The Mystery Writers of America held its annual Edgars award banquet at Manhattan's Grand Hyatt last night. The Best Novel Edgar went to Steve Hamilton's The Lock Artist--the fourth consecutive year that prize has gone to a book from the Minotaur imprint of St. Martin's Press. In his acceptance speech, Hamilton paid tribute to the novel's editor, Ruth Cavin, who died earlier this year at the age of 92 (and was working right to the end).
Other winners included Bruce DeSilva's Rogue Island (Forge) for Best First Novel, Robert Goddard's Long Time Coming (Bantam) for Best Paperback Original and Yunte Huang's Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvouz with American History (W.W. Norton) for Best Critical/Biographical. The Raven Award for outstanding achievement in the mystery field other than creative writing was shared by two bookstores: Centuries & Sleuths (Chicago) and Once Upon a Crime (Minneapolis) A full list of winners and nominees in all categories is available at the Edgars website.
During a cocktail reception before the formal awards
banquet, newly appointed Grand Master Sara Paretsky was congratulated by many
of her colleagues.
"It's very strange initially--of course, I'm really thrilled," Paretsky
said of her reaction to receiving the title. "I was thinking about when I
won my first Edgar, when there were real Grand Masters like Dorothy Salisbury
Davis, Julian Symons and Stanley Ellin... I'm not sure I belong in that
company, but I'm not going to turn it down!" Paretsky also talked about
how she had once been on book tour in Sweden and met some of the Nobel
literature committee members, who told her they worried sometimes about what
the prize might do to a writer. "They saw people's later work deteriorate
as they tried to live up to the Nobel," she said, then smiled: "I
hope there isn't an Edgar problem."--Ron Hogan
Paretsky photo by Matt Peyton.