Mystery Melange

Our Awards-a-Palooza begins with the Edgars - The Poe statuettes handed out last week at the annual Mystery Writers of America banquet included Before the Fall by Noah Hawley for Best Novel; Under the Harrow by Flynn Berry for Best First Novel; Rain Dogs by Adrian McKinty for Best Paperback Original; The Wicked Boy: The Mystery of a Victorian Child Murderer by Kate Summerscale for Best Fact Crime. For the complete list of finalists and winners, head on over to the official Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award website.

Also this past week, the annual Malice Domestic Conference handed out its Agatha Awards, including Best Contemporary Novel: A Great Reckoning by Louise Penny; Best Historical Novel: The Reek of Red Herrings by Catriona McPherson; Best First Novel: The Semester of Our Discontent by Cynthia Kuhn; Best Nonfiction: Mastering Suspense, Structure, and Plot: How to Write Gripping Stories that Keep Readers on the Edge of Their Seats by Jane K. Cleland; Best Short Story: "Parallel Play" by Art Taylor in Chesapeake Crimes: Storm Warning; and Best Children/Young Adult: The Secret of the Puzzle Box: The Code Busters Club by Penny Warner. The Lifetime Achievement Award was also presented to Charlaine Harris, and the Poirot Award to Martin Edwards.

The nominees for the Strand Magazine Critics Awards were also announced, including a nod for Lifetime Achievement to Clive Cussler. Best Novel finalists include: You Will Know Me by Megan Abbott; The Wrong Side of Goodbye by Michael Connelly; The Trespasser by Tana French; What Remains of Me by Alison Gaylin; Out of Bounds by Val McDermid; and The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware. Best Debut Novel finalists are: The Widow by Fiona Barton; IQ by Joe Ide; The Madwoman Upstairs by Catherine Lowell; A Deadly Affection by Cuyler Overholt; The Homeplace by Kevin Wolf; and The Lost Girls by Heather Young.

The 2017 David Award nominees for the best mystery published in 2016 were announced and include: Blonde Ice by R. G. Belsky; Written Off by E. J. Copperman; Death of a Toy Soldier by Barbara Early; Seconds to Live by Melinda Leigh; and Yom Killer by Ilene Schneider. Voting will take place during the Deadly Ink Conference, and the winner will be announced at the Awards Banquet on Saturday, June 17, 2017.

The Derringer Awards honoring the best in short crime fiction this year include Best Flash Story, “The Phone Call," by Herschel Cozine (Flash Bang Mysteries); Best Short Story, “The Way They Do It in Boston," by (Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine); Best Long Story, “Breadcrumbs” by Victoria Weisfeld (Betty Fedora: Kickass Women In Crime Fiction); and Best Novelette, "Inquiry and Assistance," by Terrie Farley Moran (Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine).

During the recent Edgars Award celebrations, it was also announced that Paul D. Marks won first place in the 2017 Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Award competition for his short story "Ghosts of Bunker Hill" (which appeared originally in the December 2016 edition of EQMM). Second-place went to "Puncher’s Chance," by Doug Allyn (June 2016), while "The Dropout," also by Doug Allyn (March/April 2016), won third place honors. (HT to the Gumshoe and Rap Sheet)

Wrapping up the Awards-a-Palooza news, RT Book Reviews announced the winners of their Reviewers' Choice and Career Achievement Awards. In the latter category, Karen Rose was honored for her body of work in Romantic Suspense, Karin Slaughter for Suspense Novels, and Irish Johansen for Thrillers. Winners were also announced for various categories of Romantic Suspense books of the year and also Mystery/Suspense/Thriller books of the year.

Mystery Writers of America, New York Chapter, are hosting Megan Abbott, Edgar-winning author of eight novels, including The End of Everything, Dare Me, and You Will Know Me, in crime-filled conversation with S.J. Rozan, winner of the Edgar, Shamus, Anthony, Nero, and Macavity awards for Best Novel. The event is scheduled for Wednesday, June 7 at 6 p.m. at the Club Quarters Hotel  in New York City. For ticket information, click on over here.

Some sad news to report from last week: the New York City-born Montana novelist who gave us private investigator Harry Angel (in 1978’s Falling Angel), the lively detective pairing of Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini (in 1994’s Nevermore), and a drug-fueled nightmare excursion through 1960s Mexico (in 2015’s Mañana) passed away from pancreatic cancer. Author William Hjortsberg, who was known to friends simply as "Gatz," was 76 years old. (HT to the Rap Sheet.)

Michael Mann has secured four-time Edgar Award-nominated author Reed Farrel Coleman to co-write a prequel novel with him to his landmark crime film Heat, which starred Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. The novel will be published in 2018 under the Michael Mann imprint at William Morrow/HarperCollins.

In the true-crime arena, James Patterson is set to pen a book about the life and recent suicide of former NFL player Aaron Hernandez, which is scheduled for early 2018. The book is Patterson's first nonfiction work since 2016's Filthy Rich, which profiled the disgraced hedge-fund billionaire Jeffrey Epstein.

If you're in the UK, you can try to snag a spot in one of the Crime Scene Live special events at the Flett Lecture Theatre in Kensington where you become a crime scene investigator for the night and work with Museum forensic experts to solve a murder mystery. The upcoming May, June, and July events are all sold out, but if you hurry, there are still openings for the fall.

In light of Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte’s recent government-sanctioned vigilante war on Manila's drug dealers, executed without any form of trial, there has been a stream of books from journalists and others about this unprecedented period of slaughter on the streets of the city. But, as Lit Hub notes, amidst the real-life, true-crime explosion, there are still a number of crime fiction-themed novels penned by Philippines authors worth checking out. As article author Paul French notes, "whether that will mean a continued reluctance to write crime or, perhaps, a whole new embracing of the crime genre to explain contemporary Manila society is just around the corner."

After the recent Scandinavian noir boom, it seems that dark tales from British authors are now making waves abroad. As to why and how that trend has grown recently, several publishers and agents offer their take for The Guardian.

Stacy Alesi, writing for the Library Journal's latest Readers Advisory, took at look at mystery novels, old and new, from cozies to procedurals to private eyes, with some recommendations.

The Alnwick Garden in northeast England includes a "Poison Garden" that showcases plants with killer properties. Visitors are invited to look but not touch or even smell.

Forensic science is an ever-evolving discipline, with sometimes a few steps forward and other times a few steps back. Case in point, research from The Australian National University (ANU) has cast doubt on a method used in forensic science to determine whether skeletal remains are of a person who has given birth.

For something really inspirational, check out this amazing story of a quadriplegic book reviewer.

May is International Short Story Month (as decreed by StoryADay.org). To celebrate, the Short Mystery Fiction Society will highlight one or more members' online stories per day. The first participant for 2017 is Cynthia St-Pierre who offers "Dear Reader" from the archives of Flash Bang Mysteries.
 
This week, the featured crime poem at the 5-2 is "The Beggar Generation" by Peter Braddock, and the new story over at Beat to a Pulp is "The Sun in Dust" by Jen Conley.

In the Q&A roundup, Criminal Element grilled John Rector, Author of The Ridge, about creative inspiration, genre classification, setting serving story, and the inevitable influence of the outside world on fiction; Criminal Element also snagged a Q&A with Patricia Abbott, author of the Edgar-nominated Shot in Detroit; NPR spoke with Girl on a Train's Paula Hawkins about her new book, Into the Water; and Scotch Rutherford is the latest victim of Paul D. Brazill's "Short, Sharp Interview" challenge.