The Edgar Awards for Mystery Writing: 2010

The Edgar Awards have been noticed by The Wall Street Journal, whose article yesterday, Mystery Rules at Edgar Awards  listed the nominees for this year's award for best mystery writing. The paper noted that women dominated the nominees for the Best First Novel by an American Author category. The Edgar Awards announced the winners:

Best Novel:

The Last Child by John Hart (Minotaur Books) was the winner. It tells the story of the abduction of a twelve year old girl and the attempts by her twin brother and a police detective to find the culprit, after a second child has been kidnapped. A lot of deadly secrets are uncovered in the town.

Other nominees:
The Missing (Vintage Contemporaries) by Tim Gautreaux
 The Odds by Kathleen George
The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death: A Novel by Charlie Huston Nemesis by Jo Nesbø, translated by Don Bartlett
A Beautiful Place to Die by Malla Nunn

Best First Novel By An American Author:

In the Shadow of Gotham by Stefanie Pintoff (Minotaur Books) won in this category. A former New York City policeman investigates the murder of a brilliant Columbia mathematics graduate student. A student of criminology tries to take over the investigation, saying he knows who the culprit is. The novel is set in the early 1900s.

Other nominees:
The Girl She Used to Be by David Cristofano
Starvation Lake by Bryan Gruley
The Weight of Silence by Heather Gudenkauf
A Bad Day for Sorry by Sophie Littlefield
Black Water Rising by Attica Locke

Best Paperback Original:


Body Blows: A Joe Grundy Mystery (Castle Street Mysteries) by Marc Strange (Dundurn Press - Castle Street Mysteries) is the winner.

Other nominees:
Bury Me Deep by Megan Abbott
Havana Lunar by Robert Arellano
The Lord God Bird by Russell Hill
The Herring-Seller's Apprentice by L.C. Tyler

Best Critical/Biographical:

The Lineup: The World's Greatest Crime Writers Tell the Inside Story of Their Greatest Detectives, edited by Otto Penzler (Little, Brown and Company) won in this category. 

Other nominees:

Talking About Detective Fiction by P.D. James
Haunted Heart: The Life and Times of Stephen King by Lisa Rogak

The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith by Joan Schenkar
The Stephen King Illustrated Companion by Bev Vincent

The Lineup: The World's Greatest Crime Writers Tell the Inside Story of Their Greatest Detectives is a book I'd love to read.

 

Pearl S. Buck's biography: Burying the Bones: Pearl Buck in China

Burying The Bones: Pearl Buck in China (Import) by Hilary Spurling printed by Profile Boooks, Ltd. in England, 2010.

Publisher's description:

"This is a thrilling portrait of the extraordinary childhood of Pearl Buck, the now-forgotten bestselling Nobel Prize winning novelist. Pearl Buck was raised in China by her American parents, Presbyterian missionaries from Virginia. Blonde and blue-eyed she looked startlingly foreign, but felt as at home as her Chinese companions. She ran free on the grave-littered grasslands behind her house, often stumbling across the tiny bones of baby girls who had been suffocated at birth. Buck's father was a terrifying figure, with a maniacal zeal for religious conversion - a passion rarely shared by the local communities he targeted. He drained the family's budget for his Chinese translation of the New Testament, while his aggrieved, long-suffering wife did her utmost to create a homely environment for her children, several of whom died tragically young. Pearl Buck would eventually rise to eminence in America as a bestselling author, but in this startlingly original biography, Spurling recounts with elegance and great insight her unspeakable upbringing in a China that was virtually unknown to the West."

A review of this new book describes it as a "creative biography" of author Pearl S. Buck. The review is by Elaine Showalter in the Literary Times: Review of Burying the Bones, a biography.

Anchee Min's book, Pearl of China: A Novel is a fictional account of Pearl Buck's growing up in China and her friendship with a Chinese girl her age, Spurling's book is a biography, but both books describe the turbulent times in China in which Pearl Buck grew up. Here is my review of Pearl of China.

Challenge: China Reading Challenge,

 

Wordless Wednesday: Spring Yellow

Not a forsythia, but blooms early spring. Double yellow flowers on long narrow green stems. Anyone recognize this?

More Wordless Wednesdays

Teaser Tuesday: Pearl of China by Anchee Min

Teaser Tuesdays, hosted by MizB, asks you to choose two sentences at random from your current read. Include the author and title for readers.

Pearl of China: A Novel by Anchee Min (Hardcover - March 30, 2010)

"You stole my father's wallet!" Pearl yelled.
No, I didn't." I imagined the food the money in the wallet could buy. (ch. 2) .

 Publisher's description: "In the small southern China town of Chin-kiang, in the last days of the nineteenth century, two young girls bump heads and become thick as thieves. Willow is the only child of a destitute family. Pearl is the headstrong daugher of zealous Christian missionaries. She will grow up to become Pearl S. Buck, the Nobel Prize-winning writer and activist, but  for now she is just a girl embarrassed by her blond hair and enchanted by her new Chinese friend....Pearl of China celebrates an incredible friendship and brings new color to the life of Pearl S. Buck, a woman whose unwavering love for the country of her youth eventually led her to be hailed as a national heroine in China."

About the author: Anchee Min was born in China in 1957 and endured the Cultural Revolution. She was sent to a labor camp, was recruited there by Madame Mao's talent scouts to be come an actress in propaganda films. She moved to the U.S. in 1984.

Her first book is the memoir, Red Azalea, which became an international bestseller.  

I've read Pearl Buck's The Good Earth and am really interested in the novel about her childhood in China, especially the history of the turbulent period of the time. The cover, the title, and the information on the book jacket caught my attention at the library. Author Anchee Min's memoir, Red Azalea, is also on my TBR list.

 

Sunday Salon: Catch Up

Welcome to the Sunday Salon! Join by clicking on the salon logo.

I missed a Salon last weekend, so I have some catching up to do! I did a few more reviews than I thought I had time for, given my back-to-fulltime-work status and its accompanying frustrations (Did I do the right thing? Time will tell! )

Here are my reviews, three crime novels and a memoir:

Murder in the Palais Royale, a mystery novel by Cara Black, her fifth in the Aimee LeDuc Detective series, a series I recommend for anyone who loves Paris and mysteries.

The Stone Monkey by Jeffery Deaver, a thriller written in 2004 about skinheads who prey on illegal immigrants.

Skin and Bones by D.C.Corso, a California writer's debut novel, a psychological thriller about our eroding values, set in the days after Sept. 11, 2001.

Perfection: A Memoir by Julie Metz, who writes about discovering her dead husband's infidelities, coping with it, and moving forward.

I discovered some new books, which I posted about in Turkish mysteries and romance novels, and am finishing up Arabesk, a detective novel set in Istanbul.

Am having fun with Magpie Tales, a weekly writing prompt hosted by Willow. Here are two short entries that I did the last two weeks: "Cane," "Time Will Tell". Free verse poems, just for fun.

Wish I could go to the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books this weekend. Esme at Chocolate and  Croissants wrote a post on her visit yesterday. She met, among others, Cara Black, author of Murder in the Palais Royale. Lucky Esme!

What did you read/do last week?

 

Book Review: Perfection: A Memoir by Julie Metz

Perfection: A Memoir of Betrayal and Renewal
 by Julie Metz (Hardcover - June 9, 2009)

Perfection

I was attracted by the title and the cover of this library book and borrowed it after briefly scanning the inside cover and the author's information. A graphic artist and writer, Julie Metz has written her first book, a memoir about discovering her husband's illicit affairs only after his death.

Her friends and family try to hide the facts from her but she eventually finds out about Henry's infidelity - from email on his computer, and from correspondence, not to one but to many women. And there were other hints which she had ignored during their marriage.

Julie plunges into her husband's past, ferreting out letters or other correspondence that lead her to the other women in Henry's life. She can't move on without finding out as much as she can and confronting the facts head on.

Julie has the reader's sympathy and yet she seems to become overly obsessed with  the past, even contacting the women she suspects were Henry's lovers. She explains his behavior as a quest for perfection - in his work as a chef, in his wanting to be a writer, and in his affairs.

The explanation isn't sufficient, however. We'd like to know more about the charismatic and effervescent Henry. That's impossible, however, as Julie wrote the memoir after his death and there is no one to explain Henry. If this were fiction, the novel would include his telling us more about himself. The book seems to need it badly, but it's impossible.  Julie finally moves on with her life, telling her journey in this memoir.

More about Henry's distant past, his childhood, where he grew up and his life before his marriage to Julie might have helped us to get a better grasp of his "quest for perfection." As it is, the memoir left me feeling as if there was something missing.

Challenge: 100 + Reading Challenge, Support your Local Library Challenge