Mystery Melange

Newcastle Noir 2017 announced the program for the event April 24-27, which includes panels, a Noir @ the Bar, plus a special Fringe Festival kick-off with Denise Mina talking about and reading from her work. (HT to Shots Magazine.)

Meanwhile, Echoland, the first novel in Joe Joyce’s spy series set during the second World War in Dublin, was launched this week as Dublin’s One City One Book 2017.

The Metrowest Mystery Festival is expanding on last year's mystery writers' panel and book signing by adding a mystery feature film and a writers' workshop focusing on the theme "New England Crime," to be held April 7 and 8 in the Ashland, Massachusetts Library. The featured panel includes authors Leslie Wheeler, Ray Daniel, Hallie Ephron, and Leslie Wheeler.

The Guardian's David Barnett took a look at how pulp noir and the hardboiled gumshoe are attracting new voices and audiences and getting a 21st-century reboot, thanks in part to contemporary political corruption, violence, and gender politics.

The Guardian also noted how the late Colin Dexter changed the face of crime fiction after his Inspector Morse novels created a boom time in crime fiction on television and in bookshops.

Adam Lerner and Bill Boyle have launched a fund-raising IndieGoGo campaign to get Raymond Chandler a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, with the approval of the Chandler Estate and the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. This would make Chandler the first writer (who is not also a director, producer, or animator) to get a star. They argue that "If there were no Raymond Chandler there would certainly be no Philip Marlowe. And if there were no Philip Marlowe there would arguably be no Hollywood Noir or Hollywood Walk of Fame."  (HT to Kevin Burton Smith of The Thrilling Detective Web Site)

A couple of weeks ago a Twitter hashtag was born that sparked the re-imagining of numerous classic novels as murder mysteries. Inspired by that trend, Book Rio's Kate Scott picked three classics she thought would be amazing as murder mysteries.

Bookstores, bookstores, we all love bookstores! Even the unusual, as in this group of the "most unconventional bookstores in the world."

If you're a fan of historical mysteries, as in really ancient, check out this list of "10 Mysterious Hidden Texts," some buried under monuments and secreted away in machinery or concealed in later works. But modern technology such as X-rays, CT scans, multispectral imaging, is bringing these long-lost works to light. Or maybe, mysterious buildings are more your type of thing. (HT to Bill Crider.) 

Speaking of things ancient - forensic science is helping to uncover all sorts of criminal enterprises, including one of the coldest cases of all: how was Ötzi, the five thousand year old mummy found frozen in ice murdered and whodunnit?

This week's featured crime poem at the 5-2 is "Nuclear Gift: Mrs. Keitlyn Konou From Bikini Atoll Talks About Her Jellyfish Babies," by Kimo Armitage.

In the Q&A roundup, the Huffington Post spoke with Greg Iles about his Natchez Burning Trilogy featuring Penn Cage and his new novel Mississippi Blood, the last volume in the trilogy; Nancy Pickard spoke with with Parade magazine about her Jenny Cain and Marie Lightfoot series; Thomas Pluck chatted with S.W. Lauden about his Jay Desmarteaux crime thriller series; Kevin Berg took Paul D. Brazill's Short, Sharp Interview Challenge; and Writers Who Kill snagged Edith Maxwell about her various traditional mystery series.