2010 Hammett Prize: The Manual of Detection

The North American Branch of the International Association of Crime Writers announced that The Manual of Detection, by Jedediah Berry (Penguin), has won the 2010 Hammett Prize for “literary excellence in the field of crime writing.” Berry received his award during a special ceremony at the Bloody Words X Mystery Conference in Toronto, Canada.

Nominees for the Hammett Prize included Bury Me Deep by Megan Abbott (Simon & Schuster), Devil’s Garden by Ace Atkins (Putnam), The Long Fall by Walter Mosley (Riverhead), and The Way Home by George Pelecanos (Little, Brown).

Jedediah received a bronze trophy, designed by West Coast sculptor, Peter Boiger. Congratulations, Jedediah!

Jedediah Berry wins Crawford Award

Jedediah Berry has been named the winner of this year’s William L. Crawford Award for his first novel The Manual of Detection. The award, presented annually at the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, is designated for a new fantasy writer whose first book appeared the previous year. This year’s conference will be March 17-21 in Orlando, FL.

The Manual of Detective has also been considered for awards in the Mystery Community and has been reviewed as a whodunit. I think it's both.

Laurie R. King will be appearing with Jedediah Berry on February 13 (SciFi in San Francisco), The Variety Preview Room, 582 Market St. @ Montgomery, 1st floor of The Hobart Bldg. Doors open at 6:00PM,Cash Bar - Proceeds to Variety. Readings begin at 7:00PM Followed by Q & A moderated by Terry Bisson. Signing and schmoozing in the lounge afterwards

The nominators for The Crawford award also shortlisted Deborah Biancotti’s story collection A Book of Endings, Kari Sperring’s novel Living with Ghosts, and Ali Shaw’s novel The Girl With Glass Feet, and wanted to commend two other authors whose works were ineligible this year but were highly regarded: Robert V.S. Redick, whose The Red Wolf Conspiracy appeared in 2008 and whose The Ruling Sea appears in 2010, and Michal Ajvaz, whose The Other City originally appeared in Czech in 1993 but was first translated into English, by Gerald Turner, in 2009.