The musical crime fiction 'supergroup', The Fun Lovin' Crime Writers, will perform in Belfast on November 2 as special guests of the NOIReland International Crime Fiction Festival. Group members, which include Val McDermid, Mark Billingham, Christopher Brookmyre, Luca Veste, Doug Johnstone, and Stuart Neville, will perform a set of crime-themed hits at Oh Yeah preceded by a Q&A with Belfast author Steve Cavanagh, who will probe the players on their careers, musical passions and latest books.
Midnight Ink Acquisitions Editor Terri Bischoff posted on her Facebook page that the publisher will be shutting its doors after the Spring/Summer 2019 season. Since its launch in 2005, the company has released crime fiction in all subgenres by authors such as Jess Lourey, Brendan DuBois, G.M. Malliet, Steve Hockensmith, Catriona McPherson, E.J. Cooperman and Jeff Cohen, Sue Ann Jaffarian, Kellye Garrett, Keith Raffel, J.D. Allen, Gwen Florio, Leonard Goldberg, Patricia Smiley, and Bill Cameron. (HT to the Rap Sheet)
Mystery Fanfare has a list of Halloween-themed crime fiction to give you all the thrills and chills you want to celebrate the holiday.
The latest issue of Yellow Mama is up on the web, filled with gruesome tales, creepy poetry, and plenty of Halloween noir fitting for October.
Last week marked the passing of author Evelyn Anthony at the age of 92. A prolific author of more than 50 novels, including The Tamarind Seed, which was turned into a hit film in 1974, Anthony also wrote spy thrillers, having spotted a gap in the market for such books. She was aided by contacts made through her father, Lt Commander Henry Stephens, the inventor of a top-secret anti-aircraft gunnery simulator, who'd worked with British intelligence officers in the war. Among them was Desmond Bristow, who, with Kim Philby, had recruited one of the most important double agents of the war, and his stories inspired Anthony's books The Rendezvous (1967) and The Poellenberg Inheritance (1972).
We also lost writer Margaret Hinxman, who has died aged 94. She was one of the influential band of female critics who did much to encourage film in postwar Britain then turned her hand to crime novels at the age of 60. Between 1976 and 1991 she published, under the Collins Crime Club imprint, nine thrillers, including One-way Cemetery (1977), The Night They Murdered Chelsea (1984) and Nightmare in Dreamland (1991).
A group of murder-mystery enthusiasts in Canada's Charlottetown is inviting folks to retrace the steps taken by two men convicted for murdering an elderly shopkeeper in 1941. The group, calling themselves the Mystery Gang, has organized a walk based on the route taken by the two men the night of the murder of Peter Trainor. Earl Lund and Fred Phillips were charged and hanged at the Queens County Jail — also called the 1911 jail — for Trainor's murder. Both men went to the gallows denying they did it. The group will be doing two walks on Oct. 28, with money raised to go toward more research into Peter Trainor's murder and shedding light on other Island mysteries.
As the New York Times reported, law enforcement has a new tool in the rapidly expanding use of DNA testing services like 23andMe and Ancestry.com, with data poured into a database called GEDmatch. Within two or three years, 90 percent of Americans of European descent will be identifiable from their DNA tied to relatives who have used the services even if the individual has not. While this revolution has led to the solving of fifteen murder and sexual assault cases, the privacy questions are numerous and troubling.
I don't think this is surprising at all, but parents take note: a new study reveals that growing up in a home filled with books makes kids smarter.
The latest poem at the 5-2 crime poetry weekly is "Nonbeliever, as the Dark of the Year Approaches" by Clarinda Harriss.
In the Q&A roundup, the Los Angeles Review of Books spoke with Sarah Schulman about her new crime novel, Maggie Terry, which follows Maggie, an addict, an alcoholic, and a former police officer who has lost custody of her daughter, as she moves through her first five days back on the job as a private investigator; the Mystery People chatted with Helen Currie Foster about her latest mystery to feature Texas lawyer Alice MacDonald Greer, Ghost Next Door; and the Houston Chronicle interviewed Walter Mosley about his writing, his latest novel, and neighborhood heroes.
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