The Writers Police Academy is launching an online program with classes and workshops for writers featuring law enforcement and forensic procedures and the craft of storytelling. The first up will be on January 23, "Criminal Investigations: Writing Believable Make-Believe." This daylong live and interactive seminar features detailed instruction in cyber crime and security, crime scene mapping using lasers and drones, and sexual assault investigations. As a bonus, USA Today & Wall Street Journal bestselling author, Lisa Regan, tells how to use the elements of fiction to craft a gripping crime novel. You can register for than and other upcoming courses via this link.
Exactly a 100 years ago, on January 21, 1921, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, the first novel by Agatha Christie was published in the UK. There have been many tributes and essays penned about the centennary, but if you're a fan of Christie and geography, you might check out this article by Sebastian Beck and Dominique Jeannerod on the International Crime Fiction blog. It takes a closer look at the different dimensions of space in the 45 novels featuring Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple and how the places where homicides were committed evolved over the course of Christie’s career.
If you're looking forward to staying inside with some good reading, the Rap Sheet blog has you covered with lists of new releases in the U.S. and UK for the first three months of 2021.
Netflix debuted its chilling true-crime documentary series, Night Stalker, on January 13, which tells the story of the law-enforcement officers who caught and apprehended Richard Ramirez, a serial killer and rapist who was active in California during the 1980s. As an adjunct to the series, The Wrap took a closer look at Frank Salerno, the detective who helped snag Ramirez in 1985.
Amazon.com and the "Big Five" publishers (Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan and Simon & Schuster) have been accused of colluding to fix ebook prices, in a class action filed by the law firm that successfully sued Apple and the Big Five on the same charge 10 years ago. The lawsuit, filed in district court in New York a week ago by Seattle firm Hagens Berman, on behalf of consumers in several US states, names the retail giant as the sole defendant but labels the publishers "co-conspirators." It alleges Amazon and the publishers use a clause known as "Most Favored Nations" to keep ebook prices artificially high by agreeing to price restraints that force consumers to pay more for ebooks purchased on retail platforms that are not Amazon.com.
A couple of new essays at CrimeReads tackle the topics of mental illness, including Josh Stallings's piece on the need for "neurodiversity" in crime fiction since the human brain works in fascinating, diverse ways; and Frederick Weisel's deep dive into what the intersection of detective fiction and Alzheimer’s can tell us about the paths of mysteries and the course of this tragic disease.
Did you ever wonder where the tradition of bookplates came from? Wonder no more.
A new flash fiction story is up at Shotgun Honey, "Denied," by karen Harrington.
The latest crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "January 6, 2021" by Charles Rammelkamp.
In the Q&A roundup, Murder Books welcomed Boston-based crime novelist Gabriel Valjan, author of the Roma Series, The Company Files, and the Shane Cleary mystery series, and a finalist for the Agatha and Anthony Awards; over at CrimeReads, Lee Child and Paraic O'Donnell discussed the history and significance of Jack Reacher in the context of "Moral Codes, Punching Nazis, and Human Evolution"; Lisa Haselton inverviewed cozy mystery author, G.P. Gottlieb, about her new culinary cozy novel, Smothered: A Whipped and Sipped Mystery; and Ace Atkins, the author who has continued Robert B. Parker's series featuring the iconic P.I., Spencer, talked true crime and Spenser’s hidden Auburn connection with Alabama Life & Culture.
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