Sisters in Crime Australia announced that 26 stories by 23 authors have been shortlisted for its 28th Scarlet Stiletto Awards for best short stories written by Australian women. This year 241 stories – equal to last year’s record – are competing for a record $11,910 in prize money. Awards are presented in the following categories: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, Young Writer (under 19), and Emerging Writer (19-25); Art and Crime; Best Environmental Mystery "Body in The Library" (including runner-up); Most Satisfying Retribution; Mystery with History; Malice Domestic; Cross-Genre; Thriller; Great Film Idea; and Best Disabled Protagonist. The winners will be revealed in an online ceremony, Saturday, November 27, on YouTube and on Facebook.
In more news from Australia, the Aussie publishing news website Books + Publishing (and The Society of Women Writers NSW) reported that the Australian Crime Writers Association (ACWA) is sponsoring a new flash fiction crime writing prize, the Louie Award. Sponsored by ACT president of the Australian Medical Association Antonio Di Dio, the annual award celebrates his late father Luigi who was an avid crime fiction reader. The award is open to Australian crime writers and will seek short story submissions of up to 500 words. The winner will receive $750. Entries for the inaugural award is expected to open this month on the ACWA website, although there is no information listed there just yet.
Tomorrow, October 14, the Atwater Library in Montreal will host an Online Panel Discussion with Delvin Chatterson and other Montreal-area members of Crime Writers of Canada discussing the pleasures of reading and writing crime fiction.To register and get the Zoom link, click on over here.
On October 27, you can book your free ticket for an evening with Danish crime authors Heidi Amsinck and Katrine Engberg in conversation with broadcaster, journalist, and writer, Lone Theils. The event is sponsored by Barnet Libraries and will also be offered online.
Looking ahead to November 8th, pencil in the date for the online Murder One 21: Murder in the Library. The event is offered in conjunction with the Dublin Book Festival and Dublin UNESCO City of Literature and is also free (with required registration). Adele Parks and Jane Casey will be in conversation with Vaseem Khan. But wait, there's more! Check out the registration link for additional Murder One free online events scheduled throughout November,
Liverpool’s First Ever Crime Fiction Day, Perfect Crime UK, is slated for November 13. Featured authors include Ann Cleves, Elly Griffiths, Sophie Hannah, Mel Sherratt, Martin Edwards, M.W. Craven, and more, participating in a variety of panels. Note that this is an in-person event only. For tickets, head on over to this link.
The latest issue of Clues: A Journal of Detection has been published. The new executive editor, Caroline Reitz, has included essays profling authors such as Lois Austen-Leigh, Raymond Chandler, Agatha Christie, Didier Daeninckx, Fergus Hume, Philip Kerr, Peter Robinson, and Arthur Upfield.
In a couple of posts last week, I highlighted several newish anthologies (some for charity, others more general), and I don't want to just repeat the work Richie Naravez had already done with his list of "Latinx Crime Fiction Anthologies" for CrimeReads, but do head over there and check them out.
Washington Post book critic, Ron Charles, reviewed State of Terror, the political thriller written by Hillary Clinton with Louise Penny, calling it "a thinly veiled jab at a Very Stable Genius."
Meanwhile, The Guardian's Anthony Cummins reviewed John le Carré's posthumous and final full-length book, "a precision-tooled cat and mouse chase from a bookshop in East Anglia to the old eastern bloc." As Cummins notes, however, "If we’re left dangling by the end, there’s an added tease of sorts in the novel’s billing as le Carré’s 'last complete masterwork' – on the strong side, no doubt, but a tag that nonetheless holds out the prospect of rougher treasures still awaiting the light."
Writing for The Economist, C.T. Scott profiled the story of Sherlock Holmes's "real-life secretary." Chris Bazlinton had a shock when he was offered a public relations job at Abbey National, a British building society, and learned that as part of his duties, he would "also have to act as secretary to Sherlock Holmes, answering the mail that comes in for him." It all started in 1932, when Abbey opened its grand, white-marbled headquarters on Baker Street. The art-deco building was so large that it had been assigned ten street numbers, from 219 to 229. Overnight, one of the most famous literary addresses in history – 221b Baker Street, home of Holmes and his partner, John H. Watson – became a real place for the first time. Bazlinton, was the seventh secretary to Holmes, serving until 1982, and during his tenure, he estimated he received nearly 6,000 pieces of mail and replied to each one.
It seems like every single celebrity on the planet these days (from TV actors and presenters to astronauts to politicans) is dipping their quill into the crime fiction well these days. It appears the latest will be Britney Spears.
How much time should you give a devastatingly boring book? Crime novelist, Mark Billingham, advises readers to angrily launch a book across the room after 20 non-gripping pages, but studies show that almost 40% of people will keep going right to the end.
This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "Nocturne" by J.M. Jordan.
In the Q&A roundup, Indie Crime Scene interviewed Harry Navinski, author of The Duty: A not so Scottish Murder, which is the second novel in the DCI Suzanna McLeod series; Deborah Kalb chatted with Ashley Elliott, the co-author (with Michael J. Coffino), of the new true crime book The Demon in Disguise: Murder, Kidnapping, and the Banty Rooster, which focuses on the murder of Elliott's father in 2002; Nowegian author Jo Nesbo (creator of the Harry Hole series), spoke with The O.C. Register about his new work, The Jealousy Man, a collection of dark short stories and novellas that reveal the worst in human nature; Lori Rader-Day sat down The Nerd Daily about her latest book release, Death At Greenway, which she calls "Agatha Christie noir"; and the Vancouver publication, George Straight, had a Q&A with Linwood Barclay about being influenced by Ross Macdonald, inspired by Stephen King, and shaped by deadlines.
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