Crime Writers of Canada announced the winners of the 2020 Arthur Ellis Awards. The awards, established in 1984, are named after the nom de travail of Canada's official hangman and celebrate excellence in Canadian crime writing. The winners are listed below, and you can find all this year's finalists via this link.
Best Crime Novel: Michael Christie, Greenwood
Best Crime First Novel: Philip Elliott, Nobody Move
Best Novella: Wayne Arthurson, The Red Chesterfield
Best Short Story: Peter Sellers, "Closing Doors," Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine
Best French Book: Andrée Michaud, Tempêtes
Best Juvenile or YA Book: Tom Ryan, Keep This to Yourself
Best Nonfiction Book: Charlotte Gray, Murdered Midas: A Millionaire, His Gold Mine, and a Strange Death on an Island
Unhanged Arthur Award for Best Unpublished Manuscript: Liz Rachel Walker, The Dieppe Letters
This evening, May 28, from 7-8 p.m. Eastern, Michael Connelly and CNN's Jake Tapper are teaming up for an online conversation that will benefit independent bookstores. The conversation will cover both authors' new books, the craft of writing, their move from journalism to fiction writing, how journalism informs fiction, and the importance of supporting independent bookstores now and always. Viewers will be encouraged to donate to the Book Industry Charitable Foundation (Binc). For more information about the free event on Crowdcast and to register, click here. (HT to Shelf Awareness.
The coronavirus is a crime for health and business, but one of its aspects, quarantine/lockdown, might wind up being the ideal setting for crime fiction. The Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance is presenting the Two Minutes in Quarantine Flash Fiction contest which opens today for submissions from Maine writers. Author Julia Spencer-Fleming (of the Clare Fergusson and Russ Van Alstyne series) has provided the opening line, and you provide the rest of the story in only 500 words. The submissions deadline for the fee-free competition is June 15. The winning story will be published in the Maine Sunday Telegram, plus included in a reading with a stellar group of crime writers on 6/25 for Maine Crime Online.
Authors are finding ways to help promote their books and bookstores during the pandemic. Following proper safety guidelines, the Seminary Co-op in Chicago, Ill., welcomed local author Sara Paretsky into the store lobby last week to sign copies of her new V.I. Warshawsky novel, Dead Land, while Paretsky's beloved golden, Chiara, kept an eye out. The Seminary Co-op remains closed to the public, but is filling online orders.
Another convention has fallen to the coronavirus. This, from Mike Chomko, PulpFest Marketing & Programming Director: "Throughout the latter months of 2019, PulpFest was planning for a banner year. From our vivacious Guest of Honor — Eva Lynd — to a significant estate auction and our the plethora of 'B’s' in our theme — 'Bradbury, BLACK MASK, and Brundage,' with a touch of 'Burroughs, Brackett, Baum, and a couple of 'B' movies,' PulpFest 2020 was going to be one 'B'eautiful convention. Alas, it was not meant to be. Or should we say, 'B?' Or maybe it should be 'C' for coronavirus. We regret to announce that PulpFest is being postponed until August 2021...it will now take place August 5 - 8, 2021 at the DoubleTree in Mars, PA."
Holland House Books has launched a new digital crime imprint, PM Press. Editors Phaidra Robinson and Mia Skevington are seeking most types of crime and thriller fiction, "from the classic English whodunit through to police procedurals, or classic noir through to mind-bending psychological thrillers." You can read more about submission guidelines here or via Holland's website.
It's nice to know NASA has a sense of humor and a bit of an interest in crime fiction. Mars is a long way from 221B Baker Street, but one of fiction's best-known detectives will be represented on the Red Planet after NASA's Perseverance rover touches down on Feb. 18, 2021. An instrument called SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals) will, with the help of its partner-camera WATSON, hunt for signs of ancient life by detecting organic molecules and minerals. Together, they will study rock surfaces, mapping out the presence of certain minerals and organic molecules, which are the carbon-based building blocks of life on Earth.
Author and director of the Bloody Scotland crime writing festival and the Bute Noir fest, Craig Robertson, was asked to pick the ten best Scottish crime novels of all time for The Guardian, coming up with books that deliver all the gut-punch thrills of crime without forgetting its human cost.
The latest crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "I Gave You Diamonds, You Gave Me Disease" by Charles Rammelkamp.
In the Q&A roundup, Michael Connelly stopped by the Los Angeles Times (reprinted in part here) to talk about "fake news"; Bosch; his newspaper reporter protagonist, Jack McEvoy; and the coronavirus. Over at the Writers Who Kill blog, E.B. Davis chatted with Bernard Schaffer about his Santero and Rein Thriller series which focuses on the crimes of those lost in criminal psychosis; Books & Beyond spoke with Paul Matthews, author of two comedy thriller-mystery series; and Jessica Riley Miller sat down with The Stiletto Gang's Paula Gail Benson to discuss her supernatural mysteries that are in the tradition of Charlaine Harris’s True Blood series.
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