Michael Went a-Touring
...or something like that anyways. At the end of May, I found myself in the Toronto Arts and Letters Club celebrating the Arthur Ellis Awards with the Crime Writers of Canada. We have always kept track of the event, and in fact, have nearly all judged in one category or another over the years. However, I had never attended before. The reason for me to visit was, because starting with the 2020 Prizes, I will be the Head of Juries for the event, and am honoured that the CWC, and the past Head, Sleuth of Baker Street's Marian Misters, have provided me with the opportunity. Also congratulations to all of this year’s nominees, and this year’s winners!
BEST CRIME NOVEL Anne Emery, Though the Heavens Fall, ECW Press
BEST FIRST CRIME NOVEL A.J. Devlin, Cobra Clutch, NeWest Press
BEST CRIME NOVELLA The Lou Allin Memorial Award John Lawrence Reynolds, Murder Among the Pines, Orca Book Publishers
BEST CRIME SHORT STORY Linda L. Richards, Terminal City, Vancouver Noir, Akashic Books
BEST CRIME BOOK IN FRENCH Hervé Gagnon, Adolphus - Une enquête de Joseph Laflamme, Libre Expression
BEST JUVENILE/YOUNG ADULT CRIME BOOK Linwood Barclay, Escape, Puffin Canada
BEST NONFICTION CRIME BOOK Sarah Weinman, The Real Lolita: The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel that Scandalized the World, Alfred A. Knopf Canada
BEST UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPT (aka The Unhanged Arthur) Liv McFarlane, The Scarlet Cross
The day after the Arthur Ellis found me at the "Bloody Words Mini-Con and the Bony Blithe Light Mystery Awards Dinner", at the lovely High Park Club. After a day of interesting panels and conversations with both established and emerging voices from Canada's Light Mystery (aka Cosy) genre, the award for this year went to Mike Martin for Darkest Before the Dawn the latest in his Sgt Windflower mysteries. Once again, congratulations to all the nominees!
It was a real thrill to meet with all the authors, editors, publishers and booksellers who were at both events. As the year develops, we hope to have more to announce to you that will come from the Canadian crime-writing scene!
Manitoba Book Awards
The Manitoba Book Awards also happened since our last printing and Michael J Clark tied for best first novel for his book Clean Sweep! Even more exciting, Michael's second novel Mahoney's Camaro released at the end of May. There were also a number of members of the Whodunit community who were nominated, or who won prizes, and we would like to congratulate them all!
Survey
Thank you to all of you who filled out our survey! There was a lot of really valuable feedback that you provided to us, and we hope to implement as many of the elements of it as we are able. One of the results has already been implemented with our extended hours. Thursday and Friday evenings were by far the most common responses for people to visit the shop in the evening, and as a result...
OPEN LATE(R)
...we will be open until 8pm on Thursday and Friday evenings, and until 6pm on Saturdays! We are hoping that many of you will take advantage of the good weather to walk over, or to stop in before you head out to your weekend activities and grab something to keep you entertained!
Canadian Independent Bookstore Day
We were so happy with everyone who came out to visit us on the 27th of April, and congratulations to all of you who won prizes while you were here!
Anne Morton Lecture
Also, thank you to Anne for her informative talk on the 5th of May! It was great to hear more about your research surrounding Josephine Tey, and The Daughter of Time.
Karen Bate Event
We had a lovely visit on April 14th from Karen Bate, author of the "Mayfair Mystery" series. Her baking was very appreciated, as was her humour and candidness about her writing process. Thank you, Karen for visiting.