The Wolfe Pack announced that Chris Knopf's Dead Anyway was this year's winner of the Nero Award. The other finalists included Antiques Disposal, by Barbara Allan; Truth of All Things, by Kieran Shields; and Burning Midnight, by Loren D. Estleman. The presentation will take place on December 7 at the traditional Black Orchid Banquet. (Hat tip to Mystery Fanfare.)
Speaking of prizes, this one is a bit of a shocker: the Man Booker prize, which is to the UK, Ireland and Commonwealth countries what the Pulitzer Prize for Literature is to the U.S., announced it is opening its submission process to books written by American authors. As you can imagine, it's a controversial move.
The Bloody Scotland conference announced that Malcolm Mackay won the 2013 Deanston Scottish Crime Book of the Year award for his second novel, How a Gunman Says Goodbye. The other finalists were Dead Water, by Ann Cleeves; Pilgrim Soul, by Gordon Ferris; The Red Road, by Denise Mina; The Vanishing Point, by Val McDermid; and Standing in Another Man’s Grave, by Ian Rankin. (Hat tip to the Rap Sheet.)
Here's an interactive project in which anyone can participate: Tweet (using #youdunnit) your ideas for a mystery story, on everything from the victim's name to the actual crime, through this Friday, September 20th. Crime writers Nicci French, Tim Weaver, and Alistair Gunn will then create their own stories based on the suggestions, with free digital and print versions available as a tie-in at the annual Specsavers Crime Fiction Awards in October.
Issue #14 of the award-winning noir journal, Crime Factory, has hit the virtual stands, available in digital, print and PDF formats. Peter Dragovich discusses Andrew Dominik's Killing Them Softly and The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford; Andrew Prentice interviews legendary writer, Peter Corris, author of the Cliff Hardy series; Tom Darin Liskey brings in some true crime reportage from his time as a journalist in Venezuela; Benjamin Welton dissects Georges Franju's overlooked masterpiece Nuits Rouges; John Harrison picks apart the Charles Manson pulps; and the fiction section is jammed-packed with stories from Kevin Burton Smith,
DeLeon DeMicoli, Michael M. B. Galvin, Robert James Russell, and Ryan K.
Lindsay.
The American Comparative Literature Association is soliciting papers for its 2014 conference on the topic of "The Global Detective." The seminar hopes to include papers that explore detective stories, novellas, and novels from a variety of critical angles. For more information and suggested topics, check out the ACLA site.
Altus Press announced a new line to their pulp fiction reprints, called The Dime Detective Library. Each issues will showcase one of the hard-boiled characters that ran in the pages of Dime Detective Magazine over the course of its 20 year history. Seven releases will be included in the first batch this fall, with introductions by pulp historian Ed Hulse. (Hat tip to Bish's Beat.)
Mega-bestselling author James Patterson is donating $1 million to help independent bookstores, providing those stores also include a children's section. Patterson has supported several literacy programs aimed at kids in the past.
This week's crime poem over at the 5-2 is "A Typical Night in Western Hill" by Terry Trowbridge, and the weekly Beat to a Pulp offering is "Fair Warning" from Hilary Davidson.
The editors of Mystery Scene magazine are putting the finishing touches on the Fall Issue #131. Highlights include an interview with British crime writer Mark Billingham, creator of Detective Inspector Tom Thorne; an appreciation of Margaret Maron, whose long-running Judge Deborah Knott series (The Bootlegger's Daughter, etc.) offer a panoramic portrait of her beloved North Carolina; a look back at Elmore Leonard; Tom Nolan highlights five overlooked authors you should be reading right now; and Kevin Burton Smith looks at the promising future of private-eye fiction.
Mystery Scene online also brought to my attention an art exhibit in the UK that is affiliated with the annual Agatha Christie festival in Devon, held this year from September 15-22. The exhibit features work originally created for the festival in 2010, including many that have thematic tie-ins to various Christie novels.
The Q&A roundup includes two interviews that come to us via Crime Fiction Lover, Jo Nesbo, talking about his latest novel, Police, and Karen Sandler, who's penned YA novels, talks about her new private eye novel; and Noir Nation's Eddie Vega and Absolutely Kate joined the blog A Knife and a Quilll to chat about the 'zine and noir fiction.
Comments