Mystery Melange

The Crime Writer’s Association announced that Catherine Aird (pen name of Kinn Hamilton McIntosh) will join the likes of P.D. James, Elmore Leonard and Ed McBain in receiving the organization's Diamond Dagger award, one of the highest honors in the crime writing genre. Her first novel, The Religious Game, was published in 1966, and she's since published another 24 novels, the most recent of which, Dead Heading, came out in 2014. (Hat tip to Ayo Ontade at Shots Magazine.)

The Love is Murder Conference handed out the winners of its annual Lovey Awards for Best Series, Best First Novel, and "bests" in several other categories. For all the winners, hop on over to the conference website.

Janet Evanovich, bestselling author of the Stephanie Plum series, will be on hand to kick off the Savannah Book Festival on February 12, marking the first time a female author will open the festival.

This past week, the exhibit "Pulp Confidential: Quick & dirty publishing from the 40s & 50s" opened at the State Library of New South Wales. Running through May 10, the exhibit presents a collection of 1940s and 50s vintage Australian pulp cover art, crime story illustrations and original comic books, drawn from the papers of the Sydney publishing house, Frank Johnson Publications.  

Kramer Books in Washington, D.C. are sponsoring a "Noir at the Bar: Dames at Dusk" event on Sunday, March 1st at 7:00 p.m. Ten female writers will be on hand to read from their crime fiction, including Donna Andrews, Meredith Cole, Jen Conley, Ellen Crosby, Barb Goffman, Tara Laskowski, Allison Leotta, Sandra Ruttan, Amber Sparks, and Laura Ellen Scott.

"James Ellroy: Visions of Noir" is the title of a conference July 1-3 at the University of Liverpool, sponsored by the School of English. This conference will examine Ellroy’s influence on the genre, his inspirations as a writer and his achievements in forging an idiosyncratic and unique style. The keynote speaker is journalist and critic Woody Haut, whose works include Neon Noir: Contemporary American Crime Fiction (1999) and Pulp Culture: Hardboiled Fiction and the Cold War (2014). The conference is seeking proposals for papers from interested speakers.

The Wolfe Pack and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine are once again sponsoring the annual Black Orchid Novella Award Contest. Each entry must be an original unpublished work of fiction that conforms to the tradition of  the Nero Wolfe series (but doesn't include series characters), contains no overt sex or violence, and emphasizes the deductive skills of the sleuth. Stories of 15-20,000 words are due on May 31.

Indie bookstores are an invaluable link in the chain connecting authors to readers, and The Shreveport Times profiled McKenna Jordan, who is not only the owner of Murder by the Book in Houston, she also is a violinist with the Shreveport Symphony. The Line Media also had a listing of "10 Independent Bookstores to Get Cozy with This Winter."

The Telegraph reported on the crimes in miniature reconstructed by Frances Glessner Lee in the 1940s (known as Nutshell Studies), which are still used in police training today.

In the realm of life imitates art (instead of the other way around), San Francisco's KALW public radio station reported on the mysterious disappearance of a plastic Maltese Falcon replica signed by the Hammett family and Humphrey Bogart.

If you're a fan of Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse series, both in print and on the BBC, you may be surprised to find that the character was based on the real-life detective Sir Jeremy Morse. Forty years after the publication of the first book in the Morse series, the novel's inspiration speaks for the first time about his literary namesake.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "The New Woman" by Sharon Lask Munson.

In the Q&A roundup this week, thriller authors Michael E. Rose and Greig Beck chat with Ominimystery News; Tim L. Williams takes Paul D. Brazill's "Short, Sharp Interview" challenge; and Crime Watch's 9mm Interview welcomed Attica Locke.