Sunday, May 5, 2013

The Agatha Awards: BOOKS TO DIE FOR

I’m delighted to announce that BOOKS TO DIE FOR, edited by John Connolly, Clair Lamb and yours truly, has won the Agatha Award for Best Non-Fiction at the annual Malice Domestic convention.
  The Agatha Awards, for those of you unfamiliar with them, ‘honour the “traditional mystery.” That is to say, books best typified by the works of Agatha Christie as well as others.’
  It’s a considerable honour, and I’m particularly thrilled for John and Clair, but also for all the writers who contributed to BOOKS TO DIE FOR – it goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway, that this award belongs to every one of them as much as it does the book’s editors.
  For all the Agatha Awards shortlists and winners, clickety-click here.
  It’s been a real roller-coaster week for BOOKS TO DIE FOR. We were hugely honoured to be shortlisted for Thursday night’s Edgar Awards, and naturally we were disappointed not to win. That disappointment was offset on Friday by the news that BTDF has been shortlisted for the HRF Keating Award at Crimefest, where the book will find itself, again, in some very fine company. To wit:
Declan Burke & John Connolly for BOOKS TO DIE FOR (Hodder & Stoughton, 2012)
John Curran for AGATHA CHRISTIE’S SECRET NOTEBOOKS (HarperCollins, 2009)
Barry Forshaw (editor) for BRITISH CRIME WRITING: AN ENCYCLOPEDIA (Greenwood World Publishing, 2008)
Christopher Fowler for INVISIBLE INK (Strange Attractor, 2012)
Maxim Jakubowski (editor) for FOLLOWING THE DETECTIVES (New Holland Publishers, 2010)
P.D. James for TALKING ABOUT DETECTIVE FICTION (The Bodleian Library, 2009)
  Incidentally, I’ll be hosting a panel at Crimefest on BOOKS TO DIE FOR, featuring contributors Peter James, Yrsa Sigurdardottir and Brian McGilloway. If you’re going to be in Bristol that weekend, we’d love to see you there.

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Declan Burke has published a number of novels, the most recent of which is ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL. As a journalist and critic, he writes and broadcasts on books and film for a variety of media outlets, including the Irish Times, RTE, the Irish Examiner and the Sunday Independent. He has an unfortunate habit of speaking about himself in the third person. All views expressed here are his own and are very likely to be contrary.