From lawman to literary judge: Hawley’s crime-filled reading streak

Published 1:30 am Friday, May 8, 2026

Over 10 months, Mike Hawley read 65 true-crime books that covered a wide range of topics, from serial killers to gangsters to legendary criminals to unsolved mysteries.

Hawley, the former Island County sheriff and lieutenant in the same department, took on the marathon reading effort last year after being named one of the judges of the Fact Crime category for the Edgar Awards, which are presented by the Mystery Writers of America. He was chosen for the honor, he explained, both because of his law-and-justice background and his writing chops, which include published police procedural novels “Double Bluff” and “Silent Proof.”

He admits the deep dive into these horrors left a mark on him.

“Most of them were filled with all sorts of grisly, highly detailed, graphic, horrific rapes and murders,” he told with an audience of the nation’s top writers and agents at the award ceremony. “I lost track of the body count after about 150. My therapist wishes to thank Mystery Writers of America and the writers for all the overtime she’s getting right now.”

As part of the process of selecting the best true-crime books of the year, Hawley and his fellow judges regularly received books in the mail throughout 2025. He read read every one of them, he said, even when he could tell a few pages in that a book wasn’t going to be a winner. He remembers hoping the next book would be short.

Some of the books, he said, described details of horrific crimes that were hard to stomach. Some were disturbingly sympathetic to killers. Others were simply badly written.

Fortunately, a few were absolute gems.

After reading all the books, Hawley and his fellow judges narrowed their tops picks to 10, later to five and finally to one. The winner, “Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers,” happened to focus on the Pacific Northwest during the 1970s and ’80s, when the region was known as the serial killer capital of the world — a time Hawley remembers well. The author, Caroline Fraser, grew up in Mercer Island in the shadow of Ted Bundy, the Green River Killer, the Hillside Strangler and their infamous ilk. Fraser delves deeply into the possible root causes of the phenomenon — from upbringing to environmental toxicity — while exploring her own formative years.

“She wove her own life growing up in the era into the story,” he said, adding that the work was both unique and powerful.

Hawley encourages people to also read the four top finalists, which all happen to have very long titles. They are “Out of the Woods: A Girl, a Killer, and a Lifelong Struggle to Find the Home” By Gregg Olsen; “They Poisoned the World: Life and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals” by Mariah Blake; “Blood and the Badge: The Mafia, Two Killer Cops and a Scandal that Shocked Nation” by Michael Cannell; and “The Story of a Murder: The Wives, the Mistress and Dr. Crippen,” by Hallie Rubenhold.

The contest organizers asked Hawley to present the prestigious award at the ceremony in New York City on April 29, which happened to mark the80th anniversary of the awards named after Edgar Allan Poe, a pioneer of the mystery genre.

Before to the ceremony, Hawley found himself in a conference room at the Marriott Marquis Times Square Hotel with some of the most famous writers in the world. It was simply an amazing experience, he said, although he joked he was a little worried about meeting some of the nominees who did not win.

Hawley admits that he was nervous presenting the award in front of a crowd of such high-profile people from the world of mystery writing. To make things worse, he was handed the wrong envelope and fumbled in front the audience before the problems was solved.

Fraser, a Pulitzer Prize winner, spoke briefly after accepting the award, calling her book “troubling and troublesome.”

Now, Hawley is taking a break from nonstop reading to finish up his own book, which is a crime novel that explores artificial intelligence.