Edgar Awards, The Top Prize In Mystery Writing
Reprinted San Diego Times by John Wilkens
The just-announced nominations for the Edgar Awards, the top prize in mystery writing, include a book by La Jollan Jesse Kellerman that is in large part a spoof of the genre.
Kellerman is one of seven finalists in the “Best Novel” category for “Potboiler,” which came out last summer. The nominations were announced Wednesday.
The book is a parody of mystery thrillers, complete with absurd plot developments, funny names and phony celebrity-author blurbs: “Of all the books I have read this year, this is one of them.”
It tells the story of Arthur Pfefferkorn, a once-promising literary novelist and college professor, and William de Vallee, a friend whose mystery books are best-sellers and who is lost at sea as “Potboiler” opens. Pfefferkorn comes across an unpublished de Vallee manuscript. What will he do with it?
In a U-T San Diego interview in July, Kellerman, the author of four traditional mysteries and the son of best-selling writers Jonathan and Faye Kellerman, said he wanted to cut loose this time. “My previous books are so grim, and that’s really not me at all.”
Tucked amid the goat jokes and satire about academia, though, is a novel that asks big questions about what constitutes a true work of art.
The Edgar Awards, named for Edgar Allan Poe, are given by the Mystery Writers of America. They honor the best in mystery fiction, nonfiction and television writing. The winners will be announced in May at the organization’s 67th annual banquet in New York City.
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