A Death in the Family

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The New York Sun

While the World Mystery Convention, more familiarly known as Bouchercon, is generally a happy event, it was saddened this year as it became the venue for saying goodbye to one of the major figures in the mystery writing community.


Dennis Lynds, better known under his primary pseudonym of Michael Collins, died at the age of 81 on August 19, after suffering for some time with gastrointestinal problems. Although not as famous as his friend and mentor, Ross Macdonald, he wrote more than 80 novels and 200 short stories. He was awarded a lifetime achievement award from the Private Eye Writers of America in 1988 and the Marlowe Award for his body of work by the Southern California chapter of the Mystery Writers of America in 2003.


His most successful series featured Dan Fortune, a one-armed private detective who appeared in 20 hardboiled novels, beginning with the winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best First Mystery of 1967, “Act of Fear.” When these and other of his excellent books are remembered, it will be for their sociological observations and sensitivity. As reviewer and Macdonald biographer Tom Nolan pointed out, Lynds employed the detective novel “to explore serious social and cultural themes.”


Lynds had been married for many years to Gayle Lynds, one of the world’s top female writers of espionage and adventure, a sub-genre most frequently left to male authors. She also co-founded (with David Morrell) the International Thriller Writers.


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The Bouchercon, held in Chicago this year, did provide good news, too, at least for the fortunate and worthy winners of mystery awards. Members of Mystery Readers International, which as nearly as I can figure out is an organization comprised of subscribers to Mystery Readers Journal, presents Macavity Awards in four categories each year.


Macavity, of course, is the name of the mystery cat in T.S. Eliot’s “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats,” described as “the Napoleon of Crime,” a sobriquet previously applied to Professor Moriarty in the Sherlock Holmes saga. While I have no affection for cat mysteries, which are mainly modest little books with much about which to be modest, I’m happy to make an exception for Eliot’s delightful volume.


The winner for Best Novel this year is the admirable Ken Bruen’s “The Killing of the Tinkers” (St. Martin’s). Also nominated were Robin Burcell’s “Cold Case” (Avon), Jeff Lindsay’s “Darkly Dreaming Dexter” (Doubleday), Margaret Maron’s “High Coun try Fall” (Mysterious Press), T. Jefferson Parker’s “California Girl” (HarperCollins) and Peter Robinson’s “Playing With Fire” (Morrow).


Sometimes I think I’m as fussy as Goldilocks, but every one of these is a pleasure.


Winner of Best First Mystery is Harley Jane Kozak’s “Dating Dead Men” (Doubleday), which I haven’t read but thought you’d like to know about anyway. And, with a title like that, how bad could it be?


The nonfiction winner is “Forensics for Dummies” by D.P. Lyle, M.D. (Wiley), which I am as likely to read as I am to win the decathlon in the 2008 Olympics. I just can’t stand all that icky stuff. That it beat out Leslie Klinger’s staggering achievement, “The Annotated Sherlock Holmes” (W.W. Norton) makes as much sense to me as the Eugubine Tables of Gubbio.


Selected as best short story was Terence Faherty’s “The Widow of Slane” from Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (March/April 2004 issue).


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It’s always fun to quote nuggets of wisdom by mystery and suspense writers. How about this from Len Deighton (from his 1985 novel “London Match”): “The tragedy of marriage is that while all women marry thinking that their men will change, all men marry believing their wives will never change. Both are invariably disappointed.”


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At another Bouchercon award ceremony, the North American Branch of the International Association of Crime Writers named Chuck Hogan’s “Prince of Thieves” (Scribner) the winner of the annual Hammett Prize for a work of literary excellence in the field of crime writing. Also nominated were John Katzenbach’s “The Madman’s Tale” (Ballantine), T. Jefferson Parker’s “California Girl” (HarperCollins), Peter Robinson’s “Playing with Fire” (Morrow), and Colin Harrison’s “The Havana Room” (Scribner).You know what’s cool? Mr. Harrison is Chuck Hogan’s editor at Scribner. As they would sing at Disneyland, “It’s a small world.”


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Let George Bernard Shaw have the last word (which would please him immensely, were he still alive): “When we want to read of the deeds that are done for love, whither do we turn? To the murder column; and there we are rarely disappointed.”



Mr. Penzler is the proprietor of the Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan and the series editor of the annual “Best American Mystery Stories.” He can be reached at openzler@nysun.com.


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