Ferndale author nominated for Agatha Award

Leslie Budewitz’s first book, “Books, Crooks, and Counselors: How to Write Accurately About Criminal Law and Courtroom Procedure,” is up for an Agatha Award in the non-fiction category.

The Agatha Awards are named after the classic mystery author Agatha Christie, and are awarded to authors of books and novels in different categories that exemplify her style of mystery, that is, no explicit gore, sex, or violence.

Budewitz is a part-time lawyer in Ferndale who has also had six short stories published so far.

“Writing just seemed like the right thing to do, but it didn’t seem like something you make a living at,” Budewitz said. “When you reach a certain age and there’s something you want to do, then you’ve got to do it.”

Budewitz will know if she won the award on April 28 when writers, readers, librarians, and booksellers vote at the Malice Domestic Convention’s Agatha Awards Banquet in Maryland.

Her competition in the non-fiction category includes the foremost expert on Agatha Christie, John Currran, former book editor for the Washington Post, Michael Dirda, and Charlaine Harris, whose works are the basis for the TV series “True Blood.”

Her most recently published piece was a short story about a murder on Flathead Lake called “Thicker Than Blood,” which was published in “Fish Tales: The Guppy Anthology” in March 2011.

Her book was published seven months later and was written because writers often came to her with questions about law.

“I know a medical doctor who wrote a book answering questions about medicine and forensics and I thought it was a good idea, so I stole it,” Budewitz said. “Actually, he was very supportive and gave me a quote.”

“Books, Crooks, and Counselors” took six months to write and covers 160 law related topics. According to Budewitz it involved a lot of research because the law differs from one state to another.

“Mistakes take us out of the story and it’s not hard to get things right,” Budewitz said.

Her goal was to create an understanding of the civil and criminal trial process, knowledge of the correct terminology in each state, and to make all of it approachable for writers who may not have ever had any encounters with the law.

Recently, she signed a three-book contact with Berkley Prime Crime for a cozy mystery series called “The Food Lovers Village Mysteries” set to debut in the summer of 2013.

“Cozy mysteries are the lighter side of mysteries, the comfort food of mysteries,” Budewitz said. “There’s no graphic sex or violence, but lots of graphic food.”

“The Food Lovers Village Mysteries” is set in a fictional version of Bigfork called Jewel Bay, and each book will feature a festival and food. The protagonist of the series is a young woman who manages a specialty grocery store in the village.

“It’s not any locally recognizable place, you have to play with places if you’re going to kill people,” Budewitz said with a chuckle.

For more information about Budewitz, her writing, and for updates on writing about the law, visit her blog at www.lawandfiction.com/blog. Copies of her book and the short story anthology, “Fish Tales,” are available at Riecke’s Bayside Gallery and major booksellers.