The 78th annual Edgar Awards Banquet, held last night at Manhattan’s Marriott Marquis, was very much in keeping with the times. Described by Mystery Writers of America President Chris Grabenstein as “the Oscars of mystery awards,” Grabenstein, who emceed the evening, attempted to disclaim responsibility for any of his jokes falling flat by claiming that they had actually been scripted by ChatGPT.
On a more serious note, cozy author Katherine Hall Page, one of the two authors honored as a MWA Grand Master, told attendees that we live in “difficult times, with the November election raising fears that the outcome will threaten our democracy and the civil liberties writers cherish.”
Those concerns gave added resonance to the themes of the book that took home the top prize for Best Fact Crime: Nathan Masters’s Crooked: The Roaring ’20s Tale of a Corrupt Attorney General, a Crusading Senator, and the Birth of the American Political Scandal (Hachette). The details the machinations of Warren Harding’s unethical AG Harry Daugherty, who had a reputation for being willing to keep Harding in the White House by any means necessary. In his remarks, Masters credited mystery fiction authors with teaching him how to make a dry Congressional investigation suspenseful by the timing of reveals.
The banquet also featured progress for MWA’s objective of increasing diverse representation among those it honors. Adrianna Cuevas, only the second Latina ever nominated for an Edgar, won in the Best Juvenile category for The Ghosts of Rancho Espanto (Farrar, Straus & Giroux BFYR). In her remarks, Cuevas gave a shoutout to the first nominated Latina, Christina Diaz Gonzalez, who had won for the same category in 2022, and who, in her acceptance speech that year, had accurately predicted that she would not be the last Latina to win an Edgar.
It was also a standout night for Linda Castillo, who took home two trophies: the Edgar for Best Short Story for Hallowed Ground and the G.P. Putnam’s Sons Sue Grafton Memorial Award for An Evil Heart (both published by Minotaur).
The evening, as usual, offered many humorous moments. After she learned she’d won the Lilian Jackson Braun Memorial Award for Glory Be (Pegasus Crime), Danielle Arceneaux, conceded that she’d submitted a manuscript to her agent with typos, and “two spaces after every period.”
Unsurprisingly, the biggest laughs came from R.L. Stine, the second 2024 Grand Master, whose selection helped inspire the evening’s theme, “The Kids are All Right,” which celebrated young readers. The banquet program included photos of some of the honorees being read to as children, and short essays from every nominee about their favorite book as a kid.
Stine became the first-ever MWA Grand Master who had previously won a Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Award (not to mention that his work has yielded movies, TV series, lunchboxes, and amusement park rides). In his remarks, Stine revealed that his own nephew admitted to having voted for Shel Silverstein for the Nickelodeon award the year Stine won, and that Stephen King did not react favorably when he learned that Stine’s oeuvre had been dubbed “a literary training bra” for King’s famous works of horror. Stine continued to poke fun at himself by disclosing that, at a recent book-signing in Baltimore, a teacher asked to take a photo with him just so that she could prove to her students that he was not dead.
And in a video clip of a prior interview aired along with the MWA presentation, Stine stated that he fell into the genre by chance. After writing jokebooks and Bazooka Joe comics, an editor had directed him to go home and write teen horror. Stine attributed his remarkable success to being lucky, and ended his speech by, self-deprecatingly, citing his all-time favorite Amazon review, a five-star one that read simply: “The packaging was great and it was easy to open.”
A complete list of winners and honorees is below:
Best Novel: Flags on the Bayou by James Lee Burke (Atlantic Monthly Press)
Best First Novel by an American Author: The Peacock and the Sparrow by I.S. Berry (Atria)
Best Paperback Original: Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto (Berkley)
Best Fact Crime: Crooked: The Roaring ’20s Tale of a Corrupt Attorney General, a Crusading Senator, and the Birth of the American Political Scandal by Nathan Masters (Hachette)
Best Critical/Biopgraphical: Love Me Fierce in Danger: The Life of James Ellroy by Steven Powell (Bloomsbury Academic)
Best Short Story: Hallowed Ground by Linda Castillo (Minotaur)
Best Juvenile: The Ghosts of Rancho Espanto by Adrianna Cuevas (Farrar, Straus and Giroux BFYR)
Best Young Adult: Girl Forgotten by April Henry (Little, Brown/Ottaviano)
Best Television Episode Teleplay: Escape from Shit Mountain–Poker Face by Nora Zuckerman & Lilla Zuckerman (Peacock)
Robert L. Fish Memorial Award: The Body in Cell Two by Kate Hohl, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, May-June 2023 (Dell Magazines)
The Simon & Schuster Mary Higgins Clark Award: Play the Fool by Lina Chern (Bantam)
The G.P. Putnam’s Sons Sue Grafton Memorial Award: An Evil Heart by Linda Castillo (Minotaur)
The Lilian Jackson Braun Memorial Award: Glory Be by Danielle Arceneaux (Pegasus Crime)
Special Awards
Grand Master: Katherine Hall Page, R.L. Stine
Ellery Queen Award: Michaela Hamilton, Kensington Books
A version of this article appeared in the 05/06/2024 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: