There was a new award handed out at the 24th annual Arthur Ellis Awards ceremony in Toronto last night, and you couldn’t have asked for a more appreciative recipient than author Phyllis Smallman. The award, unofficially known as the Unhanged Arthur, honours the best unpublished first crime novel, and the heretofore unknown Smallman was obviously deeply moved by the win. “This is just about the best moment of my life,” said Smallman, her voice shaking. Her manuscript, Margarita Nights, was chosen from among 96 submissions, with the hope that the award may help her land a publisher.

One of the other big winners last night was Ottawa mystery writer Barbara Fradkin, who earned her second Best Novel Arthur for her Honour Among Men, which was published by RendezVous Press. (Fradkin won the award just two years ago for Fifth Son, also published by RendezVous.) When accepting the award, Fradkin apologized for not having read all of her fellow nominees’ books, explaining that she had had trouble tracking several of them down in the big chain stores. Marian Misters, the proprietor of Toronto’s Sleuth of Baker Street mystery bookstore, was onstage at the time and chimed in: “We have all five of them, and we’re open at 10 a.m. tomorrow!”

Other winners were:

• Best First Novel: Sign of the Cross, by Anne Emery (ECW Press)
• Best Non-Fiction: High: Confessions of a Pot Smuggler, by Brian O’Dea (Random House Canada)
• Best Juvenile: Hamish X and the Cheese Pirates, by Sean Cullen (Penguin Canada)
• Best Short Story: “Fuzzy Wuzzy,” by Dennis Richard Murphy (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, August 2006)

(The award for Best Crime Writing in French was not given out this year due to the low number of submissions.)