Mystery Melange

Book sculpture by Boukje Voet

The finalists for the Shamus Awards for excellence in private eye fiction were announced last week, with winners to be handed out at the PWA Banquet at Bouchercon in Long Beach, California, November 14. The nods in Best Novel category include Little Elvises by Timothy Hallinan; The Mojito Coast by Richard Helms; W is for Wasted by Sue Grafton; The Good Cop by Brad Parks; and Nemesis by Bill Pronzini. For the entire listing, check out the Guns, Games, and Gumshoes website.

Nominations for the David Awards for the best mystery published during the prior calendar year were also announced. The awards are named in memory of David G. Sasher, Sr., and handed out at the annual Deadly Link Conference in New Brunswick, NJ. The authors/books include Lethal Treasure by Jane Cleland; There Was an Old Woman by Hallie Ephron; Condemned to Repeat by Janice MacDonald; The Wrong Girl by Hank Phillippi Ryan; and Dark Music by E. F. Watkins.

Thanks also to Crime Scraps Review for noting that Robert Harris won the 5th Annual Sir Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction with An Officer and A Spy, his account of the true-life Dreyfus Case where Jewish officer Captain Alfred Dreyfus was falsely accused of espionage.

The blog Down These Mean Streets is celebrating the 75th anniversary of Ellery Queen's debut as a radio detective by offering a complete series DVD set of the Ellery Queen 1975 television series (starring Jim Hutton as Ellery and David Wayne as Inspector Queen). The details are here on how to enter before midnight on June 20th.

Thanks to Ayo Onatade at the Shots Magazine blog for noting the upcoming final installment of the "Noir Is the Colour" series at the French Institute in London. The first three events sound like there were entertaining and informative, and the June 26th program features author Marc Dugain and former Observer crime fiction critic, Peter Guttridge, discussing notorious California "Co-ed Killer" Edmund Kemper from the 60's and 70's.

Mystery Writers of America University travels next to Philadelphia on Saturday, June 28th. Although sponsored by the MWA, the full-day seminar isn't genre-specific, covering the novel-writing process through such topics as "Dramatic Structure and Plot," "Character," and "Editing."  Instructors include award-winning authors Reed Farrel Coleman, Kathleen George, Jeff Lourey, Hank Phillippi Ryan, and Daniel Stashower. The registration deadline is June 19.

Geoffrey Wansell of The Daily Mail looked at the increasing popularity of crime fiction around the world in an article titled "From Irene to Baghdad Central: The new wave of crime fiction taking the world by storm."

The Washington Post reported on the new publisher, Syndicate Books, founded by former bookstore owner and director of marketing and publicity for Soho Press, Paul Oliver. The initial focus will be out-of-print mysteries and crime fiction like the Ted Lewis’s Get Carter (originally titled Jack’s Return Home), unavailable in the U.S. for 40 years.

A federal judge has rejected a copyright appeal brought by the estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and reaffirmed that Sherlock Holmes is now in the public domain. The move makes it legal for writers, filmmakers and others to make free use of Holmes, Watson and any elements of the canon that appeared in Conan Doyle works published prior to Jan. 1, 1923.

Suspense Magazine's June issue is out, with profiles of bestselling authors Joseph Finder, David Baldacci, Eric Jerome Dickey, Eric Van Lustbader, Jan Elizabeth Watson, and Donna White Glaser. The new columns "Across the Pond" and "ITW Reader Corner" are back, as is Dr. D.P. Lyle, who returns with a new "Forensic Files" article on Medical Malpractice in Mysteries and Thrillers.  

Jessy Randall at the Hey Dead Guy blog is beginning a series of three posts looking at reference works on detective fiction, comparing expensive print sources to the information available online for free. First up, Bruce F. Murphy's Encyclopedia of Murder and Mystery versus Wikipedia.

Author and law professor Alifair Burke chose some of her favorite crime fiction books for Omnivoracious that show the real lives of lawyers outside the courtroom.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "Vandals" by Wilda Morris. The featured story at Beat to a Pulp this week is "Dust to Dust" by Terrie Farley Moran.

In the Q&A roundup, Brian Stoddart bravely takes Paul D. Brazill's "Short, Sharp Interview" challenge; Peter Mayle talks with the New York Times about his third work of crime fiction featuring private investigator Sam Levitt; Megan Abbott sat down for an interview with the Memphis Flyer and the National Post about her novel The Fever; and Omnimystery News interviewed Eileen Brady, whose debut novel Muzzled was the winner of the 2013 Discover Mystery Award from Poisoned Pen Press.