Taylor, Barnstrom Secure Wolfe Approval

In Reference to Murder reports that Vermont author Sarah Stewart Taylor has won the Nero Award for her 2024 novel, Agony Hill (Minotaur), which introduced series detective Franklin Warren. The Nero is given out annually by the Wolfe Pack, a New York-based literary society, to “the best American mystery written in the tradition of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe stories.”

Additionally, news comes that “The Troubling Mr. Truelove,” by Pete Barnstrom (to be published in the July 2026 issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine), has picked up this year’s Black Orchid Novella Award, sponsored by the Wolfe Pack and AHMM “to celebrate the novella format popularized by Stout.” Several other short works were given Black Orchid honorable mentions:  Paul A. Barra’s “Beauty and Buford,” Craig H. Bowlsby’s “Last Train to Medicine Hat,” Libby Cudmore’s “Piano Man,” Tom Larsen’s “The Sheriff of Alabama Street,” Josh Pachter’s “Melancholia,” and Daniel Peyton’s “A Noir Satyr: Follow That MacGuffin.” Congratulations to them all!