Mystery Melange

Barnes & Noble announced that Abby Geni’s The Lightkeepers, "a sublime debut novel about a young woman who finds herself at the center of a murder mystery on a remote island," was the winner of the 2016 Discover Award for fiction, a prize that carries with it $30,000 and a full year of marketing and merchandising support from the bookseller.

English teacher Claire McFall took home the inaugural Scottish teenage book prize for her YA thriller Black Cairn Point, set in Dumfries and Galloway. Teenagers across the country voted for her book in the prize that was set up by the Scottish Book Trust with support from Creative Scotland to  encourage teens to actively celebrate the books they love. McFall's Ferryman previously won the Older Readers Category of the Scottish Children's Book Awards 2013 and was nominated for the Carnegie Medal.

Melbourne, Australia's first Noir at the Bar event is heading down under on March 28 at the Grub Street Bookshop. Organizers Andrew Nette and Iain Ryan will be joined by Kat Clay, Liam Jose, Leigh Redhead, Jock Serong and Emma Viskic for readings from the noir fiction stylists "and drinks in a cool establishment."

Tuesday, April 25 at City Lights Booksellers in San Francisco, can catch Oakland Noir, a panel moderated by Eddie Muller a.k.a. the "Czar of Noir" and Jerry Thompson and featuring authors Kim Addonizio, Nick Petrulakis, Jamie DeWolf, Joe Loya. The panel celebrates the new crime fiction anthology from Akashic Books on the topic, continuing the publisher's "city noir" series with each story is a particular anthology set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book.

The third annual Independent Bookstore Day this year will take place on Saturday, April 29, with 457 stores from around the country participating. Organizers of the event are offering bookstores promotional literary items, and each store will also have its own listing of special guests, author signings, live music, cupcakes, scavenger hunts, kids events, art tables, readings, barbecues, contests more. For participating stores near you, check out this map from the official website. (HT to Shelf Awareness)

The latest issue of Suspense Magazine has interviews with Patricia Cornwell, James Rollins, Mark Greaney, Matt Hilton, Libby Fischer Hellmann, Carey Baldwin, Kelly Parsons, and debut author Mikel Santiago. Jon Land also talks about writing fiction and there is the usual lineup of review galore.

From Sandra Seamans comes news that Rick Ollerman will be launching a new digest-sized magazine this summer called DOWN & OUT: The Magazine. The first issue features a new Moe Prager story by Reed Farrel Coleman and the second a new Sheriff Dan Rhodes story by Bill Crider. It's always a pleasure to welcome a new venue for short crime fiction to the scene, and we wish the endeavor all the best. You can check out the placeholder website link here.

On the other end of the spectrum, The Bookseller reported that subscribers of the quarterly Crime Scene Magazine were told the publication is shutting down. Established only in 2015, the magazine devoted to crime TV, film and books was available in print and digital forms and featured previews and reviews, interviews, features, and on set-reports, all in an eye-catching format.

The UK's National Railway Museum opens a free new exhibition trail March 23 through September 3 titled The Missing Passenger. Participants can unearth the clues on platforms 5 and 6 in this mysterious railway crime scene, unpick motives, and reach the final conclusion of this curious whodunnit. To celebrate, the museum is offering the chance for UK residents to win afternoon Champagne Tea for Two in the Countess of York at the National Railway Museum, plus a stay at the Novotel York Central.

Northern Illinois University is using grant money to digitize a large collection of dime novels, the popular format of short works from the 19th century, and are making them available online for browsing. Titles include the Nick Carter detective series, the James Brady detective series, and the New York Detective Library. (HT to Bill Crider)

Do you like your crime fiction on the cozy side? Then, you should check out this list of the "Top 10 Cozy Mystery Blogs."

Love that old book smell? A Columbia University preservation expert and a curator at the Morgan Library & Museum in Manhattan have created "an unusual poetic-scientific experiment in the little-visited olfactory wing of history, trying to pin down the powerful connection between smell and memory." Part of their efforts to convey a sense of the building’s history beyond just its look and feel is to replicate the aromas inside the personal book vault of John Pierpont Morgan, the financier and collector who built the library in 1906.

The New Yorker had a little fun with a tongue-in-cheek look at "Mystery Novels Inspired by a Co-Working Space."
 
This week's featured crime poem at the 5-2 is "Twenty-Seven" by Lisa Olsson.

In the Q&A roundup, Criminal Element sat down with Eliot Pattison, author of The Skeleton God, the ninth Inspector Shan mystery; the Mystery People welcomed David Joy to talk about his new novel The Weight Of This World, which continues the "rural noir" theme of his debut novel, Where All Light Tends to Go; the MP gang also interviewed Tim Dorsey, known for his mischievous characters and their bizarre adventures, including his latest Florida-based book, Clownfish Blues; and Craig Sisterson snagged Brad Parks (the only author to have won the Nero, Shamus, and Lefty awards for crime writing) for an interview over on the Crime Watch blog.