Mystery Melange

The 2017 Ngaio Marsh Awards finalists were named last week. Now in their eighth year, the Ngaio Marsh Awards celebrate the best New Zealand crime, mystery, and thriller writing for both fiction and non-fiction. For all the honorees in the Best Crime Novel, Best First Crime Novel, and Best Nonfiction Book categories, follow this link.

Join Mystery Readers NorCal for an evening with award winning author Jesse Kellerman on August 30 in Berkeley. This is a free event, but you must RSVP to attend to [email protected]. Kellerman is the author of five novels as well as the co-author with Jonathan Kellerman of the Golem novels and Crime Scene.

Killer Women, Killer Weekend 2017 will take place October 28-29 at Browns Courtrooms, Covent Garden, London. Attendees will learn the art and craft of crime fiction from bestselling authors Rachel Abbott, Mark Billingham, Erin Kelly, Mick Herron, Stuart MacBride, Sarah Pinborough, and Cally Taylor. There will also be pitch sessions to senior commissioning editors and agents at HarperCollins, Orion, Penguin Random House, and Headline; masterclasses on thrillers, procedurals, author as brand, self publishing; insider tips from top writers, editors and agents; craft workshops on suspense, character, plotting; and one-to-one research sessions with experts. Tickets go on sale September 1. (HT to Shots Magazine)

The next two issues of Mystery Readers Journal (Volume 33:3 & 4) will focus on Big City Cops. Editor Janet Rudolph is seeking reviews, articles, and Author! Author! essays, with a deadline for submissions of December 5.

The dollhouse series of model whodunits, used in Baltimore for decades to train generations of police detectives in crime scene investigation, is being cleaned, repaired and stabilized to be showcased at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery beginning in October. It is the first time the collection, built about 70 years ago, will be on public display.

Zoë Sharp, the author of fourteen novels in the Charlie Fox crime thriller series, standalones, and collaborations, took the Page 69 Test for her latest novel, Fox Hunter.

From the true crime is stranger than fictional crime department: Chinese crime writer Liu Yongbiao was working on a novel about a serial-killing author but may have based the book's storyline on his own life. He was recently arrested for four cold-case murders that happened over twenty years ago.

Are you a fan of the Murder She Wrote series starring Angela Lansbury? If so, these "9 mysterious facts" about the show might surprise you.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "False Confession" by David Spicer.

In the Q&A roundup, Sue Grafton spoke with Parade Magazine about the 24th in her Alphabet mystery series featuring Kinsey Mihone, Y is for Yesterday; and the Mystery People spoke with Mark Pryor about the latest in his Hugo Marston series, The Sorbonne Affair.