The Cozy Mystery List Blog

Cozy Mystery (and Other Favorite) Books, Movies, and TV

The 2008 Edgar Awards:

I finally got the 2008 Edgar Awards listed. The winners were announced the first week of May. I am sorry that this has taken me so long to post… It feels like I just posted the Agatha Awards! Well, I did… Since these awards are given (roughly) one month apart.

As the names of the awards imply, the Agatha Awards are for books that definitely lean more toward the Cozy Mystery Book genre… the Agatha Christie types of books. However, the Edgars should appeal to even the most devoted cozy readers. I think that if you take a look at the different Edgar Award categories, you will see that there are lots of really great mysteries, written by really terrific mystery authors.

I have tried to highlight all of the nominees and winners who have a page on the Cozy Mystery Site… If you do a comparison between the Agatha Award pages and the Edgar Award pages you will see that most of the Agatha winners and nominees have pages on this site. For example, a quick look at the Agatha Award Best Novel page and the Edgar Award Best Novel page will show you what I mean.

June 2008 Mystery Book New Releases:

The following Mystery Books will be released in June 2008:

Catherine Aird:  Losing Ground  (This will be the 22nd in the Inspector Sloan Mystery Series…)

L. L. Bartlett (aka Lorna Barrett):  Dead in Red  (This will be the 2nd in the Jeff Resnick Mystery Series…)

Claudia Bishop:  The Case of the Ill-Gotten Goat  (This will be the 3rd in the Casebooks of Dr. McKenzie Mystery Series…)

Lawrence Block:  Hit and Run (This will be the 4th in the John Keller Mystery Series…)

Emily Brightwell:  Mrs. Jeffries Holds the Trump  (This will be the 24th Mrs. Jeffries Victorian Mystery Series…)

Leslie Caine:  Poisoned by Gilt  (This will be the 6th in the Domestic Bliss Mystery Series…)

Natasha Cooper:  Poisoned Mind (This will be the 9th in the Trish Maguire Mystery Series…)

Philip R. Craig:  Vineyard Chill  (This will be the 20th in the Martha’s Vineyard Mystery Series…)

Debora Crombie:  Where Memories Lie (This will be the 12th in the Duncan Kincaid/Gemma James Mystery Series…)

Clive Cussler (written w/Jack Du Brul):  Plague Ship  (This will be the 5th in the Oregon Files Mystery Series…)

Jeffery Deaver:  The Broken Window  (This will be the 8th in the Lincoln Rhymes Mystery Series…)

Susan Dunlap:  Hungry Ghosts  (This will be the 2nd in the Darcy Lott Mystery Series…)

Janet Evanovich:  Fearless Fourteen  (This will be the 14th in the Stephanie Plum Mystery Series…)

Anthea Fraser:  Next Door to Murder  (This will be the 6th in the Rona Parish Mystery Series…)

Carolyn Haines:  Wishbones  (This will be the 8th in the Sarah Booth Delany Mystery Series…)

Honor Hartman:  The Unkindest Cut   (This will be the 2nd in the Bridge Club Mystery Series…)

Linda O. Johnston:  Double Dog Dare  (This will be the 6th in the Pet-Sitter Mystery Series…)

Rebecca Kent (aka Kate Kingsbury):  High Marks for Murder   (This will be the 1st in the NEW Bellehaven House Mystery Series…)

Laura Levine:  Killing Bridezilla  (This will be the 7th in the Jaine Austen Mystery Series…)

Jess Lourey:  August Moon  (This will be the 4th in the Murder by Month Mystery Series…)

Sujata Massey:  Shimura Trouble  (This will be the 10th in the Rei Shimura Mystery Series…)

Sharyn McCrumb:  Once Around the Track  (This will be a Stand Alone… OR ?possibly a new series?…)

Tamar Myers:  Death of a Rug Lord  (This will be the 14th in the Den of Antiquity Mystery Series… actually out during the very end of May…)

Barbara Parker:  The Dark of Day  (This will be a Stand Alone…  OR ?possibly a new series?…)

Robert B. Parker: Resolution   (This will be a Stand Alone… historical fiction…)

James Patterson (written w/Howard Roughan):  Sail  (This will be a Stand Alone…)

Ruth Rendell: Not in the Flesh (This will be the 22nd in the Inspector Wexford Mystery Series…)

Maggie Sefton: Dyer Consequences   (This will be the 5th in the Knitting Mystery Series…)

Patricia Smiley: Cool Cache  (This will be the 4th in the Tucker Sinclair Mystery Series…)

Julia Spencer-Fleming:  I Shall Not Want  (This will be the 6th in the Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne Mystery Series…)

Victoria Thompson: Murder on Bank Street  (This will be the 10th in the Gaslight Mystery Series…)

*****To go back to the Cozy Mystery New Releases page click here*****

E. V. Cunningham (aka Howard Fast)…

I started reading E. V. Cunningham‘s mystery novels several years ago. I enjoyed them so much that I put several of them on my Wish List for possible Christmas/birthday gifts for me… and was delighted to get all of the books I requested.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with E. V. Cunningham… “he” wrote the Masao Masuto Mystery Series. As Howard Fast (his real name) he wrote many (historical) novels including Spartacus, The Immigrants, Citizen Tom Paine, and Bunker Hill.

The books take place in Beverly Hills, back when it wasn’t over-populated, and had a very small police force. Masao Masuto is the head of the homicide department. He enjoys his rose garden at home, has a small room where he meditates in his saffron robe, loves his wife (Kati) and his two children, and sees the good in people, places, and things… doing so while he experiences the ugliest of things/circumstances that a homicide detective encounters.

I started reading the novels at a time when I wasn’t familiar with their chronological order…  If you are a reader of this blog,  you know how much I hate reading a series out of order! The series was a little confusing since, let’s take the first book as an example… it is named both Samantha and The Case of the Angry Actress. I think that I actually read the fourth novel first, then the second… and then the first. That was several years ago…

I recently got all of the Masao novels on my TBR bookshelf before even starting the first one (again!)… This is one of the instances where having a not-so-great memory for books’ details comes in handy—> When I want to enjoy a series from start to finish… even if it means reading a few of the novels for the second time, if it has been a matter of several years, then I’m OK.

These are books that were written in the 1960s, ’70s, & 80s… a much “gentler time.” So, although they aren’t your traditional cozy mystery with an amateur sleuth in a small village full of eccentric neighbors, I think that they still qualify as cozy… in that Cunningham (Fast) doesn’t feel the need to impress us with foul language and/or gruesome details. (***I just re-read a few of these books and see that there actually are a few very adult words in them…)

So far, I am only on the fourth (The Case of the Poisoned Eclairs) of the seven books. I am enjoying the books immensely. I just have to wonder why it took me so long to finally read the series in the correct order!

Six New Authors to the Site:

I have been trying to update the graphics on each of the individual authors’ pages… which continues to be a huge project for me. But, I decided it was time to add a few more authors to the Cozy Mystery Site… authors who I have heard about from you all, the site readers. Right now I have six new additions to the site:

Jeanne Glidewell: The very new Lexie Starr Mystery Series featuring a middle-aged assistant librarian…

Lee Charles Kelley: The Jack & Jamie Mystery Series features a dog trainer/owner of a dog kennel and a medical examiner. Also, Kelley has a story in the Bark M for Murder anthology…

Sherry Lewis: The Senior Sleuth Fred Vickery Mystery Series…

Sheila Lowe: The new Forensic Handwriting Mystery Series which features a handwriting analyst in the California Courts…

Sara Rosett: The Mom Zone Mystery Series which features a professional organizer/Air Force wife…

Chris Well: Stand-alone Christian crime thrillers with a lot of humor thrown into the mysteries…

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