Earlier this month, the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance revealed the winners of the 2018 Maine Literary Awards. Congratulations go to In Solo Time by Richard J. Cass, which won the The Book Award for Crime Fiction.
Frankie Y. Bailey will leading a crime fiction writing workshop at the Albany Public Library's Howe Branch on July 9. Bailey is a professor in the School of Criminal Justice at the University of Albany and has five mysteries featuring amateur sleuth Lizzie Stuart and two police procedurals novels featuring Albany police detective Hannah Stuart. She is a Macavity Award-winner and has been nominated for Edgar, Anthony, and Agatha awards. She is also a past executive vice president of Mystery Writers of America and a past president of Sisters in Crime.
My thanks to Janet Rudolph for bringing us the sad news of the passing of Edgar Award-nominated author, Sally Sluhan Wright. Wright was best known for a series featuring Ben Reese, a university archivist who was one of America’s first Rangers and worked for Army Intelligence in Europe in WWII. Her most recent novel was Behind the Bonehouse, the second in her Jo Grant mystery series set within the horse industry in Lexington, Kentucky. A third and final book in that series is due to be released at a future date.
The latest edition of online crime 'zine Yellow Mama is out, with new fiction by Mark Joseph Kevlock, Bill Baber, Paul Michael Dubal, Norbert Kovacs, F. Michael La Rosa, Kenneth James Crist, J. Brooke, Edward Francisco, Paul Beckman, and also poetry by John Grey, Gregory E. Lucas, Meg Baird, Joe Balaz, and the Nielsens. Yellow Mama also serves up its usual complement of illustrations and photography.
Through the years, publishers have tried to boost sales by creating more salacious covers for works, even when it didn't really reflect what the story was about - often in ways that are laughable and cringe-worthy. Rebecca Romney discussed this over at Crime Reads, pointing out detective novels that got the "sexy pulp" treatment, and Emily Temple did the same at Libhub for classic works of literature that were also given pulp covers (who knew Lord Jim freelanced as a romance novel cover model?).
Many people associate the character of Sherlock Holmes with the famous quote "Elementary, my dear Watson" - which is something Holmes never actually said in Athur Conan Doyle's stories. However, there are may other quotes you may, or may not, have heard of that Holmes actually did say, as Book Riot notes.
The latest poem at the 5-2 crime poetry weekly is "Ace" by John Jeffire.
In the Q&A roundup, author John Bowie takes Paul D. Brazill's "Short, Sharp Interview" challenge to talk about a little bit of everything including what he's working on next; the LA Review of Books spoke with author and award-winning journalist Sebastian Rotella about his latest thriller featuring his fictional counterpart Valentine Pescatore, Rip Crew, that delves into the shadowy world of Mexican border smugglers; and LitHub asked author Megan Abbott to discuss the differences between hardboiled and noir crime fiction.
Harlan Ellison died in his sleep today.
Posted by: Todd Mason | June 28, 2018 at 04:40 PM
Thanks for passing along the news, Todd. I hadn't heard yet (I tend to turn off the news during the day). We are losing so many of the greats lately - it's very painful, especially since they were all contemporaries of my parents, also now both gone. Maybe we can arrange an FFB in his honor soon.
Posted by: BV Lawson | June 28, 2018 at 05:47 PM