2016 Edgar Award Nominations

On what would have been the 207^th anniversary of the birth of Edgar Allan Poe, the Edgar Allan Poe Award nominations have been announced by the MWA. The Edgar® Awards will be presented to the winners at the 70^th Gala Banquet, April 28, 2016 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, New York City.

The nominations for the 2016 Edgar Allan Poe Awards are as follows -  

BEST NOVEL
The Strangler Vine by M.J. Carter (Penguin Random House – G.P. Putnam’s Sons)
The Lady From Zagreb by Philip Kerr (Penguin Random House – G.P. Putnam’s Sons)
Life or Death by Michael Robotham (Hachette Book Group – Mulholland Books)
Let Me Die in His Footsteps by Lori Roy (Penguin Random House - Dutton)
Canary by Duane Swierczynski (Hachette Book Group – Mulholland Books)
Night Life by David C. Taylor (Forge Books)
 

BEST FIRST NOVEL BY AN AMERICAN AUTHOR
Past Crimes by Glen Erik Hamilton (HarperCollins Publishers – William Morrow)
Where All Light Tends to Go by David Joy (Penguin Random House – G.P. Putnam’s Sons)
Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll (Simon & Schuster)
The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Grove Atlantic – Grove Press)
Unbecoming by Rebecca Scherm (Penguin Random House - Viking

BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL
The Long and Faraway Gone by Lou Berney (HarperCollins Publishers – William Morrow)
The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter by Malcolm Mackay (Hachette Book Group – Mulholland Books
What She Knew by Gilly Macmillan (HarperCollins Publishers – William Morrow)
Woman with a Blue Pencil by Gordon McAlpine (Prometheus Books – Seventh Street Books)
Gun Street Girl by Adrian McKinty (Prometheus Books – Seventh Street Books)
The Daughter by Jane Shemilt (HarperCollins Publishers – William Morrow)

BEST FACT CRIME
Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot that Avenged the American Genocide by Eric Bogosian (Hachette Book Group – Little, Brown and Company)
Where The Bodies Were Buried: Whitey Bulger and the World That Made Him by T.J. English (HarperCollins Publishers – William Morrow)
Whipping Boy: The Forty-Year Search for My Twelve-Year-Old Bully by Allen Kurzweil (HarperCollins Publishers - Harper)
Forensics: What Bugs, Burns, Prints, DNA and More Tell Us About Crime by Val McDermid (Grove Atlantic – Grove Press)
American Pain: How a Young Felon and his Ring of Doctors Unleashed America's  Deadliest Drug Epidemic by John Temple (Rowman & Littlefield – Lyons Press)



BEST CRITICAL/BIOGRAPHICAL
The Golden Age of Murder by Martin Edwards (HarperCollins Publishers - HarperCollins)
The Outsider: My Life in Intrigue by Frederick Forsyth (Penguin Random House – G.P. Putnam’s Sons)
Meanwhile There Are Letters: The Correspondence of Eudora Welty and Ross Macdonald by Suzanne Marrs and Tom Nolan (Arcade Publishing)
Goldeneye: Where Bond Was Born: Ian Fleming's Jamaica by Matthew Parker (Pegasus Books)
The Lost Detective: Becoming Dashiell Hammett by Nathan Ward (Bloomsbury Publishing – Bloomsbury USA)

BEST SHORT STORY
“The Little Men” – Mysterious Bookshop by Megan Abbott (Mysterious Bookshop)
“On Borrowed Time” – Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine by Mat Coward (Dell Magazines)
“The Saturday Night Before Easter Sunday” – Providence Noir by Peter Farrelly (Akashic Books)
“Family Treasures” – Let Me Tell You  by Shirley Jackson (Random House)
“Obits” – Bazaar of Bad Dreams by Stephen King (Simon & Schuster - Scribner)
“Every Seven Years” – Mysterious Bookshop by Denise Mina (Mysterious Bookshop)

BEST JUVENILE
Catch You Later, Traitor by Avi (Algonquin Young Readers - Workman)
If You Find This by Matthew Baker (Hachette Book Group – Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
Curiosity House: The Shrunken Head by Lauren Oliver & H.C.Chester  (HarperCollins Publishers – HarperCollins Children’s Books)
Blackthorn Key by Kevin Sands  (Simon & Schuster - Aladdin)
Footer Davis Probably is Crazy by Susan Vaught (Simon & Schuster – Paula Wiseman Books)

BEST YOUNG ADULT
Endangered by Lamar Giles (HarperCollins Children’s Books - HarperTeen)
A Madness So Discreet by Mindy McGinnis (HarperCollins Publishers – Katherine Tegen Books)
The Sin Eater's Daughter by Melinda Salisbury (Scholastic – Scholastic Press)
The Walls Around Us by Nova Ren Suma (Algonquin Young Readers - Workman)
Ask the Dark by Henry Turner (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt – Clarion Books)

BEST TELEVISION EPISODE TELEPLAY
“Episode 7,” - Broadchurch, Teleplay by Chris Chibnall (BBC America)
“Gently with the Women” - George Gently, Teleplay by Peter Flannery (Acorn TV)
“Elise - The Final Mystery” - Foyle's War, Teleplay by Anthony Horowitz (Acorn TV)
 “Terra Incognita” - Person of Interest, Teleplay by Erik Mountain & Melissa Scrivner Love (CBS/Warner Brothers)
“The Beating of her Wings” - Ripper Street, Teleplay by Richard Warlow (BBC America)

ROBERT L. FISH MEMORIAL AWARD
“Chung Ling Soo’s Greatest Trick” – Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine by Russell W. Johnson (Dell Magazines)

The Grand Master
Walter Mosley

The Raven Award
Margaret Kinsman and Sisters in Crime

Ellery Queen Award
Janet A. Rudolph

THE SIMON & SCHUSTER - MARY HIGGINS CLARK AWARD
(which is given during Edgar Week but is not an MWA award)
A Woman Unknown by Frances Brody (Minotaur Books – A Thomas Dunne Book)
The Masque of a Murderer by Suzanne Calkins (Minotaur Books)
Night Night, Sleep Tight by Hallie Ephron (HarperCollins Publishers – William Morrow)
The Child Garden by Catriona McPherson (Llewellyn Worldwide – Midnight Ink)
Little Pretty Things by Lori Rader-Day (Prometheus Books – Seventh Street Books)

Congratulations to all the nominees.

The Ideal Big Brother

James Lovegrove is the New York Times best-selling author of The Age of Odin, the third novel in his critically-acclaimed Pantheon military SF series. He was short-listed for the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1998 for his novel Days and for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 2004 for his novel Untied Kingdom. He also reviews fiction for the Financial Times. He is the author of Sherlock Holmes: Gods of War and Sherlock Holmes: The Stuff of Nightmares for Titan Books.

Hercule Poirot is an annoying prig.  Miss Marple is an interfering old busybody.  Father Brown is a pious moralist.  Gideon Fell loves bamboozling others.  Lord Peter Wimsey is a patronising snob.  Inspector Morse is a boorish alcoholic.

Let’s face it, the great fictional detectives are a pretty unpleasant lot, aren’t they?  They’re the sort of people you’d hardly give time to in real life, let alone welcome into your house.  Even Agatha Christie herself tired of her most famous creation, the fastidious little Belgian, and grew to dislike him intensely, once dismissing Poirot as a “detestable, bombastic, tiresome, ego-centric little creep”.

Sherlock Holmes isn’t much better, to be honest.  He is arrogant.  He is overbearing.  He is condescending to those less clever than him, which is pretty much everyone.  He has the shortest of fuses when it comes to patience, and continually berates and mocks the only man he can call a friend, Dr Watson.

Why is he still such a popular literary figure, then?  Why does he inspire such loyalty and devotion in his fans, worldwide?  Why are they still making movies and TV shows about him, nearly a century and a half after Sir Arthur Conan Doyle first dreamed him up?  Why do authors, myself among them, write Holmes pastiches, and why do readers lap them up?  Why is he still the most loved fictional detective of them all?

My theory, for what it’s worth, is that Sherlock Holmes is the ideal big brother.  As we all know, he himself is a younger brother, seven years junior to Mycroft; but he fulfils the role of senior sibling both to Watson and to the reader.

Like a big brother, he is cool (in every sense).  He is that bit smarter.  He leads the way.  He’s the one who gets you into scrapes, and gets you out again.  He’s fit and strong and tall.  You can’t help but look up to him.  You know he’ll look after you.

All of the above mentioned detectives are phenomenally intuitive and intelligent.  They are all firmly on the side of the angels.

What distinguishes Holmes from his peers, however, is the fact that he doesn’t work alone.  He is firmly part of a two-man team.

Yes, Poirot has a sidekick, Captain Hastings.  But Hastings is very much a subordinate.  Poirot never even pretends to treat him as an equal.  In some of the adventures, Hastings doesn’t appear at all.

Miss Marple has a string of young friends and relatives, mostly nephews and nieces, all of whom help her along.  But mostly she does the thinking work by herself.

Father Brown, too, is a loner – although God is his co-pilot.  Gideon Fell has a spouse, which makes him unusual in this context.  But Mrs Fell is never given a forename and barely features in the stories.

As for Wimsey, he has Bunter, his valet.  Bunter helps out in every aspect of his lordship’s life, from preparing meals to getting him dressed, and his skills in the field of photography sometimes come into play.  But all said and done, he remains an inferior, a mere domestic.

Morse, meanwhile, has Sergeant Lewis, who is a capable policeman in his own right.  But Lewis invariably follows Morse’s lead on a case and endures endless belittling and castigation at the other man’s hands.  Rank divides them.

What sets Holmes apart, then, is that he has his “little brother”, Watson, whom he looks upon with exasperated benevolence.  The two share an almost familial bond.  The constant presence of Watson by Holmes’s side humanises him, and dilutes his less appealing qualities.  If someone as straightforward and decent as John Watson can see the good in Sherlock Holmes, then so, by extension, can we.

Sherlock Holmes: The Thinking Engine, Titan Books, £7.99

March 1895. Hilary Term at Oxford. In the newly built extension to the University Galleries, Professor Quantock has put the finishing touches to a wondrous computational device that, he claims, is capable of analytical thought to rival that of the cleverest men alive.  A challenge that Sherlock Holmes cannot ignore.  He and Watson travel to Oxford, where a battle of wits ensues between  the great detective and his mechanical counterpart as they compete to see which of them can be first to solve a series of crimes. As man and machine vie for supremacy, it becomes clear that the Thinking Engine has its own agenda and Holmes’ and Watson’s lives are on the line as a ghost from the past catches up with them.