Mystery Writers of America (MWA) announced the recipients of its special awards. The board chose Michael Connelly and Joanne Fluke as the 2023 Grand Masters, the 2023 Raven Award recipients are Crime Writers of Color and Eddie Muller, and The Strand Magazine will receive the Ellery Queen Award. They will accept their awards at the 77th Annual Edgar Awards Ceremony, which will be held April 27, 2023, at the Marriott Marquis Times Square in New York City.
“Mystery Writers of America is thrilled to announce the recipients of our special awards for 2023. It’s always such a joy to recognize deserving individuals for their outstanding contributions to our genre. Michael Connelly and Joanne Fluke have contributed so much to the genre through their hard work and amazing careers, and they will continue to influence and inspire future generations of writers long after they receive their awards,” said MWA Executive Vice President Greg Herren.
MWA’s Grand Master Award represents the pinnacle of achievement in mystery writing and was established to acknowledge important contributions to this genre, as well as for a body of work that is both significant and of consistent high quality. 
Connelly’s nomination cited Bosch’s mantra from the first in the series, The Black Echo, to the present day also sums up Connelly’s approach to his craft: “Everybody counts or nobody counts,” adding “What those five words have meant to the readers of mystery fiction in the past 37 years can’t be overstated.”
On being notified of the honor, Connelly said, “All I can say is I’m overwhelmed. When you look at the list of previous Grand Masters you see every writer that ever inspired you. So overwhelming. I first got published thirty years ago and I remember everything about it. To think that that guy of thirty years ago would end up with this honor is really quite amazing. I am truly honored.”
Connelly is the author of 31 novels, including multiple #1 New York Times bestsellers. His books, which include the Harry Bosch series and Lincoln Lawyer series, have sold more than 74 million copies worldwide. Connelly is a former newspaper reporter who has won numerous awards for his journalism and his novels and is the executive producer of both Bosch TV series and The Lincoln Lawyer. He spends his time in California and Florida.
Fluke launched her series 21 years ago with Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder (2001). Since then, she has written 30 Hannah Swenson Mysteries, the most recent being 2022’s Caramel Pecan Roll Murder. The series also has the distinction of being turned into five hugely successful Murder, She Baked films for the Hallmark Channel. Fluke has also written suspense, thriller, and romance novels under her own name and pseudonyms. Like Hannah Swensen, she was born and raised in a small town in rural Minnesota, but now lives in sunny Southern California.
On learning of the honor, Fluke said, “I am very grateful to be mentioned in the same breath as such legends as Agatha Christie, Ellery Queen and John le Carré . . . Speaking of breathing, I'm very glad I still am!”
Previous Grand Masters include Laurie R. King, Charlaine Harris, Jeffery Deaver, Barbara Neely, Martin Cruz Smith, William Link, Peter Lovesey, Walter Mosley, Lois Duncan, James Ellroy, Robert Crais, Ken Follett, Sara Paretsky, James Lee Burke, Sue Grafton, Stephen King, Ira Levin, Mary Higgins Clark, Lawrence Block, P.D. James, Ellery Queen, Daphne du Maurier, Alfred Hitchcock, Graham Greene, and Agatha Christie, to name a few.
The Raven Award recognizes outstanding achievement in the mystery field outside the realm of creative writing. For 2023, Mystery Writers of America selected Crime Writers of Color (CWoC), “an association of authors seeking to present a strong and united voice for members who self-identify as crime/mystery writers from traditionally underrepresented racial, cultural and ethnic backgrounds,” and Eddie Muller, host of the Turner Classic Movies series Noir Alley and founder and president of the Film Noir Foundation.
Speaking for CWoC, cofounders Gigi Pandian, Kellye Garrett, and Walter Mosley wrote, “When we first started talking about the idea that became Crime Writers of Color, we never imagined the small informal group would become such a big and thriving community in just a few years. Our goal was always to create a safe and supportive space for fellow writers of color to network and thrive. So, to know that the group is making a positive impact in the mystery community as a whole is so gratifying, and to be recognized by MWA in our fifth year is such an honor! We thank you on behalf of all our 350-plus members who are in all stages of their career."
Muller is best known as the host of the Turner Classic Movies series Noir Alley, a weekly showcase for the best of crime cinema and for his lively, erudite intros and outros to these movies, in which he always foregrounds writers—novelists and screenwriters both—in the conversation. At the Film Noir Foundation (FNF), which makes restoring and preserving films from around the globe a priority, Muller has personally saved many motion pictures from disappearing, among them acclaimed titles like The Prowler, written by blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, and Too Late for Tears.
In response to learning he would receive the Raven Award, Muller wrote, “I was completely surprised! The crime and mystery fiction community—writers, editors, booksellers, and readers—is a wonderfully warm, supportive, and generous tribe and I’m happy to have been a small part of it for the past 20 years. Having my eclectic endeavors rate a Raven—what a delightful surprise, and what an honor! I'm extremely grateful to MWA.”
Previous Raven Award recipients include Lesa Holstine, Malice Domestic, Left Coast Crime, Marilyn Stasio, The Raven Bookstore, Sisters in Crime, and Oline Cogdill.
The Ellery Queen Award was established in 1983 to honor “outstanding writing teams and outstanding people in the mystery-publishing industry.” This year the Board chose to honor The Strand Magazine, a bimonthly periodical known as much for its incisive articles about the mystery world and its practitioners and penetrating interviews with top authors like James Patterson and Lee Child, as for unearthing lost short stories penned by now-dead literary greats, such as a 600-word short story by Raymond Chandler, written in the 1950s toward the end of his life, as well as the forgotten fiction of such giants as Dashiell Hammett, William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams and H.G. Wells.
Congratulations to the authors who were honored. What books were nominated? Which ones were winners?
ReplyDeleteMystery novels cover all sorts of evils including thrillers from the espionage genre such as those down to earth, raw and noir, often curious fact based Cold War thrillers you can never put down. I refer to Bill Browder’s Red Notice, Bill Fairclough's Beyond Enkription in The Burlington Files series and Ben Macintyre’s The Spy and the Traitor. The latter was lauded by none other than John le Carré as "the best true spy story I have ever read".
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, if you don't find these mysterious then MI6 or the CIA may want to hire you to solve some of their mysteries. After all, the most famous of all real spies, Oleg Gordievsky who is held responsible for collapsing the Berlin Wall, was not only Macintyre's "Spy and Traitor" but also an acquaintance of Fairclough's handler, Colonel Alan Pemberton CVO MBE. Maybe that’s why Beyond Enkription is considered to be compulsory reading for espionage aficionados. Bill Fairclough was one of Pemberton’s People as explained in an intriguing brief News Article dated 31 October 2022 in TheBurlingtonFiles website.