Mystery Melange

Constellation book sculpture by Jodi Harvey-Brown

Writer and licensed psychotherapist Dennis Palumbo wrote an article for Fiction Southeast he titled "Through a Glass Darkly: Crime Fiction as a Window on American Culture," about how great crime fiction offers what no sociology text can provide.

The New York Times profiled television and movie book tie-ins, a practice long viewed with disdain in literary circles, and how it's gaining respectability with the influx of new writers and critically-acclaimed TV shows such as Sons of Anarchy, Broadchurch, Homeland, and even the venerable Murder She Wrote.

Tor.com announced the publication of the 2014 edition of "Some of the Best from Tor.com," an anthology of twenty-six of the site's favorite short stories, novelettes, and novellas, selected from the seventy-plus stories published last year.

Blogger, journalist, and author Sarah Weinman has started a new crime fiction newsletter via free online subscription. You can sign up for "The Crime Lady" via this link, and receive her "weekly-ish newsletter about crime fiction and true crime, current and long-ago releases, stuff I'm working on, and other related things."

Martin Edwards reported the deaths of two friends of the crime fiction community last week: Bob Adey, author of the reference anthology Locked Room Murders and an editor of several other works; and novelist and short-story writer Robert Adams.

The Wall Street Journal reported on how Penguin is reissuing all 75 of Georges Simenon’s Inspector Maigret novels. Simenon (1903-1989) was one of the most prolific crime writers, publishing over 200 novels and numerous short stories.

Elizabeth Foxwell noted that, according to Americana Exchange, some of the top 500 manuscript auctions for 2014 included an original drawing and a signed manuscript for Arthur Conan Doyle works and the screenplay by William Faulkner and Leigh Brackett of The Big Sleep.

Former LA Lakers star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is teaming up with screenwriter Anna Waterhouse to write a Sherlockian crime novel titled Mycroft Holmes. It will be published in October by Titan Books. Abdul-Jabbar has apparently been a huge Holmes fan since his first season in the NBA back in 1969.

This week's featured crime poem at the 5-2 is "Rules of Etiquette" by Lisa Olsson.

Think you know a lot about international crime fiction? The Irish Times has a crime fiction book quiz for you, "From Scandinavian noir to Stringer Bell."

If you're a fan of the Murder She Wrote series starring Angela Lansbury (see above tie-ins), you'll probably enjoy this loving and tongue-in-cheek homage to the series created by super-fan Isaac Royffe—a series of all of Jessica Fletcher's "epiphanies" stitched together into one video.

The Q&A roundup this week includes Tess Gerritsen talking with Traverse Magazine about her books, including the latest in the Rizzoli & Isles series, Die Again; Lynn Chandler Willis stopped by the Sons of Spade blog to talk about her debut featuring private eye Gypsy Moran, Wink of an Eye; mystery author and homicide cop TJ O'Connor chatted with Omnimystery News about the second mystery in his Gumshoe Ghost series, Dying for the Past; and Mike Blakely, who is also an accomplished traditional western singer/songwriter, talks with The Mystery People about his latest novel, A Song To Die For, which uses the Austin music scene of the Seventies as its backdrop.