Death of a Cozy Writer Wins Agatha Award
Death of a Cozy Writer, the first novel in the St. Just Mystery series by G. M. Malliet published by Llewellyn’s mystery fiction imprint Midnight Ink, has won the Agatha Award for Best First Mystery.
The Agatha Awards are literary awards for mystery and crime writers who write novels in the traditional method exemplified by Agatha Christie. Traditionally, these novels contain no explicit sex, excessive gore, or gratuitous violence, and usually feature an amateur detective and take place in a confined setting and contain characters that know one another.
Awards are handed out in five categories:
• Best Novel
• Best First Mystery
• Best Non-Fiction
• Best Short Story, and
• Best Children’s/Young Adult
Midnight Ink title Paper, Scissors, Death, by Joanna Campbell Slan, was also nominated for an Agatha Award for Best First Mystery.
Death of a Cozy Writer, by author G. M. Malliet, is the first novel in the St. Just Mystery series. Death of a Cozy Writer is the story of millionaire Sir Adrian Beauclerk-Fisk, a mystery novelist with four children eager for the family inheritance. Detective Chief Inspector St. Just is brought in to investigate the death of Sir Adrian’s eldest son (and heir to the family fortune). Soon Sir Adrian himself is found slumped over his writing desk, and St. Just must find the killer—and deep in the heart of the eighteenth-century English manor, every member of the family is a likely suspect—before the next-in-line to the family fortune ends up dead.
Death of a Cozy Writer was also chosen by Kirkus Reviews as a Best Book of 2008, nominated for a Left Coast Crime award (the Hawaii Five-O Award for best police procedural), short-listed for the Macavity Award for Best First Novel, and has been named a semi-finalist for the IPPY awards in the category of Mystery/Suspense/Thriller.
About the Agatha Awards
Named for mystery writer Agatha Christie, the Agatha Awards are literary awards for mystery and crime writers who write mystery novels in the traditional method exemplified by Agatha Christie. The awards are handed out by Malice Domestic Ltd at an annual convention in Washington, D.C., in five categories: Best Novel, Best First Mystery, Best Short Story, Best Non-Fiction, and Best Children’s/Young Adult Mystery. http://www.malicedomestic.org/agathaawards.html
