Dispatches from Edgar Week

G. Miki Hayden, who won the Edgar for Best Short Story last year, has been filing reports for the Today in Literature site. Her opening report appears here, and she also details last night’s Boat Cruise Agent and Editors party:

Soon I was talking to old friend Charles Todd who, with his mother

Caroline, writes a series about Scotland Yard’s Inspector Ian Rutledge.

No, Charles isn’t one bit British; he’s very Southern and a gentleman.

I asked Charles how the book business was treating him and, his answer

was that he and his mother had enjoyed three hardcover print runs of A

Cold Treachery from Bantam (January 2005) and have moved on to work

with vice president/executive editor Carolyn Marino at HarperCollins.

(Marino will be given the Ellery Queen Award on Thursday night). A Long Shadow by the Todds will be out in March 2006.

Bethesda author Noreen Wald, who writes as Nora Charles, happily told

me she had signed a contract for another two of her Kate Kennedy series

and would soon be forced to travel to Florida where the novels are set,

purely for research-yup, research.

Very soon, the always delightful Mary Higgins Clark presented

her award to a novel that best represents the spirit in which she

herself writes. Underwritten for the last few years by Simon &

Schuster, the Mary Higgins Clark Award this time went to Rochelle Krich

for her novel Grave Endings. Congrats, Rochelle.

And because I don’t want my prophecy to come true, I’d like to echo that congratulations as well.