Holmes titles score Edgar Allan Poe Awards

Which work won a 2007 Edgar Allan Poe award for best play? Elementary, my dear reader! It was Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure, by Steven Dietz.

That wasn't the only Edgar award winner with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional detective in the title. E.J. Wagner's nonfiction book about the history of forensic science, The Science of Sherlock Holmes: From Baskerville Hall to the Valley of Fear, won for best critical/biographical book.

Jason Goodwin's The Janissary Tree was named best novel. And the winner for best first novel by an American author also was revealed. Whowunit? Alex Berenson, for The Faithful Spy.

The Mystery Writers of America presented the Edgars, honouring the best in mystery fiction, nonfiction, television and film, at a banquet on Thursday.

The other winners were:

• Paperback original - Snakeskin Shamisen, by Naomi Hirahara.
• Fact crime, Manhunt -The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer, by James L. Swanson.
• Short story -"The Home Front," in Death Do Us Part, by Charles Ardai.
• Best juvenile- Room One: A Mystery or Two, by Andrew Clements.
• Best young adult - Buried, by Robin Merrow MacCready.
• Best television episode teleplay -Life on Mars Episode 1, by Matthew Graham.
• Best television feature/miniseries teleplay -The Wire, Season 4, teleplay by Ed Burns, Kia Corthron, Dennis Lehane, David Mills, Eric Overmyer, George Pelecanos, Richard Prise, David Simon and William F. Zorzi.
• Best motion picture screenplay - The Departed, screenplay by William Monahan.

The Mystery Writers of America, a New York-based organization for mystery and crime writers, fans and professionals related to the genre, has given the Edgars annually since 1946. Previous winners have included Agatha Christie, Raymond Chandler, Tony Hillerman and Elmore Leonard.

Poe, considered the patron saint of MWA, was a writer of poems, short stories and detective fiction known for his macabre tales.