Mystery Melange

The Crime Writers Association (CWA) announced the Dagger Awards shortlists, with winners to be handed out at the annual dinner in October. The categories include The Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, The John Creasy (New Blood) Dagger, The Endeavour Historical Dagger, The International Dagger, The Gold Dagger for Nonfiction, The Short Story Dagger, and The Debut Dagger. For all the lists, head on over to the official CWA website.

The annual Killer Nashville conference also announced its finalists in several categories for the Silver Falchion Awards. Winners will be presented at the Killer Nashville Awards dinner at the conference on Saturday, August 26, in Nashville. A full list of all the shortlists can be found here.

The recipients of this year’s Scribe Awards, sponsored by the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers, were revealed during the recent Comic-Con International gathering in San Diego. Assassin’s Creed, by Christie Golden, won in the Best Adapted/General and Speculative category, while Robert B. Parker’s Slow Burn, by Ace Atkins, won the General Original category. For the full list of finalists, hop on over to the IAMTW website. The winners were posted on the group's Facebook page.

Author David Leadbeater's self-published archaeological thriller, The Relic Hunters, was declared the winner of the first Amazon Kindle Storyteller award. Leadbeater's entry was chosen from thousands of submitted manuscripts from the UK and wins him a prize of £20,000.

I just learned of some very sad bookseller news: the Seattle Mystery Bookshop is up for sale. Founded by Bill Farley 27 years ago, the shop has hosted a veritable who's who of crime fiction authors through the years for talks and signings. The store sells both new and used books within the genre from noir, to cozy, espionage, classics, to historical and also specializes in hard-to-find, collectible, and signed first editions and Northwest mysteries. Current owner JB Dickey hastened to add that the store isn't closing ... yet. But they already had to resort to a Go Fund Me drive which brought in enough funds to pay off overdue bills and sock away enough to last through this past winter. As Dickey noted, "It bought us a year – but barely, and that has taken its toll. While we could do another such fund raiser, that’s not a viable way to continue in business."

Megan Abbott's article for The Paris Review takes a look at "The Origins of American Noir" through the lens of Dorothy B. Hughes’s novel In a Lonely Place from 1947 and how it reversed and upturned the conventions of hard-boiled crime fiction.

The legend of Jack the Ripper endures, with yet another claim about the iconic serial killer's identity.

So does the popularity of Agatha Christie, with The Independent writing about "Christie's alluring paradox: the compatibility of middle-England villages and homicidal maniacs on the rampage."

If you're a fan of British crime fiction, check out Jake Kerridge's list of the best books in the genre from decade through decade.

PBS has ordered "The Great American Read," a new series designed to explore America’s 100 best-loved books. The eight-part series will premiere in spring of 2018 and be paired with a new community program to promote reading, as well as a digital and social-media campaign. The hosted documentary series will feature celebrities from entertainment, sports, news, and literature talking about their favorite books and culminate in a nationwide vote to choose America’s best-loved book.

Since summer is the time for travel for most folks, why not schedule a trip to one of these five "iconic detective sites" from literary classics.

Are these bugs the most gruesome clues in forensic science? Also, it turns out that even microscopic bugs can be helpful in determining time of death.

And in slightly stranger crime news, according to a new study, statistics proves Twitter a powerful tool in forecasting crime.

This week, the featured crime poem at the 5-2 is "The Nature of Crime" by Jeff Bagato.

In the Q&A roundup, Booktopia welcomed the young phenom Christoffer Carlsson who has a PhD in criminology, and In 2013 became the youngest author ever to have won the award for Best Swedish Crime Novel of the Year; the Mystery People chatted with Reavis Wortham about his new book, Hawke’s Prey, his first thriller to feature contemporary Texas Ranger Sonny Hawke; and Criminal Element spoke with J.D. Trafford, an award-winning novelist whose debut, No Time to Run, was selected by IndieReader as a bestselling pick.