Every year, The Strand Magazine celebrates authors and their books in the Critics Awards, naming winners in three top categories: Best Mystery Novel, Best Debut Mystery Novel and Best Mystery Audiobook. Lifetime Achievement Awards and Publisher of the Year are also awarded annually to standout figures in the industry.
Recognizing excellence in the field of mystery fiction and publishing, The Strand Critics Awards are judged by an ever-changing group of book critics and journalists. This year, the awards were announced via a virtual ceremony held on Wednesday, Jan 10, hosted by bestselling author Hank Phillippi Ryan and Strand Magazine’s managing editor, Andrew F. Gulli.
This Year’s Winners
Alex Segura, in his first nomination for Best Novel, took home the top prize for Secret Identity (Flatiron Books). Alexa Segura spoke about, “Those moments when we’re writing the book, when we wonder if anyone’s going to read it. You have to experience that before you get to the finished product that hopefully people will read, and love and it’s really been a wonderful journey to see the response to Secret Identity.”
Stacy Willingham won the Best Debut Novel Award for her riveting thriller A Flicker in the Dark. Willingham expressed her admiration to all the other nominees, “I’m a huge fan of your works and it’s just an honor to even be invited here and be among your company.”
The Strand launched a new award for Best Mystery audiobook, the winner of which was Nita Prose for The Maid (Random House Audio). Nita’s editor Hilary Teeman was on hand to accept the award on her behalf, and spoke of reading the original manuscript at the start of the COVID pandemic, “…I picked it up and I couldn’t put it down.”
Lee Child and James Lee Burke Receive Lifetime Achievement Awards
Adding to an already impressive list of awards, James Lee Burke received The Strand’s Lifetime Achievement Award. After finding early publishing success in the 1960s and early 70s, Burke’s works were largely ignored for over a decade. However, thanks to his undeniable versatility and talent, and the persistence of his legendary literary agent, Philip Spitzer, Burke’s 1986 novel The Lost Get-Back Boogie was finally published to critical acclaim and a Pulitzer Prize nomination. Since then, he hasn’t looked back. In a career spanning six decades, he has received continuous praise and comparisons to an illustrious set of authors ranging from Sartre to Hemingway.
James Lee Burke, speaking from Montana said, “It was a long long wilderness. One of my books was rejected 111 times, Phil Spitzer (my agent) had it in circulation for 9 years. And it was actually vandalized by some. I’m not making this up. They stabbed it (my manuscript) with ball point pens.” Burke then spoke about the mystical side of creativity, “I really feel that every artist would share this with me that it comes from somewhere else… it was a hand that came from somewhere else and told me, ‘you’re going to write and you’re going to write, and write and write.’”
Lee Child also accepted a Lifetime Achievement Award. After writing for television for many years, Lee Child turned his talents to novels. The result? A highly successful career as one of the most popular thriller authors of the last 25 years. His very first novel, The Killing Floor (1997), hit the best-sellers lists and marked the debut of Jack Reacher, who quickly became one of the most iconic action heroes of the thriller genre. The Jack Reacher books have sold millions of copies in dozens of languages around the world and have been successfully adapted into blockbuster films.
“I should be giving an award to all of you … I’ve been doing this now for what, 25 … nearly 30 years. And single best thing about it is the company of people I’ve met through my books,” Child said. “Readers and writers are in my opinion, by definition, the most interesting people on the planet and it has been my absolute joy and privilege to have spent decades in your company.”
Past lifetime achievement award-winners include Walter Mosley, Heather Graham, Joyce Carol Oates, J.A. Jance, Sandra Brown, Nelson DeMille, Jeffery Deaver, Alexander McCall Smith, and Elmore Leonard.
Parts of this article originally appeared on The Strand Magazine website.
