Skip to main content

Edgar Awards Tonight

Tonight the Mystery Writers of America put on their big awards banquet, the Edgar Awards. Yesterday was a one day symposium with the highlight being Stephen King's talk.

The Edgars are Grand Dame awards for Crime Fiction. I have never attended an awards ceremony..... my lack of black tie couture would likely bar me from the proceedings... and the fact that I am not a published mystery writer would take care of the rest.

One of the great things about this community is that the fan based organizations pick up the slack for readers and fans who would like to mingle among the writers of this wonderous genre. B'Con, Left Coast Crime, Sluethfest, Magna Cum Murder, Malice Domestic, etc.

Anyway, you should acquaint yourself with the nominees.

Best Novel

I have read 2/3 rds of only one of the nominees. I should be able to finish up The Pale Blue Eye this week. I also own The Dead Hour by Denise Mina. Hard to handicap a race when you have not read any of the nominees. However, I am not going to let that stop me. I like Denise for this, but I think Nancy Pickard's The Virgin of Small Plains is going to take it.


Best First Novel

I have read Holmes on the Range.... and I also own Cornelia Read's A Field of Darkness. Again difficult to handicap. King of Lies by John Hart feels like a winner. Why? Don't ask impertinent questions.




Paperback Original

I have read none of the nominated so now this is officially the worst Edgar predictor preview ever. Just looking at the cover art... always the best predictor by the way... I have to go with Paul Levine's The Deep Blue Alibi.

There are are more awards, but rather than turn this post into a complete farce, I will again encourage you to check the list of nominees. There are awards for TV and Film, as well as category each for Young Adult and Juvenile fiction.

I wish of the nominees the best of luck, and all of the winners a hardy congratulations. Good luck tonight and have a great time!
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is it 'Aughts' or 'Oughts' - The Best of the Decade Pt. II

Better late than what quite possibly could have been never. I found the whole task of formulating and compiling this list to be not very enjoyable. Ugh. Not sure why this list proved laborious to produce. Holidays are not a good time for anything except opening gifts... like a 47" LG LCD television. Let's quit with the complaining and finish the list. If you started here you should go back to the beginning . 5 . DIRT - Sean Doolittle (2001) This was a real toss up for me. I could just as easily gone with the funny and brutal THE CLEAN UP. DIRT gets it by a nose because a lot of what I enjoy about Crime Fiction is discovery. THE CLEAN UP is a great book, one that you should read, but I knew it was going to be good going in. Mr. Doolittle is a terrific writer of human frailty. DIRT contains one of the great truisms of human behavior that we frantically keep secrets from our closest friends and family while just as equally hoping these secrets will be discovered and accepted. I ...
4 comments
Read more

The Very Best of Mr. Michael Connelly - Part 2

My August 31 post of The Hungry Detective ranked all the non-Bosch books. This list returns to take on the larger task of Mr. Heironimous Bosch. 9 Dragons made its appearance right before the Indy B'Con, and try as I might... ok I didn't try that hard... I didn't have time to read it for inclusion in these rankings. As a quick aside I don't want to undersell any of the books at the bottom of the list. Mr. Connelly doesn't know how to write a bad book, but in my case there have been occasions where I have not connected with his work. 13. THE NARROWS - 2004 It is because I love THE POET so much that this book is at the end of the list. When Mr. Connelly is at his best his works has the precision of a watchmaker. THE NARROWS just felt forced and not worthy of the intricacy of THE POET. 12. BLACK ICE - 1993 Second book. Third read. I thought the story was pretty flat. It has been well over a decade since I read this book, but the story of Mexican drug runner...
1 comment
Read more

Murder, Mayhem and the Return of Patrick and Angie

Back from Murder and Mayhem in Muskego IV . It was an ultimately very good weekend if not for a few hiccups. The original intention was to attend the mini-con with my sister who lives in Appleton. Alas, she caught one of the fifty or so colds she will have in the next three months. Everyone at The Hungry Detective office hopes she feels better, and we are already looking forward to attending the fifth installment with her next year. The second minor disappointment was the, I'm sure, entirely unavoidable absences of Duane Swierczynski and Harry Hunsicker . Bummer. (Ed Note. Duane's twitter feed notes a Christening... Cheers to that Mr. Swierczynski!) All of this is, of course, is weighted by the very wonderful news that Dennis Lehane , after taking the balance of a year off after finishing The Given Day, is writing a new book. And it is a Kenzie and Gennaro book. Woo-Hoo! In terms of my own education about Crime Fiction, Dennis is an important figure. I was reading a lot by the...
4 comments
Read more