Staring at that empty ballot

by Sandra Parshall

I go through this every year when I receive my Agatha Awards nomination ballot prior to the Malice Domestic mystery convention. What should I put on it? Short stories are easy enough to choose, but I’m always bewildered about the kind of books that do and don’t fit the Agatha Award criteria.

The task became more difficult last year when historical mysteries were placed in a separate category. So: if I think a historical mystery was one of the best books of the year, will it be removed from my ballot if I place it in the Best Novel category instead of Best Historical?

Decisions, decisions. The completed ballot is due no later than Saturday.

I could fill up the ballot with books by friends. Some of my friends write some of the books I consider best. But not all are that good. I want to nominate books I genuinely believe rose above the competition. Without having read everything that was published during the year, I can only choose from those I did read, and that always makes me wonder what marvelous work I've missed.

I have three sure candidates for the nonfiction category. First is The Grand Tour: Around the World with the Queen of Mystery, a collection of Agatha Christie’s travel letters edited by her grandson, Mathew Prichard. Second is More Forensics and Fiction: Crime Writers' Morbidly Curious Questions Expertly Answered by D.P. Lyle, MD. The third is Books to Die For: The World's Greatest Mystery Writers on the World's Greatest Mystery Novels, edited by John Connolly and Declan Burke. (The latter two books were nominated for Edgar Awards. The Christie book, inexplicably, was not, and it will be an outright crime if Christie's own words don't earn an Agatha nomination.) Those are the only nonfiction crime-related books from 2012 that I am both familiar with and consider award-worthy, so I will only list the three on my ballot.

The novel nominations are the ones that drive me a little batty, not only because I know so many talented authors but also because the Agatha guidelines don’t explain what a “traditional” mystery is, beyond specifying that it is best exemplified by Agatha Christie’s books and has no explicit sex or excessive violence. However, some books that have been nominated – and won – have borne little resemblance to Christie mysteries. I don’t think my first novel, The Heat of the Moon, is anything like a Christie book, and it has a sex scene, but no, I won’t give back my teapot. 

I always consider Margaret Maron’s latest book, whatever it is, one of the best mysteries of the year, so The Buzzard Table from 2012 is guaranteed a spot on my ballot. I don’t read many cozies, but I read Written in Stone by Ellery Adams and loved it, and it's a strong candidate for my Best Novel nominations list. Another is Racing from Death by Sasscer Hill, who received some nominations (including the Agatha) for her first novel, Full Mortality, but still isn't getting the attention she deserves. And I mustn't forget G.M. Malliet’s A Fatal Winter, an English village mystery in the Christie mold that is more beautifully written than anything Christie herself ever produced. I’ll put my own 2012 book, Bleeding Through, on my ballot because, after all, doesn’t every author write in his or her own title? I’m guaranteed at least one mention.  

I haven’t read many historical mysteries lately, and most I've read have been gritty and violent, so I don’t have a lot to choose from. Joanna Campbell Slan’s Jane Eyre novel Death of a Schoolgirl is a shoo-in, though. Jeri Westerson’s books featuring a disgraced knight as a private detective are billed as “medieval noir,” but last year her 2011 book, Troubled Bones, received an Agatha nomination, so I guess it’s permissible to put Blood Lance from 2012 on my ballot. Anatomy of Murder by Imogen Robertson and The Anatomist’s Wife by Anna Lee Huber are already on it. But I hesitate over including The Orphan Master by Jean Zimmerman, however highly I regard it, because a foray into cannibalism might push the Agatha boundaries.

Best First Novel? Oy. Here’s where I feel a strong impulse to simply write in the titles of five friends’ books – whether I’ve read them yet or not. I’ll try to resist, but I won’t tell you what my ultimate choices are.

Children’s and Young Adult mysteries are foreign territory for me, and I’ll leave that category blank. This is a category where I suspect a small number of voters determine the nominees and winner.

Deserving of a teapot!

Three of my favorite 2012 crime novels are Criminal by Karin Slaughter, Dare Me by Megan Abbott, and The Gods of Gotham (historical) by Lyndsay Faye. But I’ll save them for my Anthony Award nomination ballot when it arrives. I don’t think they fit the Agatha Award definition of traditional mysteries.

I may be wrong.

And I am not the only one who doesn’t know exactly what a traditional mystery is. Ask a dozen people for a definition and you’ll get some interestingly varied answers. Some people think "cozy" and "traditional" are interchangeable terms. Some think all traditional mysteries take place in small towns, or have amateur sleuths.

As I said, if Christie’s books provide the form, some novels that deviate from it have been nominated and have won. If explicit sex and excessive violence are the only forbidden elements, a lot of suspense novels and thrillers could be relabeled traditional mysteries, but if a publishing house is putting a lot of effort and advertising money into branding a book a thriller, I won't argue with the labeling.

Maybe you don’t care about awards, but if you do, you want to know which books are eligible for which honors. Do you think we need a clearer definition, for award purposes, of the traditional mystery?

Do book awards have a future?

Sandra Parshall

In the past couple of years I was invited to judge novels for two major crime fiction awards. I accepted both times, not because I’m a glutton for punishment (although that might have been a factor) but because I wanted to know what the juried awards process was like on the inside.

We all quibble with the nominations and winners of the so-called “fan awards” given at conferences – the Anthonys, the Agathas, etc. – but in the end we accept that the people who pay to attend the conferences have the right to honor the books they like the most. The juried awards, though, provoke the same critical questions year after year. How can a small panel of people be trusted to choose the “best” books of the year? How could so-and-so’s brilliant work be overlooked? Why does she-or-he rack up so many nominations (and wins) while other worthy writers are slighted? Why are some obscure works nominated instead of books and stories “everyone” has read? And, of course: Why are so few women writers nominated for certain awards?

Many people, most of them writers, seem to assume that bias drives the decision-making. I wanted to find out if that was true. I especially wanted to find out if my own judgment would be fair or if I would feel a tug toward books written by friends.

I don’t know what went on the heads of other judges, but I can say honestly that I was as fair as I know how to be, and I didn’t observe any bias on the part of other judges. I’m acquainted with a lot of the writers whose books I was judging. Some are my friends. But personal feelings for the writer never influence me when I’m reading, and they didn’t influence me as an award judge. Furthermore, I never gave a thought to the author’s gender while I was evaluating a book. All I cared about were the words on the page.

I can’t go into detail about any books I judged, but I have to say I was amazed by the number of ineligible novels that were submitted. Most entries come from publicists at publishing houses, and I don’t think they bother to read the guidelines when they mail tons of books to awards judges. They throw everything into the pot and, apparently, hope the judges don’t pay attention to the guidelines either. 

But let's get real. A cooking or craft cozy, while it must have suspense in order to succeed as a mystery, probably won’t win a thriller or suspense award. To be considered in those categories, the thrills and suspense must be primary, not secondary. The same goes for “romantic suspense” novels in which the suspense vanishes for long stretches while the romance plays out in the foreground. These books face a lot of world-class competition from authors who always put the crime story first. Different awards exist for different kinds of books, and I find the claims of bias a bit baffling. After all, Lee Child doesn't complain because his books are never nominated for the Agatha Award.

I accumulated a big stack of books that had little or no chance of winning the awards I was judging. I gave all of them to a library book drive organized by Mystery Writers of America. I thank the publishers for their contributions to an underfunded library system in Mississippi.

As I completed my judging duties, the digital revolution was getting underway. E-books were, and are, threatening to take over the publishing business and relegate printed books to secondary status. That makes me wonder if I was one of the last participants in an awards process that will soon be obsolete. When major authors take their work directly to e-publishing platforms, leaving Big Publishing behind, and midlist and small press writers conclude they can make more money by getting out of print and self-publishing their novels as e-books, will mystery awards be rendered meaningless?

If the awards are to continue, shouldn’t they include all books, regardless of platform? If all books are included, the number submitted for awards consideration will be staggering. Will awards committees become huge and the process of dividing up the books for judging impossible to manage? If e-books kill mass market paperbacks, as is predicted even by professionals in traditional publishing, will entire award categories vanish and all books be lumped together? That, of course, will further diminish each individual writer’s chance of being honored.

Will there still be a place for awards in the publishing world of the future? What do you think? Do awards serve a purpose? Are they worth keeping? If so, how do we do it?

And the winner is...

Sandra Parshall

Meryl Streep said recently that “there’s no such thing as the ‘best’ actress” and that “everybody wins” in a year when many great movies provide showcases for talent. Of course, she said this while accepting a best actress award from the Screen Actors Guild, but there is some truth and good sense in the statement. It’s wishful thinking, though, to imagine that creative people can rise above the competitive streak that is an inborn aspect of human nature.

Writers aren’t exempt from the craving to outshine one another. Maybe we’re not as cutthroat about it as movie and TV people, but would most of us trample the bodies of our beloved grandmothers to get to an Edgar Award? You bet. If you win a single award of any kind, you will be labeled forevermore an “award-winning author” – regardless of whether you continue to turn out good books or never produce another that’s halfway readable.

I’m thinking about all this because it’s that time of year again, when Malice Domestic registrants are filling out their Agatha Award nomination ballots and everybody’s looking at the just-released list of Edgar nominees and saying, “Huh?”

The campaigning for an Agatha nomination usually takes the form of e-mails and mystery e-list posts “reminding” everyone that a writer’s book is eligible for a nomination. When the reminder is coming from a personal friend, it’s hard not to feel pressured. Sometimes I think writers expect a nomination simply because they’re friendly with a lot of the people who will do the nominating. But what if you don’t think your friend’s book is one of the five best of the entire year? You don’t have to say so, of course, and no one will see your ballot except the person who counts it. The whole situation is uncomfortable, though -- and unnecessary. If I think a book is terrific, I’m going to remember it. I don’t need to be reminded of its existence.

The Anthony Awards given out at Bouchercon, and many other crime fiction awards, are the result of the same sort of process. Attendance at a conference, or membership in an organization, or even a subscription to a mystery magazine, gives a person the right to make nominations. A lot of factors influence the nominators – friendship, subgenre preferences, biases that have nothing to do with the quality of books (“I don’t like violent books, or books with graphic sex, regardless of how well-written and well-plotted they are”), and, most important, the limits on how much a person can read in one year. If you haven’t read every crime novel published in the last year, how can you choose the best?

That brings us to the Edgars, which are awarded by committees. Every year both writers and fans complain about the nominations. “I’ve never HEARD of most of these books! How can they be the best?” (I hope you see the fatal flaw in that reasoning.) “Why don’t they ever nominate a cozy?” And so on. The refrain is the same, year after year.

I’ve done my share of grousing when a book I loved – for example, Laura Lippman’s wonderful What the Dead Know – is nominated for (and ultimately wins) just about every other award in existence but doesn’t receive an Edgar nomination. I don't always agree with their choices, but I have to respect the simple fact that the Edgar judges do read every eligible book that is published and submitted by publishers for consideration. Each unpaid judge in the novel categories suspends normal life for a year and reads hundreds upon hundreds of books before choosing the five she/he considers best. As I understand it, a period of discussion and perhaps re-reading follows to reconcile disagreements among the members of a particular panel, and ultimately they arrive at a list of finalists. Then they choose the winner in that category. It’s not surprising that this laborious process usually produces nominations for serious books that display outstanding, original writing and in some cases tackle social issues.

Lighter books will have a chance at other awards. A mystery or thriller doesn’t have to be life-changing to be great entertainment. It doesn’t have to pulsate with psychological or social significance that will outlast the ages. Each award has criteria, and the people making nominations have to keep those criteria in mind. You wouldn’t nominate a Karin Slaughter book for an Agatha. That doesn’t mean the Slaughter book is worthless. You can’t expect to see a cooking cozy get an Edgar nomination. That doesn’t mean the cozy isn’t entertaining (with great recipes included). And if your own book receives no nominations, that doesn’t make it a failure. Mystery writers might be happier if no awards were ever given, if we weren’t forced to applaud for authors whose books were deemed “better” than ours. Awards are here to stay, though, and all we can do is try to be realistic and sensible about them.

Would I give up my own Agatha Award? Are you nuts? Will I fill out my Agatha and Anthony ballots this year? Of course. Will I be annoyed if my favorites don’t win? Of course. I’m only human, after all.


In case you’re interested, the book I’d like to see win the Agatha for Best Novel is I Shall Not Want by Julia Spencer-Fleming.







My favorite for the Anthony is Master of the Delta by Thomas H. Cook.

Which books are you rooting for this time around?