Annal:2000 Macavity Award for Best Nonfiction

Ross Macdonald: A Biography

Tom Nolan

• 2000 Macavity-Nonfiction winner
• 2000 Anthony-Critical nominee
• 2000 Edgar-Critical/Biography nominee
• Score: 22.5

When he died in 1983, Ross Macdonald was the best-known and most highly regarded crime-fiction writer in America. Long considered the rightful successor to the mantles of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald and his Lew Archer-novels were hailed by The New York Times as “the finest series of detective novels ever written by an American.”

Now, in the first full-length biography of this extraordinary and influential writer, a much fuller picture emerges of a man to whom hiding things came as second nature. While it was no secret that Ross Macdonald was the pseudonym of Kenneth Millar—a Santa Barbara man married to another good mystery writer, Margaret Millar—his official biography was spare. Drawing on unrestricted access to the Kenneth and Margaret Millar Archives, on more than forty years of correspondence, and on hundreds of interviews with those who knew Millar well, author Tom Nolan has done a masterful job of filling in the blanks between the psychologically complex novels and the author’s life—both secret and overt.

Ross Macdonald came to crime-writing…

A Taste of Murder: Diabolically Delicious Recipes from Contemporary Mystery Writers

Jo Grossman, Robert Weibezahl

• 2000 Macavity-Nonfiction nominee
• 1999 Agatha–Nonfiction nominee
• Score: 12.5

Recipes from a talented corps of writers who know how to cook, with delicious anecdotes, some sound advice on where and when to eat what you’ve just learned how to cook, and even recipes for foods you’ve never heard of. Some contributors are Lilian Jackson Braun, Donald E. Westlake, Anne Perry, Tony Hillerman, Carol O’Connell, Parnell Hall and, of course, Anthony Bourdain.

Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle

Daniel Stashower

• 2000 Edgar-Critical/Biography winner
• 1999 Agatha–Nonfiction winner
• 2000 Anthony-Critical nominee
• 2000 Macavity-Nonfiction nominee
• Score: 32.5

This fresh, compelling biography examines the extraordinary life and strange contrasts of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the struggling provincial doctor who became the most popular storyteller of his age. From his youthful exploits aboard a whaling ship to his often stormy friendships with such figures as Harry Houdini and George Bernard Shaw, Conan Doyle lived a life as gripping as one of his adventures. Exhaustively researched and elegantly written, Teller of Tales sets aside many myths and misconceptions to present a vivid portrait of the man behind the leg of Baker Street, with a particular emphasis on the Psychic Crusade that dominated his final years-the work that Conan Doyle himself felt to be “the most important thing in the world.