This Saturday is St. Patrick's Day, and Mystery Fanfare has a roundup of all St. Patty's related crime fiction for you.
Mystery Fest Key West (set for June 22-24) has announced a call for entries for this year’s Whodunit Mystery Writing Competition. The winner will claim a book-publishing contract with Absolutely Amazing eBooks, free Mystery Fest Key West 2018 registration, airfare, hotel accommodations for two nights, meals and a Whodunit Award trophy to be presented at the 5th Annual Mystery Fest Key West, set for June 22-24 in Key West, Florida. But you'll need to hurry - the submission deadline is no later than April 15, 2018.
Via Janet Rudolph and her Mystery Fanfare blog, I learned of the deaths of three bright lights in the crime fiction community, two of whom passed away on the same day: Kate Wilhelm, who wrote the Barbara Holloway legal mystery series and Constance Leidl and Charlie Meiklejohn private eye/psychologist series, as well as various short stories and standalone mystery/suspense novels (Wilhelm was married to Damon Francis Knight, an American science fiction author whose story "To Serve Man" became an iconic adaptation for The Twilight Zone); Peter Temple, who became the first Australian writer to win the British Crime Writers’ Gold Dagger Award and is perhaps best-known for his Jack Irish novels (adapted for television with Guy Pearce as the titular lead); and Robert S. Levinson, creator of the Neil Gulliver and Stevie Marriner series of mystery-thrillers and also a Shamus award nominee and prolific short-story writer who won an Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Award winner three consecutive years.
Sad news also from Spinetingler Magazine: although they'd recently resurrected the print 'zine after being online-only for some time, the recent resignation of founder Sandra Ruttan means the publication will cease sometime this spring. We certainly wish all those involved the best and thank them for years of service to the crime fiction community.
Writing for the Washington Post, Sarah Weinman profiled a new biography, A Mysterious Life by Laura Thompson, and the book's take on Agatha Christie’s life, which rivaled the immortal mysteries she created.
The Guardian featured Belfast's No Alibis bookstore, which specializes in mystery and detective fiction.
When Emma Hardy and Grace Harrison noticed the trend of true-crime podcasts and TV series, while working for a magazine publisher in London, they hatched the idea for a periodical on the subject. The result is the quarterly Foul Play, which proposes to "satiate our fascination with real life murders without resorting to sensationalism."
Although print books still rein supreme in general, a new survey by the Pew Research Center finds that one in five Americans have listened to an audiobook, and one in four have read an ebook.
Here's something for your Bucket List: plan on visits to the "10 Most Famous Bookstores in the World."
Are these "23 of the Oldest Words Ever Spoken"?
This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "Poor Afrikka Hardy Did Not Die in Vain" by Joseph S. Pete.
In the Q&A roundup, Murder and Mayhem in Chicago conference co-founders Lori Rader-Day and Dana Kaye discussed Chicago’s Vibrant Crime Fiction Scene; Criminal Element quizzed Sebastian Rotell, author of Rip Crew; The Rap Sheet's Jeff Pierce chatted with author Max Allan Collins - 2018 marks the centennial of Mickey Spillane's birth, and Collins discussed his experiences continuing Spillane's Mike Hammer series; Richard Godwin took Paul D. Brazill's Short, Sharp Interview challenge about new sci fi dystopian thriller Android Love, Human Skin; Omnimystery News welcomed mystery author Leslie Karst to discuss her latest book to feature restaurateur Sally Solar, Death al Fresco; and the Jungle Red Writers' Ingrid Thoft chatted with Mike Lawson, winner of a Spotted Owl Award for the Best Mystery by a Pacific Northwest Writer, whose latest book, House Witness continues the adventure of Joe DeMarco, a fixer for a corrupt politician.
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