Former Island County sheriff reads 65 true-crime books for Edgar Awards

Mike Hawley spent 10 months reading 65 true-crime books for a job most former sheriffs will never see: judging the Fact Crime category at the Edgar Awards. The former Island County sheriff ended up at the center of a national mystery-writing prize, helping pick winners at the April 29 ceremony in New York City.

Mystery Writers of America chose Hawley for a reason that made sense on both sides of his résumé. He brought a policing background and a writer’s perspective to the work. Hawley served as Island County sheriff for 11 years, and by 2017 he had spent about 30 years in the Island County Sheriff’s Office. His career ran through nearly every corner of local law enforcement, including work as a detective, jail commander and ICOM dispatcher. He later added fiction to that record, publishing police procedural novels Double Bluff and Silent Proof, with his first novel, The Double Bluff, dating to 2000.

That mix of badge and book mattered in a category built on real-world violence. Hawley’s reading list ran through books about serial killers, gangsters, legendary criminals and unsolved mysteries, the kind of material that can blur the line between careful reporting and lurid spectacle. A reader with a law-enforcement background is likely to notice the parts casual true-crime fans can miss: whether the investigation feels grounded, whether the storytelling respects the facts and whether a book earns its shock or just chases it.

The Edgar Awards themselves rely on that kind of judgment. The mystery group says its volunteer committees are made up of professional writers selected from different regions and demographics for fairness, and only the judges on each committee determine the nominees and winners. The awards honor the best in mystery fiction, nonfiction and television, and the Fact Crime category has recently included books on serial killers, the Murdaugh family murders, the Golden State Killer, the 1921 murder farm massacre and crypto-related fraud.

Hawley’s Island County story also reaches into one of the region’s darkest headlines. In 2016, while still serving in the county, he helped arrest Arcan Cetin after the Cascade Mall shooting investigation in Burlington. That memory hangs over a reading assignment built around real people and real harm, which may be why Hawley said the books left a mark on him.

For Whidbey readers, his Edgar role is an unusual crossover: a former sheriff from South Whidbey and Island County stepping into a national literary award, then coming back with a deeper view of how often America turns its fascination with crime into entertainment.