Speaking of mysteries, today is the 198th birthday of the strange genius considered to be the father of the detective story and crime fiction. Rather than leave a bottle of cognac and three roses on Edgar Allan Poe’s Baltimore grave like the city’s famous and mysterious Poe Toaster (memorably depicted in Laura Lippman’s In a Strange City), the Mystery Writers of America chose to commemorate the day by announcing their nominees for the 2007 Edgar Allen Poe Awards, honoring the best in mystery fiction and nonfiction published in 2006. 

Best novel nominees include:

The nominees for a Best First Novel by An American Author are:

Sarah Weinman’s mystery blog, Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind, offers an insightful analysis of what the nominations mean, pointing out that ” If there’s a trend, it’s toward intelligent fiction from outside our normal boundaries, be it historical, cultural or psychological”. Indeed of three of the best novel nominees—literary novelist Louis Bayard, Chocolat author Joanne Harris, and travel writer Jason Goodwin— would not be considered  mystery authors in the traditional sense. Maybe the  strict barriers that have placed genre fiction like mystery in a literary ghetto are starting to break down. Maybe like Edgar Allen Poe, mysteries can finally be judged on their own literary merits as fiction worthy of serious attention.