Hahn, Abrahams Win Edgar Award for Best Mystery
RSSBy Rocco Staino -- School Library Journal, 05/07/2010
Small towns in Virginia and Vermont are the settings for two novels that captured this year’s Edgar Awards, given by the Mystery Writers of America for the best mystery published in a calendar year
Closed for the Season (Houghton, 2009) by Mary Downing Hahn received the award in the juvenile category, while Reality Check (HarperCollins, 2009) by Peter Abrahams nabbed the young adult title.
“This is an enjoyable mystery with just the right amount of frightening and dangerous elements to entice readers” writes Terrie Dorio of California’s Santa Monica Public Library in her SLJ review of Closed for the Season. The story revolves around Logan, who sets out to solve an unresolved murder in a Virginia town that leads him to a closed amusement park.
Hahn, a former children’s librarian, says her inspiration came from the abandoned Enchant Forrest Amusement Park in Ellicott City, MD. “I used to take my children there before it closed,” she told SLJ. “There it was sitting returning to nature. One day I sneaked in and took pictures and thought what a great setting for a mystery.” Both Hahn and the park are featured in the Closed for the Season video trailer. Hahn, who’s been writing mysteries for more than 30 years, was delighted to win the Edgar after two previous nominations, one for Wait Till Helen Comes (Clarion, 1986) and the other for Deep and Dark and Dangerous (Houghton, 2007).
“I always loved Edgar Allen Poe and am delighted to have my name connected to his,” she says.
Reality Check, a book that the Voice of Youth Advocates (VOYA) said would attract “reluctant readers to sports fans to romantic idealists” has high school football quarterback, Cody, going to a small Vermont town to find his missing girlfriend. Abrahams, described as Stephen King’s “favorite American suspense novelist,” is a noted writer of mysteries for adults, and in 1995 his Lights Out (Mysterious Press, 1994) was nominated for an Edgar for best novel. His books for young people include the Echo Falls mysteries, which features Ingrid Levin-Hall as a super sleuth. She first appeared in Down the Rabbit Hole (HarperCollins, 2005), the first book of the series.
The nominees in the best young adult category were: If the Witness Lied by Caroline B. Cooney (Random House); The Morgue and Me by John C. Ford (Penguin); Petronella Saves Nearly Everyone by Dene Low (Houghton); and Shadowed Summer by Saundra Mitchell (Random).
The Edgars were launched in 1946, with the first juvenile award going to Phyllis Whitney’s The Mystery of the Haunted Pool (Westminster, 1960) in 1961. The young adult award was created in 1989, with Sonia Levitin’s Incident at Loring Grove (Dial, 1988) winning that year.
The nominees in the best juvenile category were: The Case of the Case of Mistaken Identity by Mac Barnett (S & S); The Red Blazer Girls: The Ring of Rocamadour by Michael D. Beil (Random); Creepy Crawly Crime by Aaron Reynolds (Holt); and The Case of the Cryptic Crinoline by Nancy Springer (Penguin).
