Reflections on the 2024 Edgar Awards

I never thought I’d win.

I didn’t dare to think about it at all from the moment I got the news that Love Me Fierce in Danger: The Life of James Ellroy had been nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Biographical/Critical Book. However, when I took my seat in the banquet room at the Marriott Marquis Hotel, it suddenly occurred to me that I might win, in fact, that I would win, and I’d better prepare a few words.

The Marriott is a beautiful venue with world-famous Schindler Lifts (or perhaps I should say elevators). In the lobby, you input your intended floor into a keypad. You are then directed to an allotted glass elevator which takes you up to your floor, at dizzying speed, without any stops along the way.

After a champagne reception for nominees, we were led to our table where I was delighted to find that I was seated next to a fellow nominee – Colson Whitehead. Whitehead is a two-time Pulitzer winner, and for most of the evening people were swarming around him vying for his attention. He handled it all with impeccable charm and grace. I got to monopolize his attention through sheer luck of the logistical draw. I poured him a very large glass of wine, and he joked that I was trying to get him drunk in case he had to give an acceptance speech. As it happens he didn’t win, and he didn’t get tipsy either.

When my category was read out, Colson gave me a thumbs-up as my wife Diana let out a supportive whoop. I kept my acceptance speech short but remembered to thank everyone on my list. The best, and funniest, speech of the night was by R.L. Stine who was named a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America:

One of the strange factors of being a writer is that some of your best friendships are through correspondence. You rarely get a chance to meet these friends in person. That changed when I got to shake the hand of Hard Case Crime founder Charles Ardai, who had been very supportive throughout the research phase of the book. While I was taking official winner photos, Di wangled me an invitation to Otto Penzler’s post-ceremony party at the Brazen Tavern. On the walk over I swapped biographer’s war stories with John Glatt. When we got there I chatted, or perhaps I should say shouted (as it was cacophonously noisy), with Harlan Coben and Katherine Hall Page, who had also been named Grand Master. The person I really wanted to talk to was Penzler.

There have been some recent moves to cancel Otto. I can say without hesitation that they are doomed to fail. He is a God at the MWA and the Edgars, which he has been attending since the 1970s. The first thing he said to me was ‘I hate you’… Love Me Fierce in Danger had been pitted against a book published by Penzler’s Mysterious Press. I replied that my win was his fault: he was so candid with me about his time with Ellroy, and it had greatly benefitted the biography. ‘Always being candid is one of my faults’ he retorted with his trademark curmudgeonly charm.

And then the evening was over and it was more or less time to go home. We said a sad farewell to New York City, but with the pleasant knowledge that one day it would draw us back. Our time there had been typically dramatic. Streets near our Harlem residence had been closed off due to student protests against the Israel-Palestine War. Around three hundred students were arrested at Columbia and CUNY. There was a large police presence on the streets.

The only trouble we had with the law came when I was caught trying to smuggle a disembodied head through Customs! Luckily the charming Customs official (that’s usually an oxymoron) took it all in great humour.