Mystery Melange

Sara Paretsky and Christine Carbo have won the Pinckley Prizes for Crime Fiction, sponsored by the Women's National Book Association of New Orleans in honor of Diana Pinckley, longtime crime fiction columnist for the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Paretsky won the Pinckley Prize for Distinguished Body of Work, while Carbo won the Pinckley Prize for Debut Novel for her book, The Wild Inside, published by Atria.

The winners of the 28th Annual Lambda Literary Awards (the "Lammys") honoring excellence in LGBT literature were announced on June 7th. The Best Lesbian Mystery was a tie between Ordinary Mayhem by Victoria Brownworth and Tarnished Gold by Ann Aptaker, while the Best Gay Mystery was awarded to Boystown 7: Bloodlines by Marshall Thornton.

Ian Rankin is urging Scots to sign up for night-time fundraising walks for cancer charity Maggie’s by offering a personal Rebus tour of the capital city as an incentive. Everyone who registers for one of the events by June 30 will be entered into a drawing to win one of six places on the exclusive tour led by the author.

Book publishers SoHo Press, Europa Editions, Melville House, and Akashic have established June as International Crime Fiction Month. To celebrate, the Mystery People bookstore in Austin, Texas, is featuring book club discussions of novels from international crime writers all month long. There will be numerous other in-store events with bestselling authors, as well as a double feature summer film series that opens with a screening of the classic gothic noir, Rebecca. Store owner Scott Montgomery kicked things off a list of his "Top Five International Crime Novels."

Issue four of the quarterly Crime Scene magazine is out, with a focus on crime media (the Lethal Weapon reboot, Peaky Blinders, a good-bye to Wallander, an interview with Rowan ‘Maigret’ Atkinson, a fun round-up of food detectives on the box, Anthony Horowitz’s iPlayer series New Blood, and more). There's also a feature interview with Val McDermid, who talks about the crime writing community, as well as new essays and book reviews aplenty.

If you're a fan of Sue Grafton's "alphabet" mystery series, heads up: Criminal Element is offering a chance to win paperback copies of all of the books in that series (to date).

The Short Sharp Stories Awards is an annual short story competition made possible by the National Arts Festival of South Africa, and they recently announced the shortlist for this year's anthology of humorous mystery stories, Die Laughing.

Book Riot Live!, the upcoming event on November 12-13 in New York City, has added Walter Mosley to the roster. Mosley, known for his Easy Rawlins series, will join other bestselling authors taking part in panels, author signings, games, how-tos, and meet-and-greets.

Rotten Tomatoes is a popular website that gives moviegoers a chance to rate current movies, and now there's going to be a "rotten tomatoes for books." Lit Hub announced the creation of Book Marks, which will "showcase critics from the most important and active outlets of literary journalism in America, aggregating reviews from over 70 sources—newspapers, magazines, and websites—and averaging them into a letter grade, as well as linking back to their source."

The Wall Street Journal's article "The Skeptical Detective" profiled Golden Age author Josephine Tey (author of The Daughter of Time), who "cared less about clues than about characters, less about logical puzzles than puzzles of human nature."

Baylor philosophy professor Richard T. Whittington offered up his take on "Bayou Noir," the Catholic mysteries of James Lee Burke, who "stands out as a contemporary crime writer with claims to transcendence."

In an essay for the humanities publication Zócalo Public Square, Naomi Hirahara (Edgar Award-winning author of the of the "Mas Arai" series) discussed "What Raymond Chandler’s Detective Novels Don’t Get About L.A.'s Mystery."

Although indie bookstores are holding their own in many parts of the U.S., some aren't as lucky. Mystery and Imagination & Bookfellows in Glendale, California, has announced they are closing their bricks-and-mortar store and will only sell online. The store, founded in 1975, has specialized in mostly used (but some new) mystery, detective, science fiction, fantasy and horror titles. (HT to Shelf Awareness.)

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "Good Cop, Bad Cop" by Charles Rammelkamp.

In the Q&A roundup, John Connolly stopped by Shots Magazine to discuss his 14th Charlie Parker thriller; author Rich DiSilvio joined Omnimystery News to chat about his new dark thriller, My Nazi Nemesis; and Paul D. Brazill answered questions about his Brit Grit "dark comedy" crime fiction over at the Dorset Book Detective.