Women Rule! Briefly, Anyway

Wow, how time flies. In mid-January, we listed the nominees for the 2009 Edgar Awards, noting that the winners would be announced on April 30. Which just happens to be this coming Thursday!

To help commemorate this occasion, Xavier Lechard, the French author of the blog At the Villa Rose, has begun what he promises will be “a six-part series on the Edgars focusing on the top prize, the Best Novel Award, over its half-century of existence.” The opening installment of that series was posted earlier today. It focuses on the award’s founding in the 1950s, a period that Lechard observes was

arguably if somewhat counter-intuitively the most female-friendly period in all Edgar history; four out of the seven winners of the decade belong to the so-called fairer sex. The same phenomenon is found at the nomination level. Female authors outnumber their male colleagues in 1956 while both 1957 nominees are women. Only in 1958 do men (temporarily) take the advantage. This “Golden Age” of female mystery writing proved to be short-lived, though, and was followed by a long and severe setback as psychological suspense made way for grittier fare ... written by men.

Stay tuned for future installments.