Annal:1998 Macavity Award for Best Nonfiction

Deadly Women: The Woman Mystery Reader's Indispensable Companion

Jan Grape, Dean James, Ellen Nehr

• 1998 Macavity-Nonfiction winner
• 1998 Agatha–Nonfiction nominee
• Score: 16.48

From Agatha Christie to Murder, She Wrote, women have occupied a central and honored place in the mystery scene. Containing articles about female writers past and present, including Mary Higgins Clark, Patricia Cornwell, J.A. Jance, Sara Paretsky, Marcia Muller and others, this book celebrates women’s contributions to crime fiction.

“G” Is for Grafton: The World of Kinsey Millhone

Natalie Hevener Kaufman, Carol McGinnis Kay

• 1998 Edgar-Critical/Biography winner
• 1998 Macavity-Nonfiction nominee
• Score: 16.48

She is Kinsey Millhone, and for millions of readers (not a few of whom have named their newborns after her), she is far more than a creature of fiction. For millions of us, she is us (or how we’d like to be), and that is a large part of her appeal and our loyalty. Now for every reader who has ever shared Kinsey Millhone’s adventures comes this lively, informative look into her life, her work, her thoughts.

With the cooperation of Kinsey’s creator, Sue Grafton, who provided unprecedented access to her working journals, authors Natalie Hevener Kaufman and Carol McGinnis Kay have created a fully dimensional biography that will answer every question readers have ever had. It’s all here in a feast for fans that is full of facts and includes such features as time lines, maps, floor plans, case logs, and photos. But it’s also a revealing journey into the mind and work habits of Kinsey’s creator. You’ll learn why Sue Grafton chose to write detective fiction and how she responds to runaway plot lines and unruly characters—and even what titles she has discarded in the series, what…

Guilty Parties: A Mystery Lover's Companion

Ian Ousby

• 1998 Macavity-Nonfiction nominee
• 1997 Agatha–Nonfiction nominee
• Score: 12.48

Guilty Parties tells the whole story, accompanied by dozens of special features packed with information to surprise even the most avid fan. Classic puzzles like the locked-room mystery are analyzed and the Ten Commandments for the detective novel 1930s-style defined. Want to know what bean-shooters, roscoes, Chicago overcoat, nippers and buttons are? Look them up in the hard-boiled dictionary. Discover the stories of pulp fiction and film noir, or read about today’s feisty female private eyes. Complete with a world round-up of current crime novels, full lists of Edgars, Daggers and other prizes, a detailed chronology and ideas for further reading, here is the perfect guide to crime and mystery writing.

The Napoleon of Crime: The Life and Times of Adam Worth, Master Thief

Ben Macintyre

• 1998 Macavity-Nonfiction nominee
• Score: 6.48

He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson.
He is the organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city.
He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker….
—Sherlock Holmes on Professor Moriarty in “The Final Problem”

The Victorian era’s most infamous thief, Adam Worth was the original Napoleon of crime. Suave, cunning Worth learned early that the best way to succeed was to steal. And steal he did.

Following a strict code of honor, Worth won the respect of Victorian society. He also aroused its fear by becoming a chilling phantom, mingling undetected with the upper classes, whose valuables he brazenly stole. His most celebrated heist: Gainsborough’s grand portrait of the Duchess of Devonshire—ancestor of Diana, Princess of Wales—a painting Worth adored and often slept with for twenty years.

With a brilliant gang that included “Piano” Charley, a jewel thief, train robber, and playboy, and “the Scratch” Becker, master forger, Worth secretly ran operations from New York to London, Paris, and South…