I began writing reviews for mysterybooks@about.com, a long-defunct, excellent website. I met Cathy Gallagher there, if you will; she ran the site and for a time, I hosted some really cool author chats on the site and she posted reviews that I wrote. She was the first person to make me think that I could write reviews. I had legit reasons to hesitate. I'm glad she talked me out of those. When about.com decided the site wasn't, well, lucrative enough, the community lost a really good resource. They didn't archive my reviews or chat transcripts so I raced to save everything. (It's worth noting that I met Lee Child on that site as well, when i hosted a chat with him and came away knowing I'd just met someone incredible. This was confirmed the next day. And every day since. And oh those fans!)

Barbara Franchi's creation of Reviewingtheevidence.com was built, in part, on the reviews Cathy offered on the site.

As usual I'm writing far too long an intro to explain something. But I tell you all this as a lead-in. It's become a sort of standing (ok, sitting) joke around here to pretend to be very peeved if the mail does not bring many packages. Lots of packages. Sometimes we've ordered stuff, okay yeah, but we expect books. Lots and lots of books. Daily. Right. It will never stop being thrilling to see a package waiting at the front door. Ever. Today was no exception.

Today's mail brought five books. A couple aren't exactly my thing, but I will try them. I really will. While we were out today, I picked up a used copy of a non-fiction book I think will be a good airplane book when Stu and i fly back east next week. (erp. Yes, I saw the weather today. erp. eek. Um, gulp.) I probably will spend the flight(s) playing games and doing puzzles but just in case...

The reason for today's babble is that one package contained a special edition of a book you should know. It's the special 20th anniversary edition of Peter Lovesey's THE LAST DETECTIVE. A remarkable book by a remarkable man and a remarkable author. It's the first Peter Diamond mystery and it won the Anthony for best novel in a year of super books. I remember the year very well because I was at the Bouchercon where there was somewhat of a false controversy about "ballot stuffing" that was horse puckey. It was a good year, dammit.

As a member of the 1994 Bouchercon committee, I was paying attention to how things were done, as I had not been to a Bouchercon for a while. One thing was pretty obvious; there were people who could see a conspiracy in a fishbowl and their issues were paranoid fluff. It almost hurt the damn award but it didn't. The issue arose because there were six books nominated; five were written by women. I still get crazy angry when i think about the way accusations were tossed around - accusations with nothing to back anyone up but snarkiness. For the record, I read five out of the six nominees. It was a good year for mysteries. Should THE LAST DETECTIVE have won? Um, damn. Yeah, I think so. Although i would not argue if at least one or two of the others had gotten the Anthony.

A terrific book, THE LAST DETECTIVE started off a very promising series for someone already established in the mystery world with the historical Sergeant Cribb books. I only met Peter once or twice - mainly when he, Liza Cody and Michael Levin attended the Seattle Bouchercon and provided great entertainment for everyone. While I haven't liked every book in this series, it's mostly a good one and this book was a great start. Soho Press obviously things so as they're reissuing the "special edition" as a special price. Soho didn't ask me to post this info to my blog; I probably would not have if they'd asked. But hey, it's a remarkably good book and a nice salute to Lovesey and his talent. If you haven't read it, you might want to try it. If you have, maybe dig it out? I do reread this book every so often. It holds up, even if it was published 20 (gasp) years ago.

I guess what I'm saying here is that this is nice. Every house wants to have new stuff to offer us voracious readers. This book did, in fact, come with a copy of the new Peter Diamond, STAGESTRUCK. But I like that they think it's worth doing to offer a book from twenty years ago.