Mystery Melange

If you'll be in the Dallas, Texas, area on November 12, mark your calendar for the Noir at the Bar event at The Wild Detectives. The event will feature readings from several dark fiction authors, including Harry Hunsicker, Eryk Pruitt, Opalina Salas, Jedidiah Ayres, Joe Lansdale, and others (final lineup still pending) and will be hosted by David Hale Smith and Eryk Pruitt

Intellect Books in the UK is launching a new nonfiction series in November titled Crime Uncovered. The project's aims are to explore the genre "in an intelligent, critical and accessible manner." The first two volumes will be on the antihero and the detective, followed in March by a volume on the private investigator. (HT to Elizabeth Foxwell.)

Scott S. Smith penned an essay for Investors Daily about Ross Macdonald as part of a celebration of the centennial of Macdonald's birth this year, including an overview of his writing and how he influenced many of today's top crime fiction authors.

A group of bestselling authors have joined Pen International’s new "writers circle," to offer financial support to Pen’s work defending freedom of expression around the world. Authors on board the initiative include Salman Rushdie, Colm Tóibín, Alexander McCall Smith, Margaret Atwood and Ian Rankin. As bestselling Turkish novelist Elif Shafak noteed, it's a chance for writers to "connect across borders," evoking a “turbulent period in world history in which storytellers, east and west, need to speak louder, bolder.”

Stieg Larsson's Millennium series is getting additional sequels, according to Swedish publisher Norstedts. David Lagercrantz, who took on the franchise after Larsson’s death with The Girl in the Spider’s Web, will write two more books featuring Lisbeth Salander, tentatively scheduled for publication in 2017 and 2019.

The Mystery People blog will celebrate its 5th anniversary on November 7th, with a panel discussion, trivia, and giveaways. They will also their list of "Mystery People’s Top 100 Greatest Crime And Suspense Books," a list culled from top twenty lists contributed by critics, writers, and Mystery People staff. Throughout the rest of October and into November, they'll post the various offerings, beginning with a "Top 21" list by bestselling author Craig Johnson, author of the Longmire series.

In light of the release of a new 007 film and a John le Carré biography, The Guardian took a look at the history of the British spy and how a national obsession led to Bond, Smiley, and an enduring love for tales of espionage.

Speaking of things spy-related, Kiss Kiss Kill Kill Archive founder, Richard Rhys Davies, will be releasing a massive, two-volume, fully-illustrated, full-color tome The International Spy Film Guide 1945 - 1989. The project will be a huge resource for students of Cold War spy cinema, spanning from the end of WWII to the fall of the Berlin wall and covering over 2,000 films from 65 Countries on both sides of the Iron Curtain.  (Hat tip to the Double O Section blog.)

We lost Canadian crime author Eric Wright last week, who died at the age of 86 from kidney cancer. Wright was best known for his Toronto Inspector Charlie Salter mystery series and won several Arthur Ellis Awards for his books as well as the Derrick Murdoch Award for his body of work.

To no one's great surprise, forty-eight percent of British crime fiction fans chose Sherlock Holmes as the greatest detective of all time in a new survey. Dame Agatha Christie was named greatest crime writer and her Murder On The Orient Express the greatest crime novel.

The new online issue Of Yellow Mama is out with a roster of new crime shorts and poems.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "Daughter of the Confederacy" by Clarinda Harriss.

In the Q&A roundup, the Sons of Spade blog chatted with George Snyder about his three different hardboiled series; The Mystery People welcomed Bryon Quertermous to talk about his debut, Murder Boy, which follows struggling writer Dominick Prince, who attempts to kidnap his instructor in order to pass his class; The Mystery People also sat down with Allen Eskens to discuss the follow-up to his award-winning debut; Kathleen Ernst stopped by Omnimystery News to discuss her sixth mystery in her Chloe Ellefson series; and Jason Starr joined up with Crime Fiction Lover to discuss Savage Lane, his latest thriller.