Agatha (Christie) has a lot to answer for

If you like your mysteries with a touch of “tea and crumpets” in them, then the books that were nominated (and those that won) the Agatha Awards are just for you. The Agatha Awards, named after Agatha Christie, are presented at the Malice Domestic annual conference, this year held on May 1-3 in Arlington, Virgina. The Agatha Awards “salute the traditional mystery.”

What is a “traditional mystery?” According to the Malice Domestic web site, traditional mysteries are “books best typified by the works of Agatha Christie as well as others. For our purposes, the genre is loosely defined as mysteries that: contain no explicit sex; contain no excessive gore or gratuitous violence; usually feature an amateur detective; and, take place in a confined setting and contain characters who know one another.”

Nominated for Best Novel this year were:

Six Geese A-Slaying by Donna Andrews (St. Martin’s Minotaur)

A Royal Pain by Rhys Bowen (Penguin Group)

The Cruelest Month by Louise Penny (St. Martin’s Press)

Buckingham Palace Gardens by Anne Perry (Random House)

I Shall Not Want by Julia Spencer-Fleming (St. Martin’s Minotaur)

This year's winner was The Cruelest Month.

Other catagories that Agatha’s are given for include Best First Novel, Best Non-Fiction, Best Short Story and Best Children’s/Young Adult Mystery. Meg