by Hugh Pentecost
• 1981 Death in a Tenured Position by Amanda Cross
• 1980 Burn This by Helen McCloy
• 1979 The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling by Lawrence Block

Source

http://www.nerowolfe.org/htm/neroaward/award.html