The British Crime Writers’ Association has selected author Robert Goddard as the recipient of its 2019 CWA Diamond Dagger, given to an author whose crime writing career has been marked by sustained excellence and who has made a significant contribution to the genre. Goddard will received the award during the CWA’s Dagger Awards ceremony on October 24 in London. Previous winners of the CWA Diamond Dagger include Michael Connelly, Ann Cleeves, Sara Paretsky, and Peter Lovesey.
The Carter Brown Foundation in conjunction with Brio Books and Stark House Press announced that the inaugural winner of the Carter Brown Mystery Writing Award is Wilson Toney for his novel, Alibi for a Dead Man. The judges praised the novel for its “snappy plotting, sharp dialogue and authentic characterization.” The award is named in honor of prolific Australian author Alan Geoffrey Yates, aka Carter Brown (1923-1985), who wrote over 350 novels and was posthumously awarded a Ned Kelly, Australia’s leading literary award for crime writing.
The winners of the Audie Awards, sponsored by the Audio Publishers Association, were announced Monday night at the APA’s 24th annual Audies Gala. The winner in the Mystery category was The Punishment She Deserves by Elizabeth George, as read by Simon Vance. The Thriller/Suspense award winner was Crimson Lake by Candice Fox, read by Euan Morton.
The McIlvanney Prize is launching a new award for 2019 for Scottish Crime Debut of the Year. The winner of the McIlvanney Prize, Bloody Scotland’s annual prize awarded to the best Scottish Crime book of the year, will be awarded £1,000, with the winner of the Crime Debut taking home £500. The Scottish Crime Debut of the Year will be judged by the board of Bloody Scotland including crime writers Lin Anderson, Craig Robertson, Gordon Brown and Abir Mukerjee.
An International Crime Fiction conference is headed to University College Dublin on March 29. Panel discussions will include such topics as “Contemporary Perspectives on French Crime Fiction,” “Italian and Irish Crime Fiction,” and more. This is a free event open to the public.
Crafting Crime Fiction: Mark Billingham and Erin Kelly will be in conversation with Libraries Sheffield on May 23, talking about writing crime fiction, adapting work for television, and their latest books. The authors are both Sunday Times bestselling authors and both published in over 25 countries.
HarperCollins imprint Avon is partnering with the Big Issue magazine to find a new crime writer in a competition launching this month. The winner will receive a two-book deal with the HarperCollins division. Submissions are invited from across the UK, with a deadline of May 31, 2019 followed by the shortlist and winner announcements in September and October, respectively. Judges for the award include books editor at the Big Issue, Jane Graham; Kingsford Campbell agent Julia Silk; author Katerina Diamond; and writer and editor M J Ford.
There is a call for papers for a special issue of Studies In Crime Writing: The True Crime Renaissance. This edition is devoted to scholarly explorations of the reasons for this popularity and a deep analysis of the genre in its present and multiple forms. The editors welcome submissions on any aspect of this phenomenon and seek 300-word abstracts and a 1-page CV by the deadline of June 30, 2019. First drafts of accepted essays will be due by September 30, 2019, and final drafts by January 31, 2020 for a 2020 publication date.
Author and editor Martin Edwards noted that among the upcoming titles in the British Library’s Crime Classic series is the first novel by John Dickson Carr, It Walks By Night, which introduced his first major series detective, Henri Bencolin. The new edition will also include a Bencolin short story.
Alan Nevins and his team at Renaissance Literary & Talent, who represent the various parties that control the Cornell Woolrich library, have worked tirelessly to track down and retrieve rights to Woolrich stories and collections that have been out of print for decades. They're making a major push to reintroduce Woolrich’s revolutionary work to new audiences with fresh collections of his most well-known and obscure short fiction. They already issued a couple of editions including a two-part series published on the 50th anniversary his death, An Obsession with Death and Dying, with more works schedule in the months to come.
The online publication My London News profiled Isokon, the London building that opened in 1934, where Agatha Christie and a Cambridge spy ring mastermind both lived. Perhaps not-so-coincidentally, Agatha Christie wrote her only spy novel, N or M?, during her stay there.
Speaking of Agatha Christie, her fans and readers can relax. HarperCollins Publishers has signed a new global deal with Agatha Christie Ltd to continue its exclusive English language publishing relationship until 2030. The company has been Christie’s publisher since The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was published (under imprint William Collins) in 1926, and the deal for print, digital and audio formats continues one of the longest-running partnerships in publishing history.
Carol Westron penned a guest post on the Promoting Crime Fiction blog about how superstition, spiritualism, and the supernatural were used by many Golden Age authors but in particular, Ngaio Marsh.
Indie publisher Joffe Books has acquired the 350-strong Robert Hale crime and general fiction list from the Crowood Press. Hale’s publishing list was built up over the course of 80 years and included titles from big names like Jean Plaidy, Harold Robbins and Nicholas Rhea, as well as UK print rights to Robert Bloch’s classic, Psycho. Joffe Books, a digital crime specialist, plans to relaunch many of the titles over the next 12 to 18 months in both ebook and paperback editions.
We lost two fine crime authors last week when news came of the deaths of H. Terrell Griffin and Charles McCarry. Griffin was a former attorney and Army medic who later turned his hand to writing the award-winning Matt Royal mysteries set on the Florida Gulf Coast. (Here's an Author R&R post he shared with this blog back in 2008 after the publication of his novel, Blood Island.) McCarry was a former C.I.A. agent who used his Cold War experiences to pen his critically-acclaimed espionage novels, including the bestselling The Tears of Autumn, about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. (HT to Mystery Fanfare)
Just in time for Mardi Gras, Janet Rudolph has a list of Mardi Gras mysteries. Laissez les bon temps rouler!
The Milwaukee Public Museum's new exhibit, “The Power of Poison,” opened this past weekend and runs through July 7. Organized by the American Museum of Natural History, the exhibit highlights the complex role of venom and poisons in nature, popular culture, medicine and history. There's a section on poison in myths and legends, highlighting how poisonings are critical plot points in the Harry Potter series, comic books, Sherlock Holmes stories, and Agatha Christie's novels.
A notebook of poetry penned by Bonnie Park and Clyde Barrow is set to go on auction in April. The volume features poems written by the outlaw duo during their Depression-era crime spree and also includes a treasure trove of photographs. Although most of the poems were written by Bonnie, the book also includes a poem ostensibly written in Clyde Barrow’s spelling error-filled scrawl.
My local library matched up readers up with book “blind dates” for Valentine's Day - but Tom Lee, owner of Troubadour Books and Records, has been wrapping some of his wares in brown paper and string for a while, with only a quote and some key words to entice potential readers, giving “mystery novel” a new meaning.
What a bargain! Late author Tom Clancy’s former penthouse at the Ritz-Carlton Residences in Baltimore is now on the market for less than half its original asking price. The 12,000-square-foot condo is currently listed for $5.9 million and features views of the Inner Harbor, five bedrooms, two offices, three private elevators, and a 700-square-foot private gym and an in-home theater.
The latest poem at the 5-2 crime poetry weekly is “The Complex Solution is Sometimes Correct” by Nicholas Bush.
In the Q&A roundup, Crime by the Book welcome crime writer Camilla Grebe to discuss her brand-new Scandinavian mystery, After She's Gone; The Bookseller chatted with Karin Slaughter about her most recent novel, Pieces of Her, and the gendered questions she gets about the violence in her books; Crime Fiction Lover spoke with MJ Arlidge, the creator of the series of crime novels featuring DI Helen Grace and also a TV producer on shows such as Silent Witness; and the Mystery People’s Scott Butki interviewed Greg Iles, the bestselling author of the Natchez Burning trilogy, who returns with a new novel, Cemetery Road, about friendship, betrayal, and shattering secrets that threaten to destroy a small Mississippi town.
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