Description

This history of mystery fandom is called The Heirs of Anthony Boucher because it was to Boucher's mystery review column in the New York Times Book Review that fans turned, before what Lachman calls "The Fan Revolution" was launched in 1967. In a literary domino effect, Boucher's column led to the first fan magazine, The Armchair Detective, and Boucher encouraged and reviewed it. Boucher's sudden death in 1968 was a shock to mystery fans, but everything they have done since is part of Anthony Boucher's legacy.

About the Author

Marv Lachman has been reading mysteries since 1943, when he was eleven. He won Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award for Best Critical/Biographical Work of 1976, for Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection (with co-authors Chris Steinbrunner, Otto Penzler, and Charles Shibuk). He was nominated for the same award in 1994 for A Reader's Guide to the American Novel of Detection, which was also nominated for an Agatha, an Anthony, and a Macavity Award. Lachman won the Macavity Award in 2001 for The American Regional Mystery (2000), which was also nominated for an Anthony and an Agatha.

Lachman was given a Raven Award from the Mystery Writers of America in 1997, for his fan-related activities. MWA's Raven is a "special award given for outstanding achievement in the mystery field outside the realm of creative writing." In 2001 he received the first Don Sandstrom Memorial Award for Lifetime Achievement in Mystery Fandom. In 2013 the Bouchercon Board of Directors gave him the David Thompson Special Service Award for his "exemplary life-long service to the mystery and crime fiction community." In 2019 Marv is attending his fortieth Bouchercon.

The first edition of The Heirs of Anthony Boucher (2005) won the Anthony Award at Bouchercon in 2006. Marv's most recent book was The Villainous Stage (2014), a history of crime plays in New York and London. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with his wife, Carol.