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Bouchercon XVII

1986 mystery and detective fiction convention

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionOct 2, 2025
Entity authorityQ4949290
Source-derived summary

Bouchercon is an annual convention of creators and devotees of mystery and detective fiction. It is named in honour of writer, reviewer, and editor Anthony Boucher; also the inspiration for the Anthony Awards, which have been issued at the convention since 1986. This page details Bouchercon XVII and the inaugural Anthony Awards ceremony.

Bouchercon

The convention was held in Baltimore, Maryland on October 10, 1986; running for two days until the 12th. The event was chaired by Gail M. Larson, owner of the bookshop "The Butler Did It".

Special Guests

Guest of Honor — Donald E. Westlake

Fan Guest of Honor — Chris Steinbrunner

Toastmaster — Mary Higgins Clark

Anthony Awards

The following list details the awards distributed at the first annual Anthony Awards ceremony.

Novel award

Winner:

Sue Grafton, "B" Is for Burglar

Shortlist:

Sarah Caudwell, The Shortest Way to Hades

John D. MacDonald, The Lonely Silver Rain

Charlotte MacLeod, The Plain Old Man

Sara Paretsky, Killing Orders

First novel award

Winner:

Jonathan Kellerman, When the Bough Breaks

Shortlist:

Susan Kelly, The Gemini Man

Dick Lochte, Sleeping Dog

Robert Reeves, Doubting Thomas

Andrew Vachss, Flood

Paperback original award

Winner:

Nancy Pickard, Say No to Murder

Shortlist:

P.M. Carlson, Murder is Academic

Earl Emerson, Poverty Bay

Kate Green, Shattered Moon

Patrick A. Kelley, Sleightly Murder

Short story award

Winner:

Linda Barnes, "Lucky Penny", from The New Black Mask, No.

Editorial summary

“Bouchercon XVII” enters the record as 1986 mystery and detective fiction convention. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Bouchercon, XVII and mystery can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1986—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Bouchercon, XVII and mystery.
Editorial analysis

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Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 2, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q4949290. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1986.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Bouchercon XVII” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.