At last night’s Edgar Awards, one of our favorite mysteries, The Last Child by John Hart (Minotaur Books) won for Best Novel (the full list of winners is available here).

It’s now available in trade paperback.

The Last Child John Hart Retail Price: $14.99 Paperback: 432 pages Publisher: Minotaur Books – (2010-03-09) ISBN / EAN: 0312642369 / 9780312642365

Macmillan Audio; UNABR; 9781427206664; $39.95
BBC Audio; UNABR; 9780792763789 : 110.95

Best First Novel went to another Minotaur title, In the Shadow of Gotham by Stefanie Pintoff. The trade paperback edition will be available in a couple of weeks.

In the Shadow of Gotham Stefanie Pintoff Retail Price: $14.99 Paperback: 400 pages Publisher: Minotaur Books – (2010-05-11) ISBN / EAN: 0312628129 / 9780312628123

Potential winners were treated to a harsh dose of reality from the Wall Street Journal yesterday in an article that points out “the first Edgar is often the last” (somewhat amelioriated by the fact that John Hart proved them wrong this time. It’s his second win, after 2008 for Down River);

A perusal of the group’s online database found little overlap between debut authors who have won best first novel (including Patricia Cornwell, Michael Connelly, James Patterson and Richard North Patterson) and seasoned mystery writers who have won best novel (among them Dick Francis, Tony Hillerman, Elmore Leonard, John le Carre, Donald E. Westlake and Raymond Chandler).

Nonetheless, not bad company to be in.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 30th, 2010 at 9:06 am and is filed under Awards, Mystery & Detective. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.