Awards were once again in focus this past week, with several announcements including:
- The Private Eye Writers of America's finalists for the 2016 Shamus Awards in the categories of Best Novel, Best Paperback, Best First Novel, and Best Short Story. The winners will be handed out at the annual PWA banquet during the Bouchercon Conference, this year held in New Orleans in September. (Hat tip to Guns, Gams & Gumshoes.)
- The Macavity Award finalists, as nominated by members of Mystery Readers International, subscribers to Mystery Readers Journal and friends of MRI. The winners will be handed out at opening ceremonies at Bouchercon.
- The longlist for the 2016 Ngaio Marsh Award established in 2010 and made annually for the best crime, mystery, or thriller novels written by New Zealand citizens and residents. (Hat tip to Craig Sisterson over at Australian Crime.)
- At this past weekend's Key West Festival, the Whodunit Award was handed out to Tequila Mockingbird by Lewis C. Haskell. The award is supported by the Marion Stevens Fund at the Community Foundation of the Florida Keys. (Hat tip to Mystery Fanfare, which has a list of all the finalists.)
There will be a Noir at the Bar as part of the Belfast Book Festival tonight, moderated by Gerard Brennan and featuring Northern Irish crime fiction authors Brian McGilloway, Stuart Neville, Steve Cavanagh, and Kelly Creighton.
Down the road a ways, the 2016 Edinburgh International Book Festival, which runs from August 13 to 29, will feature over 800 writers, poets, illustrators, politicians, journalists, historians, scientists, philosophers and playwrights from 55 countries. Crime Fiction Ireland takes a look at this year's crime fiction highlights.
The Crime Fiction Lover blog has a sneak preview of the upcoming ultimate Nordic crime fest, Iceland Noir, to be held November 17-20 in Reykjavik. The main panel at the event will be women authors to include Val McDermid (Scotland), Viveca Sten (Sweden), Leena Lehtolainen (Finland) and Sara Blaedel (Denmark). They’ll be talking about their dark authorly dealings at the darkest time if year.
The Mysterious Press has just released the bulk of Dashiell Hammett's Continental Op stories in digital reading formats. The Op was a nameless detective Hammett described as "a little man going forward day after day through mud and blood and death and deceit—as callous and brutal and cynical as necessary," born in the pages of Black Mask in 1923, predating Hammett's most famous creation, The Maltese Falcon's Sam Spade. The Op stories are split into eight volumes and include introductions from Richard Layman, along with Julie M. Rivett, Hammett's granddaughter.
James Patterson's new imprint with Hachette, BookShots, focuses on producing short, plot-heavy, cinematic novellas, making Flavorwire ponder if it's "the Second Coming of Pulp Fiction."
Modern technology like CCTV, DNA profiling and in the internet make committing crime harder but also more boring to solve according to best selling crime writer Simon Kernick, who writes "How committing, fighting and writing about crime has been changed by modern technology" for the Mirror.
Prefer female protaongists in your crime fiction? If so, Bookriot has a list of "Favorite thrillers with female lead characters."
If you're a fan of hit men crime fiction, you'll want to check out the suggestions from 280Steps on "10 Hitman Novels That Everyone Should Read."
In the Q&A roundup, Jacqueline Seewald interviewed writer B. J. Bourg, a twenty-five-year veteran of law enforcement, as well as a former professional boxer and a lifelong martial artist; The Bay Net spoke with Laura Lippman author of the "Tess Monaghan" series, whose bestselling novels have garnered the Edgar, the Anthony, the Agatha, and the Shamus Awards, among other honors; and The Mystery People chatted with Flynn Berry about her debut novel, Under the Harrow, a "powerful novel about women, their choices, and their relationships with each other."
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