Female Sleuths Sweep 2024 Anthony Awards

Winners of this year’s Anthony Awards, announced this weekend at the Bouchercon mystery convention, include some female sleuths with whom you may already be familiar:

Best First Novel: Mother-Daughter Murder Night by Nina Simon

This charming debut mystery from author Nina Simon features a trio of stubborn women: mother Lana Rubicon, daughter Beth, and granddaughter Jack. Lana is a high-powered LA real estate mogul who finally meets her match in cancer, which forces her to convalesce many miles away at Beth and Jack’s home in a sleepy coastal town. Lana, not surprisingly, is bored, until the teen-aged Jack discovers a body and becomes a suspect. Lana and Beth, who are basically estranged until Lana’s cancer diagnosis, must put aside their many differences as they work to find the killer and prove Jack’s innocence.

Mother-Daughter Murder Night already tops a number of “best of” mystery lists and was nominated for and/or won a number of awards. It’s a well-written mystery and I particularly enjoyed the perspectives of three very different women. Highly recommend.

Best Paperback/Ebook/Audiobook: Hide by Tracy Clark

The debut of a new series from Clark that features Chicago detective Harriet Foster, who’s returning to work after a brief leave following the apparent suicide of her longtime partner. She’s soon swept up in the hunt for a serial killer who likes to mark his victims, young women with red hair, with red lipstick. Meanwhile, she’s got a new partner and a new boss, and she’s still trying to understand what prompted her partner to end her life.

I’m a huge fan of Clark’s work, having already devoured the four books in her Cass Raines’ series about a cop-turned-PI, also in the Windy City. But I’ve yet to read Hide as my local library hasn’t acquired it yet. I’ve asked for it to be added to the collection, but I suspect I won’t have the patience to wait and will purchase it instead from Bookshop.org.

(Note: I typically link to Amazon.com because the site include the first few pages as samples, but I prefer to buy from Bookshop to support independent bookstores.)

Best Children’s/Young Adult: Enola Holmes and the Mark of the Mongoose by Nancy Springer

This is book 9 in the series starring the intrepid younger sister of Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes. In this entry, it’s May of 1890 and Enola is pursuing her education “as a scientific perditorian, a finder of lost things and people.” Then a young American publisher disappears in London and his friend, author Rudyard Kipling, turns up at Enola’s office — still labeled with the name of a fictitious male detective — looking for help. But when he realizes the young Enola is actually the investigator, he refuses to hire her and goes to brother Sherlock. This determines Enola to find the missing man herself.

If you’re not familiar with the Enola Holmes books, you may have seen the popular Netflix series based on Springer’s work.

Other winners of the 2024 Anthonys include:

Bouchercon is a non-profit organization named in honor of mystery author, editor and critic Anthony Boucher. The first convention was held in 1970. Learn more about Bouchercon here.

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