...I'll be on Zoom with the other Edgar nominees in fifteen minutes.

That was awesome.

Congratulations on the nomination!
I caught the Zoom session in time and learned something new about Agatha Christie.

I joined 10 minutes in, and watched to the end. Very nice!

I'm sorry I missed it. Was the session recorded?

Big Al

Thanks, y'all!

Yes, Big Al, it was recorded. I'll find out where it's archived and post the link.

Oh cool! Thanks for sharing the link, I’ll watch it too.

Thanks for sharing that link. Mystery has not been one of my primary genres of choice, although I have enjoyed all your novels and had a favorite mystery writer for a number of years in K. C. Constantine (a pen name), whose police procedurals were set in locations pretty clearly drawn from western Pennsylvania locations.

The discussion made me appreciate the realm of the mystery novel more. It also made me wonder if there are a few mystery novelists beyond Agatha Christie that you have a special affinity for or would especially recommend.

Big Al

Good question!

Spending three years working on that book really cut into my pleasure reading time, but I read several dozen of her books and all 170 short stories during that time, so it's not like I stopped reading. lol

I really admire Louis Bayard's The Pale Blue Eye, which was just made into a movie. The plot wobbles some at the climax, but it's a beautifully written homage to Poe.

My mystery class just read Rachel Howzell Hall's They All Fall Down, a modern updating up Christie's And Then There Were None. Again, I have quibbles, but it's a good book, and it's fun to read it back to back with Christie's original.

My friend Ann Parker writes a good historical series set in the West. She just won a Spur for her most recent one.

I'm hearing good things about Winter Counts by David Heska Wanbli Weiden, which has won or been nominated for alllllllll the awards. My students and I read one of his short stories and I thought it was really good.

I admire Dennis Lehane a lot, although I'm behind and haven't read several of his latest. Mystic River, Shutter Island, and Live by Night are very good and very different from each other.

I loved Val McDermid's A Place of Execution and want to read more of hers. This is the book that one of my graduate students, as he was giving a presentation on it, said that he got to a certain point and hollered, "Holy sh!t! Now I've got to read the whole thing again!" I love a book that sneaks up on you like that.

That'll keep you reading for a while!