2020 Agatha Awards

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Malice Domestic announced the 2020 Agatha Award winners on July 17.

The Agatha Awards honor the “traditional mystery,” books typified by the works of Agatha Christie and others. The genre is loosely defined as mysteries that contain no explicit sex, excessive gore or gratuitous violence, and are not classified as “hard-boiled.” 

THE AGATHA AWARDS (for works published in 2020)

BEST CONTEMPORARY NOVEL

  • All the Devils are Here by Louise Penny (Minotaur)

BEST HISTORICAL NOVEL

  • The Last Mrs. Summers by Rhys Bowen (Berkeley)

BEST FIRST NOVEL

  • Murder at the Mena House by Erica Ruth Neubauer (Kensington)

BEST SHORT STORY

  • “Dear Emily Etiquette” by Barb Goffman (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Sep/Oct)

BEST NON-FICTION

  • Phantom Lady: Hollywood Producer Joan Harrison, the Forgotten Woman Behind Hitchcock by Christina Lane (Chicago Review Press)

BEST CHILDREN’S/YA MYSTERY

  • Holly Hernandez and the Death of Disco by Richard Narvaez (Piñata Books)

[Thanks to Cora Buhlert for the story.]

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3 thoughts on “2020 Agatha Awards”

  2. I might as well put my Malice Domestic joke in here, because where else am I going to? This is a convention mostly attended by women mystery fans. In its early years (it’s in the Washington DC area), it was almost exclusively women. There were generally less than half a dozen guys in a membership of a few hundred.

    So I came up with the following line for a hard-boiled mystery novel: “The place was as desolate as the men’s room at a Malice Domestic.”

  3. I am now happily three chapters into All the Devils are Here; thanks for the link.

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