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Gloria Ferris wins first Bloody Words Light Mystery Award

Gloria Ferris has won the first Bloody Words Light Mystery Award for her novel Cheat the Hangman (Imajin Books).

The Light Mystery award, also known as the Bony Blithe Award, was established by the board of directors of Bloody Words, Canada’s oldest and largest mystery convention, to encourage an appreciation for traditional “light” mysteries. The honours were granted at the annual Bloody Words Banquet in Toronto on June 2. Winners of the annual juried award receive a framed plaque and $1000 cheque.

Ferris started out as a technical writer at a nuclear power development but later turned to crime fiction. She wrote Cheat the Hangman, her first novel, in 2009, and it was a finalist in the Crime Writers of Canada Unhanged Arthur Award that year. Her second novel, Corpse Flower, won that same award in 2010 and will be published by Dundurn Press in 2013.

The other authors shortlisted for the award were:

  • Alan Bradley, A Red Herring without Mustard (Doubleday Canada)
  • Phyllis Smallman, Champagne for Buzzards (McArthur & Company)
  • Mary Jane Maffini, The Busy Woman’s Guide to Murder (Berkley Prime Crime)
  • Janet Bolin, Dire Threads (Berkley Prime Crime)