Bloody Words Light Mystery Award 2012

Gloria Ferris has been awarded the first ever Bloody Words Light Mystery Award for Cheat the Hangman.

Bloody Words is an annual Canadian mystery conference (which might be in Halifax in 2015!). "Bloody Words is Canada’s oldest and largest gathering of mystery readers and authors.Founded in 1999, the conference has become June event to look forward to for people who enjoy genre conventions." And their award goes to a book which as they say "makes us smile". Books under consideration are "Light mysteries which include everything from laugh-out-loud, to gentle humour, to good old fashioned stories with little violence or gore."

Cheat the Hangman (M) by Gloria Ferris

"After inheriting Hammersleigh House from her eccentric great-uncle Patrick, Lyris Pembrooke makes a grisly discovery in the tower room of the Georgian-style mansion―the mummified remains of a child.
To uncover the mystery, Lyris is aided by family psychic Aunt Clematis and Leander, a spirit guide with an attitude, who prefers hanging out with Winston Churchill and John Lennon. While nurturing a new relationship with Blackshore’s Chief of Police, avoiding her controlling ex-husband’s demands, hosting this year’s family reunion and engaging in a psychological battle with the mansion's butler, Lyris is taxed to her limits. During an oppressive summer heat wave, a tear in the gossamer veil that separates past and present forces Lyris to finally accept her psychic destiny. Driven to find out who murdered little Tommy Pembrooke sixty-eight years ago, she begins a journey back in time." publisher

Other books on this year's shortlist were A Red Herring Without Mustard (M) by Alan Bradley, Champagne for Buzzards (M) by Phyllis Smallman, The Busy Woman's Guide to Murder (M) by Mary Jane Maffini, and Dire Threads (M) by Janet Bolin.