Perseverance Press Mysteries:
for the New Golden Age
Since fall 1999, Perseverance Press has published new mysteries by established authors in the mainstream tradition of the Golden Age. Our efforts have been rewarded by critical praise and several award nominations in 2000 and 2001.
Eric Wright was short-listed for three prestigious mystery awards for The Kidnapping of Rosie Dawn: the Edgar (MWA), the Anthony (Bouchercon convention), and the Arthur Ellis (Canadian Crime Writers). He won the Barry Award, named for the late reviewer Barry Gardner, from Deadly Pleasures magazine for Best Paperback Original of 2000. Taffy Cannon was nominated for the Agatha (Malice Domestic convention) and the Macavity (Mystery Readers Journal) for Best Novel of 2000 for Guns and Roses. This year, Janet LaPierre has been nominated for the Shamus ( Private Eye Writers) for Best Paperback Original for Keepers in the Port Silva series. The Shamus Award will be given at the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention in October, 2002.
We are proud of all our authors and dedicated to the highest-quality production of their books. Please see the information on the Perseverance Press Book Club, which makes our affordable trade paperbacks an even greater bargain for discerning mystery readers.
In a review of Hal Glatzer’s Too Dead To Swing in Mystery News, Sally Fellows wrote, “Once again Perseverance Press has given us an enjoyable, well-written book. They seem to be doing a great deal of that.” We intend to go on doing that as long as we can.
—Meredith Phillips, Editor
Visit the Perseverance Book Club
The New Golden Age of Mysteries
The Golden Age of mystery writing refers to the two decades between the world wars, with a flowering of classic mysteries on both sides of the Atlantic (Christie, Sayers, Allingham, Marsh, as well as Chandler, Hammett, Macdonald, Gardner, et al). Many people think that in the last two decades of the twentieth century we have entered a new Golden Age for the mystery. The number of books in this genre has skyrocketed, along with their quality. Many mysteries occupy the bestseller lists, although they aren't always categorized as such. Even more enjoy steady sales to fans and libraries, and mysteries are now the most popular type of genre fiction.
Perseverance Press/John Daniel & Company is publishing traditional mysteries for the New Golden Age: novels of manners, of suspense, often continuing series with characters whom readers have grown to love. Too often, so-called midlist writers are squeezed out by the publishing establishment's hunt for the next bestseller. Essentially, their characters are murdered by their publishers' blockbuster mentality! Some of these writers, with devoted fan followings, have found a home for their series at Perseverance Press. And some have been inspired to create stand-alone books or new series.
Perseverance publishes mysteries in the mainstream tradition of the Golden Age, when explicit violence and gore were not part of the canon. We will not publish what some call "slice-and-dice" books, with graphic mutilation, horrific torture, violence against children, and so on. Nor will we dwell on the sordid or show only the worst face of humanity. We want our mysteries to provide an escape for the reader, not a duplication of what increasingly fills newscasts as well as movies and television. Our books range from softboiled to semi-hardboiled, but they won't give readers nightmares. Violence is an inescapable part of crime fiction, but our books don't portray it in excruciating detail.
The traditional mystery imagines an essentially benign universe and a community in which the disruption of murder or any crime is seen as contrary to the norm of stability, and must be put right. In this setting, the average citizen (or amateur sleuth) is often of help to the police and other investigators in solving the mystery and restoring order.
Award nominations (Edgar, Agatha, Ellis, Anthony, Macavity, all in 2000) and critical praise have rewarded our publishing efforts. With two or three books per year so far, we plan to expand our list and double the number of books we publish. Readers' (and writers') satisfaction is our goal, with affordable and high-quality trade paperback editions of new mysteries for the New Golden Age.
About Perseverance Press
Perseverance Press is proud to announce its return, in a new partnership with John Daniel & Company Publishers of Santa Barbara. The two small presses will collaborate in publishing at least two new mysteries per year. They plan to produce literary mystery novels with an emphasis on excellent writing, suspenseful plots, and meaningful characters and situations.
Perseverance Press, critically acclaimed and nominated for the Edgar, Anthony, Agatha, and Macavity awards in the 1980s and early '90s, published "a new line of old-fashioned mysteries." It launched the mystery-writing careers of first-time authors like Janet Smith and Lora Roberts, as well as selling foreign and reprint rights and going into multiple printings. More recently, editor-publisher Meredith Phillips has devoted herself to freelance editing, specializing in mystery fiction for several New York houses. However, she missed the excitement and many challenges of publishing, and decided to re-enter the fray to bring out new works by favorite mystery writers.
Short-listed for the National Book Critics Circle Award, John Daniel & Co. has won a distinguished reputation over the last decade as a publisher of high-quality literary fiction and nonfiction by such authors as Hildegarde Flanner, Charles Champlin, John Espey, Carolyn See, Jeff Greenwald, Nancy Packer, Jess Mowry, Pete Fromm, Janet Lewis, Dennis Lynds, and many more. Its latest Santa Barbara short story anthology includes such writers as Ross Macdonald, T.C. Boyle, Wallace Stegner, and John Sayles. Daniel & Daniel will be responsible for production, sales, marketing, and distribution, while Phillips will acquire, edit, and promote.
All Perseverance Press books are trade paperbacks and are distributed nationwide by SCB Distributors. They are published as "A Perseverance Press Book/John Daniel & Co."
What they're saying, and what they said, about the publishers:
About Perseverance Press
"Phillips is committed to old-fashioned mysteries, and her attitude suggests not only personal attention to detail, but a strong sense of caring in the crafting of the finished work. The typical small press problems of limited funds and small working staff are off-set by her dedication to the genre itself and to the satisfaction of discovering and promoting both new and seasoned talents."
—Sue Grafton, "The March of Crime"
"Perseverance is singled out for encomiums...in the excellent reviews its publications collect with almost monotonous regularity."
—Charlotte MacLeod, "American Crime Writers League Bulletin"
"The press is a very good one.... The statement of policy does not mean that the books are of the sterile, goody two-shoes variety. There is some violence when necessary, moderate sex, and blood is spilled, but never out of context and never dragged in for the sake of exploitation."
—"As Crime Goes By"
"Anyone swimming against the current like that seems worth talking to."
—Washington Post Book World
"I usually beg, borrow, or buy any book Perseverance Press publishes."
—Sara Ann Freed, Editor, Mysterious Press
"Special kudos to that marvelous small press, Perseverance, without a loser in the bunch."
—Sue Feder, fan, editor, and reviewer
"That determined little publisher, Perseverance Press, continues to find new talent in the central California area."
—John Ball, author of In the Heat of the Night
