Agatha Ascendant

 

Winners were announced last night at the Agatha Awards Banquet during Malice Domestic, which this year was held from April 24-26 at the North Marriott Hotel & Convention Center in Bethesda, Maryland. The annual 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." ​Everyone who is registered for the Malice Domestic conference or becomes a Friend of Malice of any given year will receive a nomination ballot in early January, with finalists voted on during the convention. Congrats to the winners and finalists!

Best Contemporary Novel:  At Death's Dough, Mindy Quigley, Minotaur

Other finalists: 

A Grave Eeception, Connie Berry, Cooked Lane
Murder in Fifth Position, Lori Robins, Level Best Books
The Devil Comes Calling, Annette Dashofy, One More Chapter
Waters of Destruction, Leslie Karst, Severn House

Best Historical Novel:  The Case of the Christie Conspiracy, Kelly Oliver, Boldwood Books

Other finalists: 

Bye Bye Blackbird, Elizabeth Crowens, Level Best
The Girl in the Green Dress, Mariah Fredericks, Minotaur
Murder at the Moulin Rouge, Carol Pouliot, Level Best
The Hindenburg Spy, I.A. Chandlar, Oliver Heber Publishers

Best First Novel:  Whiskey Business, Adrian Andover, Chestnut Avenue Press

Other finalists:

Murder in the Crazy Mountains, K.L. Borges, Epicenter Press/Camel Press Imprint
Player Elimination, Shelly Jones, Tule Press
Savvy Summers and the Sweet Potato Crimes, Sandra Jackson-Opoku, Minotaur
Voices of the Elysian Fields, Michael Rigg, Leveltru

Best Short Story:  “Six-armed Robbery,” Ashley-Ruth Bernier, Malice Domestic Mystery Most Humorous

Other finalists:

“Baby Love,” Barb Goffman, Double Crossing Van Dine Anthology, Crippen and Landru
“Boss Cat Fules,” Nikki Knight, Malice Domestic Mystery Most Humorous
“Lola's Last Dance,” Kerry Hammond, Celluloid Crimes, Level Best
“When the Iron is Hot,” Maddie Day, EQMM Mar/Apr 2025

Best Non-fiction:  Vacations Can Be Murder: a True Crime Lover's Travel Guide to New England, Dawn M. Barclay, Level Best

Other finalists:

Bone Valley, Gilbert King, Flat Iron Books
Story of a Murder: the Wives, the Mistress, and Dr. Crippen, Hallie Rubenhold, Dutton
The Dinners all bow: Two Authors, One Murder, and the Real Hester Prynne, Kate Winkler Dawson, G. P. Putnam

Best Children’s/YA Mystery:  Death in the Cards, Mia P. Manansala, Delacorte Books for Young Readers

Other finalists:

Missing Mom, Lynn Slaughter, Fire and ice YA
Risky Pursuit, Nancy G. West, Fire and Ice YA
Rufus and the Dark Side of Magic, Marilyn Levinson, Level Best
Hurricane Heist, James Ponti, Aladin Books

Sunday Music Treat

Can you really play Chopin's "Minute Waltz" in a minute? Not that I've ever seen, although Ignaz Friedman tried his very best in this recording from 1923, which clocks in at the fastest time I've found thus far, 1:21 (although Scott Drayco in his prime might have been able to pull it off).

 

Quote of the Week

 

The Illustrious Indies

 

This Saturday, April 25, will mark the thirteenth annual Independent Bookstore Day (or Indie Bookstore Day), a celebration of independent bookstores, booksellers, and their communities that was launched in 2013 as California Bookstore Day by writer and editor Samantha Schoech, and went national in 2014. This year's event marks the largest celebration yet, spanning independent bookstores in every US state and territory in 2,000+ locations. Participating stores will mark the occasion with exclusive merchandise, special programming, and one-of-a-kind in-store experiences that highlight what makes indie bookstores essential to their communities.

Indie Bookstore Day includes multi-stop bookstore crawls to lively street fairs, each reflecting the distinct personality of the bookstores behind them. Over 40 bookstore crawls are being hosted in more than half the states, many extending beyond a single day and rewarding readers the more bookstores they visit. The Indie Bookstore Day map serves as the ultimate guide to it all, spotlighting hundreds of events and experiences happening in communities nationwide on April 25. Whether readers are on the hunt for exclusive finds or planning a full day (or weekend) of bookstore hopping, the map is the go-to resource for making the most of Independent Bookstore Day.

American Booksellers Association partner, Libro.fm, is offering special promotions throughout the week including a new member offer, a week-long audiobook sale, and the Golden Ticket in-store giveaway for 12 audiobooks. Bookshop.org, where every purchase on the site financially supports independent bookstores, will celebrate Independent Bookstore Day with free standard shipping on all orders on April 25 and 26.

Last year Indie Bookstore Day brought something unexpected—a clash with Amazon, which held a last-minute major book sale that “unintentionally overlapped” with the annual event on the last Saturday of April (Amazon’s inaugural book sale in 2024 was held in May). Outrage from independent booksellers and their advocates about the overlapping events led to consumer backlash and the best sales day in history for many of the more than sixteen hundred stores that participated in the event. As a result, many shoppers who hadn’t planned to visit a bookstore said they came out specifically to support their local bookshop and protest what they saw as Amazon’s stepping on the indies. 

On a personal note (and for full disclosure), the first novel in my Scott Drayco mystery series, Played to Death, was chosen for inclusion in the Bookshop.org Indie Author Bookstore Day Adult Fiction free promotion.

Choice Canadian Crime

Crime Writers of Canada (CWC) announced the Shortlists for the 2026 Crime Writers of Canada Awards of Excellence in Canadian Crime Writing. The CWC also revealed that the winner of the 2026 Grand Master Award, for a writer with a substantial body of work who has garnered significant national and international acclaim while demonstrating a steadfast commitment to the crime-writing community, is Rick Mofina. Since 1984, Crime Writers of Canada has recognized the best in mystery, crime, suspense fiction, and crime nonfiction by Canadian authors, including citizens abroad and new residents. Winners will be announced on Friday, May 29, 2026. 

The Peter Robinson Award for Best Crime Novel

With a $1000 prize

• Sue Hincenbergs, The Retirement Plan, HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
• Jen Sookfong Lee, The Hunger We Pass Down, McClelland & Stewart
• Tamara L. Miller, Into the Fall, Thomas and Mercer
• Louise Penny, The Black Wolf, Minotaur Books
• Eddy Boudel Tan, The Tiger and the Cosmonaut, Viking Canada

Best Crime First Novel 

Sponsored by Melodie Campbell with a $1000 prize

• Ray Critch, The Beltane Massacre, Breakwater Books
• Jan Field, Yesterday’s Lies, La Cloche Publishing
• Joel Nedecky, The Broken Detective, Run Amok Crime
• David L. Tucker, A Painting to Die For, Otter & Osprey Press
• A.L. Wahdel, Too Dark For the Light, Butterfly 80 Publishing

Best Crime Novel Set in Canada

Sponsored by Shaftesbury with a $500 prize

• Lis Angus, That Other Family, Next Chapter
• Angela Douglas, Every Fall, Rising Action Publishing Co.
• Uzma Jalaluddin, Detective Aunty, HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
• C.S. Porter, Salt on Her Tongue, Vagrant Press
• Chevy Stevens, The Hitchhikers, St. Martin’s Press

The Whodunit Award for Best Traditional Mystery

Sponsored by Jane Doe with a $500 prize

• Shelley Adina, The Engineer’s Nemesis, Moonshell Books
• Mel Anastasiou, Stella Ryman and the Search for Thelma Hu, Pulp Literature Press
• Alice Fitzpatrick, A Dark Death, Stonehouse Publishing
• Laury Silvers, Some Justice: A Ghazi Ammar Medieval Mystery, Independently Published
• Iona Whishaw, The Cost of a Hostage, TouchWood Editions

Best Crime Short Story

Sponsored by Crime Writers of Canada with a $200 prize

• Lis Angus, "Under the Circumstances," A Capital Mystery Anthology, Ottawa Press and Publishing
• Madeleine Harris Callway, "The Lost Diner," Pulp Literature Press (story on p.115)
• Barbara Fradkin, "Cold Shock," A Capital Mystery Anthology, Ottawa Press and Publishing
• Billie Livingstone, "The Headache," Dark Yonder (story on p.31)
• Sylvia Maultash Warsh, "Polly Wants a Freakin’ Cracker," Malice Domestic: Murder Most Humorous, Wildside Press

Best French Language Crime Book

Sponsored by Carrick Publishing with a $500 prize

• Chrystine Brouillet, Le regard des autres, Druide
• André Jacques, Jeux d’ombres, Druide
• Steve Laflamme, La mémoire du labyrinthe, Libre Expression
• Maureen Martineau, Une nuit d’été à Littlebrook, Héliotrope
• Martin Michaud, Delta Zéro, Libre Expression

Best Juvenile / YA Crime Book

Sponsored by Superior Shores Press with a $250 prize

• Charis Cotter The Mystery of the Haunted Dancehall, Tundra Books
• Vicki Grant, Death by Whoopee Cushion, Tundra Books
• Claire Hatcher-Smith, The Mizzy Mysteries: A Skeleton in the Closet, Tundra Books
• Tanya Lloyd Kyi, The City of Lost Cats, Tundra Books
• John Lekich, Bark Twice for Murder, Orca Book Publishers

The Brass Knuckles Award for Best Nonfiction Crime Book

Sponsored by David Reid Simpson Law Firm (Hamilton) with a $300 prize

• Robert Cree with Therese Greenwood, The Many Names of Robert Cree: How a First Nations Chief, Brought Ancient Wisdom to Big Business and Prosperity to His People, ECW Press
• John L. Hill, Acts of Darkness: Notorious Criminals, Their Defenders, Prosecutors, and Jailers, Durvile & UpRoute
• Kathleen Lippa, Arctic Predator: The Crimes of Edward Horne Against Children in Canada’s North, Dundurn Press
• Lorna Poplak, On the Lam: Great (and Not So Great) Escapes from Prison, Dundurn Press
• Julian Sher & Lisa Fitterman, Hitman: The Untold Story of Canada’s Deadliest Assassin, HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

Best Unpublished Crime Novel manuscript written by an unpublished author

Sponsored by ECW Press with a $500 prize

• Anne Burlakoff, Val's Story
• William Hall, The Less You Know
• Francis K. Lalumière, Lens Flare
• Barbara Stokes, Death Scent
• Isabelle Zimmermann, Blistered 

Friday's "Forgotten" Books: Voice Out of Darkness

Ursula Reilly Curtiss (1923-1984) came into the world with fairly impressive crime-fiction genes. Her mother, Helen Reilly, her sister, Mary McMullen, and her brother, James Kieran, all wrote mysteries. Curtis didn't start out that way, working first as a columnist for the Fairfield, Connecticut News in 1942, at age 19, followed by a stint as a fashion copy writer. She began writing mystery/suspense novels, full-time at that, when she married John Curtiss in 1947 (the marriage no doubt helping her financial circumstances enough to give her that opportunity). Her first book, Voice Out of Darkness, won the Red Badge Award for the best new mystery of 1948.

Rather than penning police procedurals like her mother, Curtiss focused on the type of story where an innocent bystander gets pulled reluctantly into becoming an amateur sleuth — against a backdrop of seeming domestic calm, with layers of evil hiding behind family secrets and familiar faces. Her protagonists were usually female, except for works like 1951's The Noonday Devil where the main character is a man who learns his brother's death as a Japanese POW was carefully planned by a fellow prisoner.

Voice Out of Darkness falls into the female-protagonist camp, where we find that thirteen years prior to the events of the book, Katy Meredith lost her foster-sister, Monica, in a skating accident. Although Katy tried to save Monica, Monica's last words were "Katy pushed me." Katy thought she'd escaped both her home town and the horrors of Monica's death by moving to New York, until she starts receiving threatening notes in the mail. At first she wonders if someone else near the ice that day overheard Monica's words and is trying to blackmail her, but when Katy returns to her childhood home, she finds evidence of a calculating killer whose sights are now set on her.

Curtiss has moments of crisp observations in her writing, such as the following character study:

She was disconcerted, in the midst of her apologies for lateness, by Lieutenant Hooper's mild and wren-like appearance; he looked, she thought, like a portrait of a suburban traveller. Rubbers. Plaid woollen muffler, an air of having been assembled, eyed critically, and finally dismissed on the 8:32 by a bustling, dutiful wife. Except for his eyes: shrewd, steady, impartial as jewellers' scales.

or this excerpt about Fenwick, Connecticut, Katy's home town:

[It] had its replicas all over the New England coast. It lay sheltered in a tumble of windy hills, its architecture a blend of pure old Colonial and the raw new bones of housing developments. Its chief prosperity came from the summer visitors who came to splash and play in its wide blue crescent of Sound and laugh delightedly at its ancient moviehouse. Its chief crop was gossip, sown and grown with zest...

Curtiss' strengths are in her characterizations, setting and pacing, the novel being a quick read, which helps make the slight thinness and predictability of the plot (at least by 21st-century eyes looking backward), not much of a distraction. Curtiss later had two of her books, made into movies, I Saw What You Did from 1965, based on Curtiss' novel Out of the Dark, starring Joan Crawford, and 1969's What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice?, based on the author's novel The Forbidden Garden, featuring Geraldine Page and Ruth Gordon. Curtiss also wrote the screenplays for a couple of television episodes of Detective and Climax Mystery Theater.

Mystery Melange

The Los Angeles Times announced the winners of the 46th annual Book Prizes in a ceremony at USC’s Bovard Auditorium. The Times’ Book Prizes recognize outstanding literary achievements and celebrate the highest quality of writing from authors at all stages of their careers. Winners were announced in 13 categories for works published last year including in the Mystery/Thriller category, which went to Megan Abbott for El Dorado Drive (G.P. Putnam’s Sons). The other finalists include The Proving Ground: A Lincoln Lawyer Novel by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown and Company); Everybody Wants to Rule the World by Ace Atkins (William Morrow); King of Ashes by S.A. Cosby (Flatiron Books: Pine & Cedar); and Crooks by Lou Berney (William Morrow).  


The shortlist for the £25,000 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction has been announced. The award celebrates works of historical fiction set more than 60 years ago that were published during the last calendar year. The 2026 finalists include Graeme Macrae Burnet’s Benbecula, fresh off its announcement as a longlisted title for the Crime Writers Association's Historical Dagger award.


The longlist for the 2026 Margery Allingham Short Mystery Competition was recently revealed. Every year since 2014, the Crime Writers Association and the Margery Allingham Society have jointly held an international competition for a short story of up to 3,500 words that fits into Golden Age crime writer Margery Allingham’s definition of what makes a great mystery story. The shortlist will be chosen from the 12 longlisted titles and announced later in the spring, with the winner honored May 30 at the NCRM launch at Criminally Good Books in York.


Mystery Writers of America (MWA) New York will present a panel on"Creating Unforgettable Characters" at the Tredyffrin Library in Chester County, Pennsylvania, on May 18 at 5pm. Moderated by Michael Bradley, the panel includes authors John Dobbyn (the Knight/Devlin legal thrillers), James McCrone (the thriller trilogy Faithless Elector, Dark Network and Emergency Power), and Jane Kelly (the Meg Daniels Mysteries).


In honor of National Library Week, Janet Rudolph compiled a listing of Library/Librarian Mysteries series.


Christina Hardyment of the UK newspaper, The Times, traveled from Dartmoor to the Highlands to find the landscapes loved by Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, PD James, and more.


This week's crime poem up at the 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly is "Falling From the Sky" by Susan L. Pollet.


In the Q&A roundup, John B. Valeri interviewed Jane Harper about Australian crime fiction, settings, and crafting slow-burn suspense; Crime Fiction Lover chatted with Clifford Beal, who has written in various genres, about his first crime novel, Little Sins; and Ali Karin spoke with Michael Ridpath on The Rap Sheet blog about his latest historical thriller, Operation Berlin.