When The Janissary Tree won the Edgar Award for Best Novel in NYC last year, I was in Glastonbury. This year, it’s The Snake Stone which has been nominated for a Macavity Award for the best Historical Mystery and the publishers – FSG/ Picador – are very sweetly shipping me out to Baltimore. The full list of nominees is here http://www.mysteryreaders.org/macavity.html
Win or lose, it will be fun to be there – especially as I’m appearing on Saturday morning, the 11th October, on a panel chaired by Janet Rudolph. It’s called ‘Been Around the World’ and I’ll be talking alongside Charles Benoit (India, Thailand, Egypt), Arnaldur Indridason (Iceland) and Michael Stanley (Africa).
Barbara Peters will be getting a Lifetime Achievement Award – she runs the Poisoned Pen bookshop in Phoenix, and a huge lot more.
Hello Jason. Congratulations on the Macavity nomination – and on this blog, which I discovered thanks to the mention at the back of The Bellini Card. I finished the book last night in an Italian restaurant here in Paris. My other half is in New York covering the fashion shows (we’re both journalists) so the adventures of Yashim saved me from a rather lonely Saturday evening.
I’m thoroughly enjoying the series. I’ve been to Istanbul a few times (last time I stayed at the Pera Palas – what a treat!) and adore the atmosphere of the place. I was worried that Yashim might become a caricature once he was taken out of his natural environment, but you pulled off his Venice excursion beautifully. And of course we got to see more of Palewski. Plus a veiled reference to Holmes: nice!
I’ll be back in Istanbul in November for a conference so I will take Lords of the Horizon with me. Congratulations again and keep up the good work.