The 2026 First Crime Novel Competition

 

NEW YORK, NY 5/5/26 – Minotaur Books and the Mystery Writers of America introduced the winner of their First Crime Novel Competition at the 80th annual Edgar® Awards Banquet on Wednesday, April 29th, in New York City. The announcement was made by Kelley Ragland, vice president and publishing director at Minotaur Books.

The competition winner, Sharon Roth, is a Maryland attorney who also writes as Shannon Taft. Roth has written over twenty published short stories, including a Derringer Award-finalist and a story that appeared in Best American Mystery and Suspense. Her debut novel, Ghost of a Clue, is a cozy mystery featuring a protagonist named Lexi, who as a child witnessed the killing of her mother and sister. As a result of the attack, Lexi hears her sister's voice in her head. Now an adult, Lexi is trying to put the past behind her and buy a B&B in the Poconos. But when the true crime journalist intent on bringing all of Lexi's secrets into the open is murdered, Lexi is the prime suspect. Ghost of a Clue is tentatively scheduled for publication in fall of 2027.

Kelley Ragland added, “We fell in love with Lexi Wells and her voice, as well as the Poconos setting. Ghost of a Clue is a terrific mystery full of charm and substance, featuring a character with the unique ‘sidekick’ of her sister’s memory. We’re thrilled to be publishing Sharon’s debut.”

The First Crime Novel Competition, which had its first winner in 2008, provides a previously unpublished writer an opportunity to launch his or her career with the Minotaur Books imprint. The winner will receive a one-book, $10,000 contract.

Minotaur is currently accepting submissions for next year’s award.

For more information about both writing competitions Minotaur Books co-sponsors, Click Here

Many Thanks to Hector DeJean [Associate Director of Publicity] Minotaur Books

About Minotaur Books, St. Martin’s Publishing Group and Macmillan Publishers [the U.S. trade division of the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group].

Minotaur Books, an imprint of The St. Martin’s Publishing Group, launched in 1999, and publishes 75 hardcover crime fiction titles annually. Minotaur Books grew out of a fifty-year tradition of publishing quality crime fiction at St. Martin’s Press, and has published several award-winning and best-selling titles > https://us.macmillan.com/minotaurbooks/

The St. Martin’s Publishing Group is part of Macmillan Publishers, the U.S. trade division of the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, a large family-owned media company headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany. Its publishing companies include prominent imprints around the world that publish a broad range of award-winning books for children and adults in all categories and formats.

About Mystery Writers of America

Mystery Writers of America (MWA) is the premier organization for mystery writers, professionals allied to the crime writing field, aspiring crime writers, and those who are devoted to the genre. MWA is dedicated to promoting higher regard for crime writing and recognition and respect for those who write within the genre. MWA is a non-profit organization as described in Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. www.mysterywriters.org.

MWA 2025 Grand Masters, Raven, & Ellery Queen Award Recipients announced

    

Mystery Writers of America (MWA) announced the recipients of its special awards. 

2025 Grand Masters: Laura Lippman and John Sandford 

2025 Raven Award: Face in a Book Bookstore & Gifts

2025 Ellery Queen Award: Peter Wolverton of St. Martin’s Publishing Group 

They will accept their awards at the 79th Annual Edgar Awards Ceremony, which will be held May 1, 2025, at the Marriott Marquis Times Square in New York City.

MWA’s Grand Master Award represents the pinnacle of achievement in mystery writing and was established to acknowledge important contributions to this genre, as well as for a body of work that is both significant and of consistent high quality. 

The Raven Award recognises outstanding achievement in the mystery field outside the realm of creative writing. 

The Ellery Queen Award was established in 1983 to honour “outstanding writing teams and outstanding people in the mystery-publishing industry”

Congratulations to all the recipients.

MWA 2024 Grand Master and Ellery Queen Award Recipients

 Mystery Writers of America (MWA) announced the recipients of its special awards.  

Katherine Hall Page and R.L. Stine as the 2024 Grand Masters 

Michaela Hamilton of Kensington Publishing will receive the Ellery Queen Award. 

Awards will be given at the 78th Annual Edgar Awards Ceremony, which will be held May 1, 2024, at the Marriott Marquis Times Square in New York City.

“Mystery Writers of America is delighted to announce the recipients of our 2024 special awards. Our Grand Masters, Katherine Hall Page and R.L. Stine, have given so much to our genre—not just through their writing, but also through their generosity to other writers, their hard-working professionalism, and their boundless enthusiasm for the written word,” said MWA Executive Vice President Donna Andrews.

MWA’s Grand Master Award represents the pinnacle of achievement in mystery writing and was established to acknowledge important contributions to this genre, as well as for a body of work that is both significant and of consistent high quality. 

On being notified of the honor, Katherine Hall Page said, “I joined MWA in 1989, over a third of a century ago. In so doing I immediately felt a part of a supportive community and formed deep, long lasting friendships. And membership has also bestowed a link to MWA’s extraordinary past, beginning in 1945. The first Grand Master was Agatha Christie in 1955. I am stunned to be standing in her—and all the other’s—shoes. Thank you MWA for the thrill of a lifetime.”

Page wrote her first mystery, The Body in the Belfry, while living in France for year during her husband’s sabbatical from MIT. It was the 1991 Agatha Award winner for Best First Mystery Novel. The 15th in the series, The Body in the Snowdrift, won the 2006 Agatha Award for Best Mystery Novel. Page was also awarded the 2001 Agatha for Best Short Story for “The Would-Be Widower” in the Malice Domestic X collection and received three more Agatha nominations, including one for her series cookbook, Have Faith in Your Kitchen, in the nonfiction category, making her the first author to be nominated or win in four different Agatha categories. She was an Edgar nominee for her juvenile mystery, Christie & Company Down East.  The Body in the Lighthouse (2003) was one of three nominees for The Simon & Schuster Mary Higgins Clark Award. The Body in the Boudoir was a finalist in the 2013 Maine Literary Awards. Page received the 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award from Malice Domestic and Crime Master for her work from the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance. The Body in the Web is out now from William Morrow in hardcover, paperback, large print, E-book, and audio editions. 

R.L. Stine is one of the best-selling children’s authors in history. Goosebumps, which recently celebrated its 30th anniversary, has more than 400 million books in print in 32 languages. An all-new New York Times bestselling Goosebumps series, House of Shivers, debuted in September 2023, with two more books to be published in 2024.

The Goosebumps series made Stine a worldwide publishing celebrity (and Jeopardy answer). His other popular children’s book series include Fear Street, (recently revived as a feature film trilogy), The Garbage Pail Kids, Mostly Ghostly, The Nightmare Room, and Rotten School. Other titles include It's The First Day of School Forever, A Midsummer Night's Scream, Young Scrooge, Stinetinglers, and three picture books, with Marc Brown—The Little Shop of Monsters, Mary McScary, and Why Did the Monster Cross the Road (2023).

On learning of the honor, Stine said, “Tony Hillerman. Elmore Leonard. Mickey Spillane. Ruth Rendell: Those were the MWA Grand Masters when I first started attending the Edgar Awards over 30 years ago. If you had told me then I’d be on that list someday, would I have believed you? I don’t think so. I’m surprised and truly honored.” 

The Ellery Queen Award was established in 1983 to honor “outstanding writing teams and outstanding people in the mystery-publishing industry.” This year the Board chose to honor Michaela Hamilton, executive editor at Kensington and editor in chief of Citadel, which she joined after a 25-year career in publishing. Her importance in the discovery of new writers and emphasis on publishing traditional mysteries, thrillers, and suspense novels cannot be underestimated. 

On learning she would receive the Ellery Queen Award, Hamilton said, “As a lifelong mystery fan, as well as a longtime supporter of MWA, I couldn’t be more tickled by this amazing recognition. When I think about previous recipients of the Ellery Queen Award, I feel quite humble. I’m just a bookworm who was lucky enough to spend the last 50-plus years working with authors I adore on books I love. Long live suspense fiction!” 

Hamilton acquires and edits commercial fiction and nonfiction including thrillers, true crime, and cozy mysteries. She has worked with authors including John Gilstrap, Gregg Olsen, M. William Phelps, Caitlin Rother, Barbara Allan, John Lutz, Lynn Cahoon, Nancy Coco, Rick Reed, and Leo J. Maloney. Her lifelong love of suspense fiction began in childhood, when she skipped the Nancy Drew mystery series in favor of Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer novels, which she read clandestinely after finding her father’s copies in the bathroom. She likes her thrillers violent, her cozies amusing, and her beer well chilled. 

Previous Ellery Queen Award winners include The Strand Magazine, Juliet Grames, Reagan Arthur, Kelley Ragland, Linda Landrigan, Neil Nyren, Charles Ardai, and Janet Hutchings. 

“Michaela Hamilton has worked with dozens of new and seasoned writers over the decades,” Andrews said, “not only making Kensington a powerhouse in the mystery and thriller field, but also giving genre lovers hundreds of books—and thousands of hours of reading pleasure.”

MWA Announces the 2021 Grand Masters

Today Mystery Writers of America (MWA) announces the recipients of its special awards. The board chose Charlaine Harris and Jeffery Deaver as the 2021 Grand Masters, and the 2020 Raven Award recipient is Malice Domestic. They will receive their awards at the 75th Annual Edgar Awards Ceremony, which will be held April 29, 2021. 

"Mystery Writers of America is thrilled to honour Jeffery Deaver and Charlaine Harris as MWA's 2021 Grand Masters," said MWA President Meg Gardiner. "Over the course of decades, Deaver and Harris have gripped tens of millions of readers while broadening the reach of the genre with transformative books—notably, Deaver's Lincoln Rhyme series, and Harris's Sookie Stackhouse novels—and while generously encouraging and supporting fellow writers and the reading public. We're delighted to recognize their achievements."

MWA's Grand Master Award represents the pinnacle of achievement in mystery writing and was established to acknowledge important contributions to this genre, as well as for a body of work that is both significant and of consistent high quality. Jeffery Deaver has published more than forty novels since the early 1990's, including two series besides the Lincoln Rhyme novels, numerous stand-alone and short story collections.  On being notified of the honor, Deaver said, "When I was a (relatively) young writer new to this business of penning novels, many years ago, the first professional organization I joined was Mystery Writers of America. Signing on felt to me like coming home—being welcomed into a community of fellow authors willing to share their expertise and offer support in a profession that was largely, well, a 'mystery' to me. Besides, how could I not join? MWA was the real deal; for proof, one had only to look at those in the ranks of the Grand Masters: Agatha Christie, Rex Stout, Ellery Queen, James M. Cain . . . and so many others whose works populated my bookshelves. Yet it never once occurred to me, in all my years as a member and my two terms as president, that I might be invited into those very ranks. I wish to express by boundless gratitude to MWA for this honor, which stands, without question, as the high point of my career."

Charlaine Harris has published 13 novels in the Southern Vampire series (adapted into the popular HBO series True Blood), which proved so popular that at one point her novels took half of the top ten slots on New York Times' bestseller list. Her other series include the Aurora Teagarden novels, the Lily Bard (Shakespeare) books, the Midnight Texas trilogy (adapted for television) and numerous others, as well as several standalones. Harris said, "This is like winning the lottery and the Pulitzer Prize in one day. I am so honored and thrilled to join the ranks of revered writers who are Grand Masters. I thank the MWA Board from the bottom of my heart."

Previous Grand Masters include Barbara Neely, Martin Cruz Smith, William Link, Peter Lovesey, Walter Mosley, Lois Duncan, James Ellroy, Robert Crais, Ken Follett, Martha Grimes, Sara Paretsky, James Lee Burke, Sue Grafton, Stephen King, Mary Higgins Clark, Lawrence Block, P.D. James, Ellery Queen, Daphne du Maurier, Alfred Hitchcock, Graham Greene, and Agatha Christie, to name a few.

The Raven Award recognizes outstanding achievement in the mystery field outside the realm of creative writing. For 2021, Mystery Writers of America selected the Malice Domestic mystery conference, founded in 1989 and held every spring since. Malice Domestic focuses primarily on traditional mysteries, their authors and fans, and also presents the Agatha Awards, with six categories. "Who says Friday the 13th is an unlucky day?" said Verena Rose, currently chair of the Malice Domestic Board of Directors. "Certainly, not me. This morning I received a call from Greg Herren, Executive Vice President of Mystery Writers of America, letting me know that Malice Domestic has been selected to receive the Raven Award in 2021. What an absolutely, amazing surprise and as the Chair, I can't wait to give my fellow Board members the news. This is an honor we are beyond thrilled to receive." Previous Raven winners include Left Coast Crime, Marilyn Stasio, Kristopher Zgorski, Dru Ann Love, Raven Bookstore in Lawrence, Kansas, Sisters in Crime, Margaret Kinsman, Kathryn Kennison, Aunt Agatha's Bookstore in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Oline Cogdill, The Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego, Centuries & Sleuths Bookstore in Chicago, Once Upon a Crime Bookstore in Minneapolis, Mystery Lovers Bookstore in Oakmont, PA, Kate's Mystery Books in Cambridge, MA, and The Poe House in Baltimore, MD.

The Edgar Awards, or "Edgars," as they are commonly known, are named after MWA's patron saint Edgar Allan Poe and are presented to authors of distinguished work in various categories. MWA is the premier organization for mystery writers, professionals allied to the crime-writing field, aspiring crime writers, and those who are devoted to the genre. The organization encompasses some 3,000 members including authors of fiction and non-fiction books, screen and television writers, as well as publishers, editors, and literary agents. For more information on Mystery Writers of America, please visit the website: www.mysterywriters.org

                                                                                                                                                                            

MWA Announces the 2017 Edgar Nominations

News from Margery Flax of Mystery Writers of America [MWA]

January 19, 2017, New York, NY – Mystery Writers of America is proud to announce, as we celebrate the 208th anniversary of the birth of Edgar Allan Poe, the Nominees for the 2017 Edgar Allan Poe Awards, honoring the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction and television published or produced in 2016. The Edgar® Awards will be presented to the winners at our 71st Gala Banquet, April 27, 2017 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, New York City.

Congratulations from Shots Magazine to all the Nominees; and thanks for the hard work that the MWA judges put into the Edgar Awards, you are all winners

BEST NOVEL

The Ex by Alafair Burke (HarperCollins Publishers – Harper)

Where It Hurts by Reed Farrel Coleman (Penguin Random House – G.P. Putnam’s Sons)

Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye (Penguin Random House – G.P. Putnam’s Sons)

What Remains of Me by Alison Gaylin (HarperCollins Publishers – William Morrow)

Before the Fall by Noah Hawley (Hachette Book Group – Grand Central Publishing)

BEST FIRST NOVEL BY AN AMERICAN AUTHOR

Under the Harrow by Flynn Berry (Penguin Random House – Penguin Books)

Dodgers by Bill Beverly (Crown Publishing Group)

IQ by Joe Ide (Little, Brown & Company – Mulholland Books)

The Drifter by Nicholas Petrie (Penguin Random House – G.P. Putnam’s Sons)

Dancing with the Tiger by Lili Wright (Penguin Random House – Marian Wood Book/Putnam)

The Lost Girls by Heather Young (HarperCollins Publishers – William Morrow)

BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL

Shot in Detroit by Patricia Abbott (Polis Books)

Come Twilight by Tyler Dilts (Amazon Publishing – Thomas & Mercer)

The 7th Canon by Robert Dugoni (Amazon Publishing – Thomas & Mercer)

Rain Dogs by Adrian McKinty (Prometheus Books – Seventh Street Books)

A Brilliant Death by Robin Yocum (Prometheus Books – Seventh Street Books)

Heart of Stone by James W. Ziskin (Prometheus Books – Seventh Street Books)

BEST FACT CRIME

Morgue: A Life in Death by Dr. Vincent DiMaio & Ron Franscell (St. Martin’s Press)

The Lynching: The Epic Courtroom Battle that Brought Down the Klan by Laurence Leamer (HarperCollins Publishers – William Morrow)

Pretty Jane and the Viper of Kidbrooke Lane: A True Story of Victorian Law and Disorder: The Unsolved Murder That Shocked Victorian England by Paul Thomas Murphy (Pegasus Books)

While the City Slept: A Love Lost to Violence and a Young Man’s Descent into Madness by Eli Sanders (Penguin Random House – Viking Books)

The Wicked Boy: The Mystery of a Victorian Child Murderer by Kate Summerscale (Penguin Random House – Penguin Press)

BEST CRITICAL/BIOGRAPHICAL

Alfred Hitchcock: A Brief Life by Peter Ackroyd (Penguin Random House – Nan A. Talese)

Encyclopedia of Nordic Crime: Works and Authors of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden Since 1967

by Mitzi M. Brunsdale (McFarland & Company)

Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin (W.W. Norton – Liveright)

Something in the Blood: The Untold Story of Bram Stoker, the Man Who Wrote Dracula by David J. Skal (W.W. Norton – Liveright)

BEST SHORT STORY

“Oxford Girl” – Mississippi Noir by Megan Abbott (Akashic Books)

“A Paler Shade of Death” – St. Louis Noir by Laura Benedict (Akashic Books)

“Autumn at the Automat” – In Sunlight or in Shadow by Lawrence Block (Pegasus Books)

“The Music Room” – In Sunlight or in Shadow  by Stephen King (Pegasus Books)

“The Crawl Space” – Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine by Joyce Carol Oates (Dell Magazines)

BEST JUVENILE

Summerlost by Ally Condie (Penguin Young Readers Group – Dutton BFYR)

OCDaniel by Wesley King (Simon & Schuster – Paula Wiseman Books)

The Bad Kid by Sarah Lariviere by  (Simon & Schuster – Simon & Schuster BFYR)

Some Kind of Happiness by Claire Legrand  (Simon & Schuster – Simon & Schuster BFYR)

Framed! by James Ponti (Simon & Schuster – Aladdin)

Things Too Huge to Fix by Saying Sorry by Susan Vaught (Simon & Schuster – Paula Wiseman Books)

BEST YOUNG ADULT

Three Truths and a Lie by Brent Hartinger (Simon & Schuster – Simon Pulse)

The Girl I Used to Be by April Henry (Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group – Henry Holt BFYR)

Girl in the Blue Coat by Monica Hesse (Hachette Book Group – Little, Brown BFYR)

My Sister Rosa by Justine Larbalestier (Soho Press – Soho Teen)

Thieving Weasels by Billy Taylor (Penguin Random House – Penguin Young Readers – Dial Books)

BEST TELEVISION EPISODE TELEPLAY

“Episode 1 – From the Ashes of Tragedy” – The People vs. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story, Teleplay by Scott Alexander & Larry Karaszewski (FX Network)

“The Abominable Bride” – Sherlock, Teleplay by Mark Gatiss & Steven Moffat (Hartswood Films/Masterpiece)

“Episode 1 – Dark Road” – Vera, Teleplay by Martha Hillier (Acorn TV)

“A Blade of Grass” – Penny Dreadful, Teleplay by John Logan (Showtime)

“Return 0” – Person of Interest, Teleplay by Jonathan Nolan & Denise The (CBS/Warner Brothers)

“The Bicameral Mind” – Westworld, Teleplay by Jonathan Nolan & Lisa Joy (HBO/Warner Bros. Television)

ROBERT L. FISH MEMORIAL AWARD

“The Truth of the Moment” – Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine by E. Gabriel Flores (Dell Magazines)

GRAND MASTER

Max Allan Collins

Ellen Hart

RAVEN AWARD

Dru Ann Love

ELLERY QUEEN AWARD

Neil Nyren

THE SIMON & SCHUSTER – MARY HIGGINS CLARK AWARD

The Other Sister by Dianne Dixon (Sourcebooks – Sourcebooks Landmark)

Quiet Neighbors by Catriona McPherson (Llewellyn Worldwide – Midnight Ink)

Say No More by Hank Phillippi Ryan (Tor/Forge Books – Forge Books)

Blue Moon by Wendy Corsi Staub (HarperCollins Publishers – William Morrow)

The Shattered Tree by Charles Todd (HarperCollins Publishers – William Morrow)

The EDGAR (and logo) are Registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office by the Mystery Writers of America, Inc.

More Information about the Mystery Writers of America is available from >

http://mysterywriters.org/

Photo A Karim, Edgar A Poe [lookalike] and R J Ellory taken at Westminster Hall, Baltimore [the last resting place of Edgar A Poe], during Bouchercon Baltimore 2008

MWA Announces 2016 Grand Master, Raven & Ellery Queen Award Recipients

November 23, 2015 – New York, NY – Walter Mosley has been chosen as the 2016 Grand Master by Mystery Writers of America (MWA). MWA’s Grand Master Award represents the pinnacle of achievement in mystery writing and was established to acknowledge important contributions to this genre, as well as for a body of work that is both significant and of consistent high quality. Mr. Mosley will receive his award at the 70th Annual Edgar Awards Banquet, which will be held at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City on Thursday, April 28, 2016.

When told of being named a Grand Master, Mosley said, “Receiving the Grand Master Award is the apex of my career as a crime writer; as a writer. It is, joyfully, one of the seminal events of my life.”

Walter Mosley is one of the most acclaimed and prolific crime writers of our time. He started writing when he was thirty-four, and since then has published over forty novels. He is also the most successful and well-known crime writer of color.

He is perhaps best known for his Easy Rawlins series, beginning with Devil in a Blue Dress, which was made into a film starring Denzel Washington. He has also written three other series, featuring Fearless Jones, Leonid McGill, and Socrates Fortlaw. In addition, he has written science fiction, non-fiction, social criticism, young adult fiction, plays, graphic novels, and numerous short stories.

Previous Grand Masters include Lois Duncan, James Ellroy, Robert Crais, Carolyn Hart, Ken Follett, Margaret Maron, Martha Grimes, Sara Paretsky, James Lee Burke, Sue Grafton, Bill Pronzini, Stephen King, Marcia Muller, Dick Francis, Mary Higgins Clark, Lawrence Block, P.D. James, Ellery Queen, Daphne du Maurier, Alfred Hitchcock, Graham Greene, and Agatha Christie.

The Raven Award recognizes outstanding achievement in the mystery field outside the realm of creative writing. Two Raven Awards will be awarded in 2015: one to Margaret Kinsman and the other to Sisters in Crime.

As a mentor, teacher, scholar, and editor, Margaret Kinsman has supported and promoted both the mystery genre as a whole and many individual writers. As senior lecturer in popular culture at Southbank University in London from 1991 – 2012, she played a leading role in making crime fiction an important and legitimate field of study. She has worked hard both to expand readership of our genre in the general public and to expand understanding of the genre as a powerful form of social commentary.

From 2004 to 2011, Kinsman served as Executive Editor of Clues: A Journal of Detection, the only American scholarly journal dedicated to the mystery. She continues to serve Clues as a consulting editor. She is an international authority on Margery Allingham and has published extensively on other American crime writers. She is a U.S. citizen who divides her time between London and Iowa City, Iowa, where she is conducting research in the Nancy Drew archives at the University of Iowa.

When told that she would receive the Raven Award, Kinsman said “I am thrilled to know the MWA is giving me the Raven award this year – such recognition is indeed an unexpected, and very exciting, honour!”

At the 1986 Bouchercon in Baltimore, Sara Paretsky convened an initial meeting of woman writers who were concerned about both the rising tide of graphic violence against women in mysteries and the lack of equity in review, award nominations, advances, and other measures of a writer’s success. The following year during the Edgars Week, a group of woman writers met in Sandra Scoppettone’s SoHo loft for breakfast and formed Sisters in Crime. Initial steering committee members were a who’s who of woman mystery writers, including Charlotte MacLeod, Kate Mattes, Betty Francis, Dorothy Salisbury Davis, Sara Paretsky, Nancy Pickard and Susan Dunlap.

The mission of Sisters in Crime is to promote the ongoing advancement, recognition and professional development of women crime writers.  Membership is open to all persons worldwide who have a special interest in mystery writing and in furthering the purposes of SinC. The organization has approximately 3,600 members in some fifty regional chapters in the United States and Canada.

When informed that the organization would receive the Raven Award, current SinC President Leslie Budewitz said, “Sisters in Crime is thrilled with this award, honoring nearly thirty years of work in the trenches, promoting the advancement, recognition, and professional development of women crime writers. That it comes from one of our partners in crime and advocacy makes the honor doubly sweet.”

Previous Raven winners include Kathryn Kennison, Jon and Ruth Jordan, Aunt Agatha’s Bookstore in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Oline Cogdill, Molly Weston, The Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego, Centuries & Sleuths Bookstore in Chicago, Once Upon a Crime Bookstore in Minneapolis, Mystery Lovers Bookstore in Oakmont, PA, Kate’s Mystery Books in Cambridge, MA, and The Poe House in Baltimore, MD.

The Ellery Queen Award was established in 1983 to honor “outstanding writing teams and outstanding people in the mystery-publishing industry”. This year the Board chose to honor Janet A. Rudolph.

Rudolph is the director of the fan-based Mystery Readers International, editor of the Mystery Readers Journal, a teacher of mystery fiction, and has been a columnist for most of the mystery periodicals. A native of Philadelphia, she now lives in Berkeley California, where she completed a master’s degree in art history, a credential in secondary education, and a Ph.D. in religion and literature specializing in mystery fiction. She has received two Fulbright grants—one to India and another to Brazil.

Mystery Readers Journal, her brainchild, is the official publication of Mystery Readers International. Originally started as a newsletter to update the local mystery community on fun events, it is now one of the most important periodicals in the field. A quarterly, each issue focuses on a specific theme with major articles, author essays, special columns and a calendar of events. Members of MRI award the coveted Macavity for excellence in mystery writing.

On learning she would receive the Ellery Queen Award, Rudolph said,” I am astonished, delighted, and humbled to be included in the company of such illustrious past recipients of the Ellery Queen Award. I feel so privileged that over the past 31 years of publishing the Mystery Readers Journal, I was able to create and curate a forum in which over 1500 mystery authors contributed with essays offering different angles on shared themes in their writing, thus extending and increasing mystery reader awareness and enjoyment.”

Previous Ellery Queen Award winners include Charles Ardai, Joe Meyers, Barbara Peters and Robert Rosenwald, Brian Skupin and Kate Stine, Carolyn Marino, Ed Gorman, Janet Hutchings, Cathleen Jordan, Douglas G. Greene, Susanne Kirk, Sara Ann Freed, Hiroshi Hayakawa, Jacques Barzun, Martin Greenburg, Otto Penzler, Richard Levinson, William Link, Ruth Cavin, and Emma Lathen.

The Edgar Awards, or “Edgars,” as they are commonly known, are named after MWA’s patron saint Edgar Allan Poe and are presented to authors of distinguished work in various categories. MWA is the premier organization for mystery writers, professionals allied to the crime-writing field, aspiring crime writers, and those who are devoted to the genre. The organization encompasses some 3,000 members including authors of fiction and non-fiction books, screen and television writers, as well as publishers, editors, and literary agents. For more information on Mystery Writers of America, please visit the website: www.mysterywriters.org.

# # #

The EDGAR (and logo) are Registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office by the Mystery Writers of America, Inc.

P D James (1920-2014) – A personal reminiscence by Mike Ripley and Obituary

Within two minutes of hearing the news on the BBC’s 2 p.m. bulletin yesterday, I was telephoned by the East Anglian Daily Times for a reaction to the death of Phyllis James.  This interest by a regional newspaper was no random act of news-gathering as Phyllis is revered in East Anglia partly as a former resident of Southwold and partly because several of her famous crime novels had atmospheric Suffolk settings, not the least of them being the coastal village of ‘Monksmere’ in her 1967 Unnatural Causes which begins with the famously gruesome opening: The corpse without hands lay in the bottom of a small sailing dinghy drifting just within sight of the Suffolk coast.

As she often said when asked the perennial question ‘How do you write your books?’ it was, for her, a question of place.  Only when she had fixed on a setting – and not before – did plot, characters, suspense, and solution begin to coalesce.  This was often, though not always, a distinctive physical, geographical place like the East Anglian coastline, which she caught so beautifully in Death in Holy Orders (2001) or other dramatic seascapes such as the Dorset coast of The Black Tower (1975) or ‘Combe Island’ off Cornwall in The Lighthouse (2005).  She proved to be just as comfortable describing (or more accurately, letting her characters observe) urban settings, notably Cambridge in high summer in An Unsuitable Job For a Woman (1972) and London – and in Original Sin (1994) specifically the River Thames.

Sometimes the setting was a specific place, and as Phyllis James wrote crime novels, it could be a specific place where something very nasty has taken place, as in the bloodstained vestry of St Matthew’s church Paddington in A Taste For Death (1986) with its two almost decapitated bodies.  I remember there was something of a furore when that book – with that opening chapter - came out for it gave lie to the suggestion that P. D. James was a writer of “cosy” mysteries.  True, she wrote traditional English detective stories and did so with a skill, which did – and will forever – rank with the best of Allingham, Marsh, Sayers and Christie but she was far from a cosy writer.  Murder, in her books, was never bloodless or provided simply as an artifice to the plot.

From Agatha Christie she learned the lesson not to make her series detective an eccentric, if not bizarre, character and from Dorothy Sayers she learned the danger of falling in love with her central protagonist.  And so her hero Adam Dalgliesh was, from the outset, created as a professional policeman with an established (albeit tragic) family history whose career loyal readers would follow as he ascended the giddy heights of Scotland Yard over the years.  His creator imbued him with the qualities she admired (in both sexes): intelligence, courage, sensitivity, and reticence.

When writing about this process and her own career in Talking About Detective Fiction (2009), she said, interestingly: If I started today it is likely that I would choose a woman, but this was not an option at the time when women were not active in the detective force.

Nor were they particularly dominant in crime fiction.  It is easy to forget that when P.D. James’ first Adam Dalgliesh novel, Cover Her Face, was published in 1962; the best-seller charts were dominated (and internationally dominated) by male thriller writers. Alistair Maclean, Hammond Innes, and Ian Fleming were well into their stride and the careers of Len Deighton and John Le Carré were just taking off.  True, Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham, and Ngaio Marsh were still active, but there seemed to be a trend towards spies rather than detectives and exotic thriller locations, from the Arctic to the Amazon, rather than small English villages like St Mary Mead.  Also, most notable innovations in crime writing appeared to be taking place in America rather than Britain, spearheaded by Ed McBain and Ross Macdonald.

A woman writing traditional English detective stories with a strong sense of Christian morality seemed to be swimming against the tide, but that is exactly what Phyllis James did, although she once admitted to me that the real incentive to sell that first novel was to pay for a new carpet in the living room!

Although her skill as a writer was recognised by the critics, commercial success did not come overnight but by the time Anglia Television began to serialise her novels in the 1980s, she was well on her way to becoming a household name.  She won three Silver Daggers from the Crime Writers’ Association, though amazingly never a Gold Dagger – and equally surprisingly was never elected CWA Chairman, something I had to look up, as it seemed so unlikely.  She was, however, the 1987 recipient of the Cartier Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement though at that time, her writing career was probably only just approaching the halfway mark.

In a writing career spanning 52 years, she was not a prolific author – certainly not by crime-writing standards – producing 20 novels, 14 of which featured Adam Dalgliesh.

The first P.D. James book I read, though, was not a Dalgliesh but her stand-alone 1980 novel about adoption and ‘lost’ children, Innocent Blood.  To this day I think it remains my favourite and I was rather proud to hear Ruth Rendell, in a radio tribute to Phyllis yesterday, say that it was also her favourite.

I first met Phyllis through the Dorothy L. Sayers Society, of which she was the Patron for many years.  She gave the first annual Sayers Memorial Lecture at Witham in Essex (where Sayers had lived) and I gave the second.  We both returned to Witham in 2007 to launch the Essex Book Festival and, after the formalities were done and dusted, she joined me in an impromptu question-and-answer session with visitors to Witham public library.

When one would-be novelist asked, rather plaintively: “What do you have to do to write a book?”  Phyllis and I answered loudly and in perfect unison: “Read!” though we had not, honestly, rehearsed.

At the funeral of her friend and fellow Detection Club member Harry Keating in 2011, she gave a heartfelt oration of which I know Harry would have approved.  At the wake after the service she was naturally sombre, but as charming and polite as ever.  We talked about her forthcoming novel Death Comes to Pemberley and she hinted that not only did she have an idea for the ‘next Dalgliesh’ but also for the one after that.

I have no idea how far she got with the next Dalgliesh, but she always said in public that her detective hero “would die with her” and it seems, sadly as if he has.

I cannot say I knew Phyllis well.  We were of very different generations and traditions when it came to crime writing, but British crime writing in particular is a broad church and Phyllis was a charming, wise, and supremely talented pillar of that church.  I doubt we will see her like again.

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Pictures courtesy of Mike Ripley and the Shots Collective.

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Phyllis Dorothy James, Baroness James of Holland Park, OBE, rose to fame for her series of detective novels starring policeman and poet Adam Dalgliesh.  James began writing in the mid-1950s.  Her first novel, Cover Her Face, featuring the investigator and poet Adam Dalgliesh of New Scotland Yard, named after a teacher at Cambridge High School, was published in 1962.  Many of James's mystery novels take place against the backdrop of the UK's bureaucracies, such as the criminal justice system and the National Health Service, in which James worked.  In 1991, she was created a life peer as Baroness James of Holland Park and sat in the House of Lords as a Conservative.

She revealed in 2011 that The Private Patient was the final Dalgliesh novel.  As guest editor of BBC Radio 4's Today programme in December 2009, James conducted an interview of BBC Director General Mark Thompson, in which she seemed critical of some of his decisions.  Regular Today presenter Evan Davis commented that "She shouldn't be guest editing; she should be permanently presenting the programme". During the 1980s, many of James's mystery novels were adapted for television by Anglia Television for the ITV network in the UK.  The BBC has adapted Death in Holy Orders in 2003, and The Murder Room in 2004, both as one-off dramas starring Martin Shaw as Dalgliesh.

Her novel The Children of Men (1992) was the basis for the feature film Children of Men (2006), directed by Alfonso Cuarón and starring Clive Owen, Julianne Moore and Michael Caine.  She wrote 14 novels featuring Adam Dalgliesh, 2 novels featuring Cordelia Gray and a number of non-fiction books.

P D James was the President of the Society of Authors between 1997 and 2013.  She was a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of Arts.  She also held Honorary Fellowships of both St Hilda’s College Oxford and Girton College Cambridge to name a few.

Her books won a number of awards and were shortlisted numerous times as well –

1971 Best Novel Award, Mystery Writers of America (runner-up): Shroud for a Nightingale

1972 Crime Writers' Association (CWA) Macallan Silver Dagger for Fiction: Shroud for a Nightingale

1973 Best Novel Award, Mystery Writers of America (runner-up): An Unsuitable Job for a Woman

1976 CWA Macallan Silver Dagger for Fiction: The Black Tower

1986 Mystery Writers of America Best Novel Award (runner-up): A Taste for Death

1987 CWA Macallan Silver Dagger for Fiction: A Taste for Death

1987 CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger (lifetime achievement award)

1992 Deo Gloria Award: The Children of Men

1992 The Best Translated Crime Fiction of the Year in Japan, Kono Mystery ga Sugoi! 1992: Devices and Desires

1999 Grandmaster Award, Mystery Writers of America

2010 Best Critical Nonfiction Anthony Award for Talking About Detective Fiction

2010 Nick Clarke Award for interview with Director-General of the BBC Mark Thompson whilst guest editor of Today radio programme.

In 2008, she was inducted into the International Crime Writing Hall of Fame at the inaugural ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards.

The Guardian obituary can be found here and here.  From the Independent and the Telegraph.  The BBC also have a video interview with Nick Higham who talks about her work.