Mystery Melange

A new award named in honor of the late crime writer William McIlvanney has been won by author Chris Brookmyre for his novel Black Widow. The McIlvanney Prize was previously known as the Scottish Crime Book of the year and was presented at the recent Bloody Scotland festival in Stirling. The other short-listed authors were Doug Johnston, Val McDermid and ES Thomson. Judges described Brookmyre's novel as being "like watching Olympic diving...even the twists have twists."

The RBA International Prize for Crime Writing (known in Spanish as the Premio RBA de Novela Negra) has been awarded this year to Ian Rankin for his translated novel Perros salvajes (Even Dogs in the Wild). The award is a Spanish sales promotion literary award said to be the world’s most lucrative crime fiction prize at €125,000.  (HT to Jose Ignacio and A Crime is Afoot.)

Contraband, the crime fiction imprint of the tiny independent Scottish press Saraband, has produced a title on the Man Booker Prize shortlist for 2016, with Scottish writer Graeme Macrae Burnet's His Bloody Project. The list also included a debut novel from the American writer Ottessa Moshfegh, who at 35 is the youngest author on the shortlist for her psychological thriller Eileen.

San Antonio's Gemini Ink is inviting bookworms to “roam humanity’s psycho-social depths” via spirited discussions about classic noir titles such as The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, and The Third Man during its Wednesday Nights of Noir series which runs through December. The series kicks off with a free cocktail party tonight.

Noir At the Bar will be back in action Tuesday, September 20th at Threadgill’s South in Austin, Texas. Featured authors on hand for readings will include "local author, musician and man-about-town" Jesse Sublett, as well as fellow Yanks Rick Ollerman, Todd Robinson, and Brits Zoe Sharp and John Lawton. As always, Jesse will begin the night with a rousing murder ballad.  (HT to the Mystery People.)

Sisters in Crime/Los Angeles announced that it will award up to three grants to attend the 2017 California Crime Writers Conference coming up June 10-11, 2017 in Culver City, California. The Sisters in Crime/LA Educational Grant serves to further the education of published and aspiring mystery/crime writers on the path to writing excellence, and membership in Sisters in Crime is not required. The deadline for applications is midnight PST, January 31, 2017.

The latest edition of the UK magazine Crime Scene is out, with a 17-page special feature dedicated to the grand dame of British crime, Agatha Christie. It takes in a new film adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express with Kenneth Branagh, Sophie Hannah’s upcoming Poirot novel Closed Casket, David Suchet’s Poirot, Antony Horowitz’s Magpie Murders (an homage to Christie), and the new theatre production of The Mousetrap. There is also a feature looking at the acclaimed BBC production The Fall, with Gillian Anderson who faces off in the third series against the ultra creepy serial killer played by Jamie Dornan, as well as looks at other TV shows including DCI Banks, Making a Murderer, Rectify, Gomorrah, and more. (HT to Crime Fiction Lover.)

Unfortunately, another bit of news from the crime magazine world isn't as rosy:  editor/publisher Alex Cicak announced that Pulp Modern is closing their doors after five years of publishing stories by 91 amazing writers who contributed stories to the journal between 2011 and 2016.   (HT to Sandra Seamans.)

The Guardian continued the focus on Agatha Christie during her 125th anniversary year with a look at how the "cozy" genre Christie made popular may be having something of a renaissance, "giving new inspiration to a genre tired of alcoholic divorcees and goth hackers." Of course, David Brawn, estates publisher at HarperCollins, notes that there are economic factors at work, too, adding "One of the main reasons behind the sudden popularity of crime from this period is that modern publishing and new technology allows for shorter runs in printing, which means that we can now mine backlists that would previously have been unprofitable."

American, British and Canadian Studies, the journal of the Academic Anglophone Society of Romania, invites submissions for a special 2017 issue on Contemporary Crime Fiction, guest edited by Dr. Charlotte Beyer of University of Gloucestershire. The Special Issue will explore the diversity and proliferation of American, British and Canadian crime fiction in the contemporary period, and trace thematic and formal priorities that have emerged in crime writing during the late 20th to early 21st century. 

After a dozen novels and 70 million book sales, British writer Frederick Forsyth says he's giving up on thrillers because his wife told him he can no longer travel to adventurous places. “I’m tired of it and I can’t just sit at home and do a nice little romance from my study,” said the 78-year-old, who revealed in a memoir last year that he had worked extensively for the MI6 spy service.

Think you know everything about the Grand Dame of crime writing? You might want to check out Parade Magazine's list of "10 Things You Didn't Know About Agatha Christie."

Alex Segura compiled a list of "9 Mysteries by Female Authors You May Not Have Read Yet" for Bookbub.

Did you know Taiwan has a mystery-oriented independent bookstore? Murder Ink, established in 2014, collects a variety of mystery stories, encompassing romance, crime, realism, suspense and detective genres from around the world.

Did you also know that they make Sherlock Holmes temporary tattoos?  (HT Seattle Mystery Bookshop)

And this is possibly the best mugshot ever.

The featured crime poem at the 5-2 this week is "Reek: Soberanes Fire, Day 13, 25% Containment" by Jennifer Lagier, and this month's featured story at Beat to a Pulp is "The Key Man" by Jon McGoran.

In the Q&A roundup, Frank Westworth takes Paul D. Brazill's "Short, Sharp Interivew" challenge to talk about his new thriller, Fifth Columnist; E. B. Davis, with the Writers Who Kill, interviewed Judy Penz Sheluk about Skeletons in the Attic, the first book in her Marketville series; Omnimystery News welcomed Diane Capri to discuss the seventh book in her popular Hunt for Reacher series; Craig Sisterson's Crime Watch blog hosted Laura Lippman as part of his latest "9MM Interivew" feature; and the MysteryPeople held a Q&A with Craig Johnson about the latest installment in his Sheriff Walt Longmire series.