Classic Mysteries

The Agatha Awards

From somewhere in Cyberspace, the winners of this year's Agatha Awards for mystery writing were announced this evening at a virtual convention of mystery writers and readers put together by the organizers of the Malice Domestic conference.

As Malice Domestic wasn't able to hold its annual convention in person during the Spring, the organizers put together three days of a virtual videoconference Malice convention called "More than Malice." The event, described by organizers as "a unique virtual crime fiction festival," featured some excellent and provocative presentations, interviews,  and panel discussions featuring some of the best mystery writers in the field. While the audience had to be content (for now) with remote learning, the presentations were lively, informative, and fun.

And then there were the Agathas:

 

Best Children's/YA Mystery

Holly Hernandez and the Death of Disco by Richard Narvaez 

Midnight at the Barclay Hotel by Fleur Bradley 
Premeditated Myrtle by Elizabeth C. Bunce 
Saltwater Secrets by Cindy Callaghan
From the Desk of Zoe Washington by Janae Marks

 

Best Non-Fiction

Phantom Lady: Hollywood Producer Joan Harrison, the Forgotten Woman Behind Hitchcock by Christina Lane

Sometimes You Have to Lie: The Life and Times of Louise Fitzhugh, Renegade Author of Harriet the Spy by Leslie Brody
American Sherlock: Murder, Forensics, and the Birth of American CSI by Kate Winkler Dawson 
Howdunit: A Masterclass in Crime Writing by Members of the Detection Club by Martin Edwards
H. R. F. Keating: A Life of Crime by Sheila Mitchell

 

Best Short Story

"Dear Emily Etiquette" by Barb Goffman (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Sep/Oct)

• "The Red Herrings at Killington Inn" by Shawn Reilly Simmons; Masthead: Best New England Crime Stories
• "The Boy Detective & The Summer of ‘74" by Art Taylor (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine Jan/Feb)
• "Elysian Fields" by Gabriel Valjan California Schemin’: The 2020 Bouchercon Anthology
• "The 25 Year Engagement" by James Ziskin In League with Sherlock Holmes: Stories Inspired by the Sherlock Holmes Canon

 

Best First Novel

A Murder at the Mena House by Erica Ruth Neubauer

•  A Spell for Trouble by Esme Addison 
• Winter Witness by Tina deBellegarde
• Derailed by Mary Keliikoa
• Murder Most Sweet by Laura Jensen Walker

 

Best Historical Novel

The Last Mrs. Summers by Rhys Bowen

• The Fate of a Flapper by Susanna Calkins
• A Lady's Guide to Mischief and Murder by Dianne Freeman
• Taken Too Soon by Edith Maxwell
• The Turning Tide by Catriona McPherson

 

Best Contemporary Novel

All the Devils are Here by Louise Penny

• Gift of the Magpie by Donna Andrews
• Murder in the Bayou Boneyard by Ellen Byron
• From Beer to Eternity by Sherry Harris
• The Lucky One by Lori Rader-Day

The award winners will be presented with their awards at the next full Malice Domestic conference, scheduled for next April.

If you're new to the award, Malice Domestic defines it this way: 

The Agatha Awards celebrate the TRADITIONAL MYSTERY, best typified by the works of AGATHA CHRISTIE. The genre is loosely defined as mysteries that contain no explicit sex, excessive gore, or gratuitous violence, and would not be classified as "hard-boiled."

 

And I must say that after the trials and tribulations of the past year-and-a-half...it was a glorious weekend for crime fiction.

 

"

We'll be Right Back...

Okay. Time for a break.

 

I've been missing in action here for a bit. I still have a lot -a LOT - of books to read and reread and review and post - more than 700 posted so far.

 

But i need a break.

 

So I'll ask your indulgence between now and the end of the year, and I won't publish anything new during the two-and-a-half week period. My next review, to be posted on January 4, 2021, will be of Ellery Queen's Halfway House.

 

And I'd remind you that just about all the reviews of those 700+ mysteries are available for your reading just as always. So enjoy, relax, find and fall in love with a great author - and check them out at  the Classic Mysteries backlist page!  - they're in alphabetical order by author and title! AND they're free.

 

See you in the new year - and may it be a far better one for you and yours than this apparently loutish and incoherent group of events perpetrated by 2020.

Meet the "Chicks on the Case"

I'm honored (and more than a little flattered) to be taking part in some conversations today (Friday, 3/8/19) on the Chicks on the Case blog. The chicks - nearly a dozen excellent authors who generally specialize in traditional mysteries, including cozies -  who mostly write cozies and other forms of the traditional, puzzle-plot mysteries invited me to stop by and share some thoughts with you about book blogging in general and mystery blogging in particular. I'll be stopping by there several times today, so click that link and stop by and say "Hello!'' I'd love to chat with you.

Building Repairs on Monday

Typepad, the blogging platform which powers the Classic Mysteries blog and website, has sent around a warning notice about routine maintenance for Typepad which - apparently - may take this site down for a while on Monday night (4/9), beginning at 10 PM Central Time, 11 PM Eastern Time. They don't provide any indication of how long said repairs, updates, etc., may take. I'm going on the fond assumption that everything will be back up and running again as it should on Tuesday morning. But if you can't access this page Monday night, there's nothing wrong with your computer. OK, maybe there IS something wrong with your computer, but it's not related to what Typepad is doing. I'll publish a new review as usual Monday morning, and we'll all see what, if anything, transpires later in the day. Thanks for your patience.

Holiday Shopping? Please Consider...

As we enter the Christmas/Chanukah/Kwanzaa/Solstice/Festivus/Whatever season of good will and good shopping, may I ask you to consider - where appropriate - shopping via Amazon.com and specifically from this site? If you go to Amazon by clicking through the box on the upper right hand corner of this blog, Amazon is kind enough to share a remarkably small (but, in the aggregate, significant) portion of your purchase price with me. Cost to you: nothing beyond what you want to spend anyway. Benefit to me: helps to pay the costs of maintaining a website, podcast and blog - not huge costs, but then the shared benefit isn't huge either.

Just to be clear, I would hope that your purchases of mysteries - classic mysteries in particular - are made through the small army of mystery book sellers, new and used or other brick-and-mortar booksellers. But for everything else - and Amazon sells just about everything else - I'd be most grateful if you could simply go to Amazon from that box that says Quick Link to Amazon. Thank you, and I wish you all the best of holiday seasons. 

Extra: "Blood Relations"

If you have read and enjoyed Ellery Queen's The Origin of Evil, which we discussed here and on the Classic Mysteries podcast this week, you might also enjoy a fascinating book which reveals how the two men who made up "Ellery Queen", Fred Dannay and Manfred B. Lee, worked together on this book in particular, as well as three other EQ books from the same general time period. To put it mildly, it wasn't easy for either of the collaborators. They did most of their work on this one while living a continent apart, communicating through long and elaborate letters. Joseph Goodrich has edited those letters. along with commentary and additional insights, into an absolutely fascinating book called Blood Relations: The Selected Letters of Ellery Queen, 1947-1950. Frankly, it's nearly as exciting as the Queen books themselves - an astonishing look into the process which created some of the brilliant books which came out of that collaboration. I wrote about them several years ago on this blog, and I recommend my own comments to you. If you enjoy some of the mid-career classics and wonder how these complex mysteries came to be, then read this book. I'm delighted to see that it's still in print in paper, as well as in electronic editions.

The Pause That Refreshes...

I am currently sailing across the pond - a journey that, unfortunately, means I won't be able to post my normal reviews for the next couple of weeks. I may be able to try when we're in port (next weekend, perhaps), but I will definitely be back by June 4, and I'll try to catch up by then with a few reviews of books read and/or reconsidered over the Atlantic crossing. Thanks for your patience, folks; we'll be back in June.

520 = Ten Years

The Classic Mysteries podcast has reached a milestone of sorts. This week's audio review of John Rhode's Body Unidentified is podcast 520 in the series. I have been doing a weekly podcast review every week, and this one is number 520 - the number of weeks in ten years.

So Happy Birthday to my podcast and my reviews. Go ahead and toast the podcast. But I promise that you readers are the ones who will get the gifts - I plan to keep presenting you with a new review each week of, as my introduction says, mysteries worth reading and re-reading. Thanks for being here for so long - and I hope you'll keep coming back.

Big and Even Biggers

With little more than a month remaining before the Left Coast Crime conference gets under way in Honolulu, the organizers have released what they hope will be the final schedule of events and panel discussions planned for the four-day event, March 16 through 19.

(Disclosure: My wife and I are currently serving on the Standing Committee that oversees these conferences.)

As one who writes mostly about classic crime, I'm particularly interested in this year's "Ghost of Honor," Earl Derr Biggers, the creator of Charlie Chan. I'm delighted to say that I'll be appearing on a Saturday afternoon panel with two other Charlie Chan enthusiasts - authors Rochelle Staab, who will moderate, and Hal Glatzer. We'll also have a Charlie Chan movie night, where we're planning to watch The Black Camel, starring Warner Oland, and Charlie Chan in Honolulu, starring Sidney Toler. 

I've also been invited to join a panel on Friday morning called "Reviewers & Critics: Are authors at their mercy?" It will be moderated by my old blogfriend Jen Forbus and feature the amazing Dru Ann Love, of Dru's Book Musings (and the winner this year of the prestigious Raven Award as part of the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Awards) and two authors (new to me), Maddie Margarita and Jane Stillwater.

 My wife and I are also co-hosting the opening event of the conference - a session called "Speed Dating for Authors." It gives authors a chance to present their books to more than a hundred potential new readers - a great ice-breaker.

My wife, being a retired school librarian, will also be moderating a panel Friday morning called "YA & Mid-Grade Novels: The young and the restless," with four authors of mysteries aimed at younger readers, Kelley Armstrong, Pamela Beason, Catherine Paul (aka Evelyn Cirincione), and Penny Warner.

So much to do, so many authors to meet, so many mystery readers to entertain and enthrall. And in Hawaii, no less. I do hope to see at least some of you there!

Congratulations to Dru Ann (and Other Award Winners!)

I'm delighted and excited to announce that the Mystery Writers of America have selected my friend and fellow-blogger Dru Ann to receive the 2017 Raven Award, presented for "outstanding achievement in the mystery field outside the realm of creative writing." Dru is the proprietor, organizer and driving force behind her blog called Dru's Book Musings. Her blog goes well beyond her reviews of many mysteries in many sub-genres; her Facebook page is also a spot you might want to visit regularly. You'll find a permanent link to her blog on the Mysterious Blogroll on the lower right side of this page. She's also a regular at most of the mystery conferences I attend, and you'll never get a more cheerful greeting from anyone - or find a harder worker. Congratulations!

The MWA (which certainly tries to live up to its slogan, "Crime Does Not Pay...Enough") has also announced that two of its prestigious Grand Master Awards will be presented in 2017 to authors Max Allan Collins and Ellen Hart for their "important contributions to this genre, as well as for a body of work that is both significant and of consistent high quality." The organization will also present its Ellery Queen Award, for "outstanding writing teams and outstanding people in the mystery-publishing industry," to Neil Nyren, EVP, Associate Publisher and Editor in Chief at Putnam. The list of authors he's published over the years includes an incredible number of the stars of the mystery, thriller and related non-fiction fields, from Ace Atkins to General Tony Zinni.

The winners will be presented their awards at the MWA's annual Edgar Awards banquet in New York next Spring. Congratulations and much respect to all.

 

UPDATED to correct the award to 2017 (not 1917). Typing while tired. Thanks to Gary Curtis for the catch. Grr.