Minotaur Books announced that Christina Estes’s novel, Off the Air, has won the 2020 Tony Hillerman Prize for a best first mystery novel. Minotaur Books is planning to publish Estes’s debut in 2023. Estes is an Emmy award-winning reporter who lives in Phoenix, and is also a founding member of Sisters in Crime Grand Canyon Writers. Off the Air is the story of a local TV news reporter who gets the scoop of a lifetime while investigating the murder of a popular radio talk show host—but the killer is determined to keep her silent.
Capital Crime has announced that London-based journalist and writer, Darren Boyle, has won the 2021 Amazon Publishing New Voices Award for his thriller, The Black Pool. He will receive a £1,000 cash prize, a trophy, and a potential offer of publication from Thomas & Mercer, the mystery and thriller imprint of prize sponsor Amazon Publishing, whose authors include Mark Edwards, Claire McGowan, Dreda Say Mitchell, and Damien Boyd. The Black Pool is set is set in contemporary Dublin and features a journalist protagonist who ventures deep into the murky world of organized tiger raids gang—but how much is he willing to risk for the ultimate story? The Amazon New Voices Award is open annually to unpublished mystery, thriller, and crime fiction manuscripts in English from writers around the world.
The million euro literary Planeta prize has lured three Spanish men out of anonymity to reveal that they are behind ultra-violent Spanish crime thrillers marketed as the work of female author, Carmen Mola, which roughly translates as "Carmen’s cool." When one of their books won the lucrative award, the trio went public to pick up the check at a glitzy ceremony attended by the Spanish king. However, not everyone was thrilled with the unveiling. Beatriz Gimeno, a feminist, writer, activist—and former head of one of Spain’s national equality bodies, the Women’s Institute—attacked the men for creating a female persona in their publicity for Carmen Mola books over several years. "Quite apart from using a female pseudonym, these guys have spent years doing interviews. It’s not just the name—it’s the fake profile that they’ve used to take in readers and journalists. They are scammers."
Tomorrow, the New York Adventure Club is offering the virtual webinar, "Agatha Christie: Unraveling the Mystery Behind the Queen of Crime," with tour guide Simon Whitehouse. It will include London locales of Christie's works and life, including where the royal premieres of film adaptations were held, as well as background on her career and 1926 disappearance. Tickets are $10, with access to the webinar available for a limited time after the event. (HT to The Bunburyist)
The final Inspector Montalbano novel, finished years ago by author Andrea Camilleri, has been published in the UK. Camilleri was determined that his crime series not be continued by another writer and left his concluding novel with his publisher long before his death in 2019. The series, following the food-loving Sicilian detective as he solves crimes against the backdrop of a changing Italy, has been translated into 32 languages, with more than 65 million copies sold around the world. Camilleri wrote the first book about Salvo Montalbano in 1994 at the age of almost 70; he began writing the 28th in 2004, depositing the manuscript at his publishing house in Palermo on the promise that it would be kept in a locked safe and only published after his death.
The year's "best of" book lists are already starting to pop up, including Barnes & Noble, which compiled an overall list as well as one specific to Mysteries and Thrillers. You can find those top ten crime fiction titles here.
The Rap Sheet offered up a tribute to "A Steward of Hammett’s Digs, Now Gone." William P. "Bill" Arney, who is said to have reclaimed the apartment at 891 Post Street in San Francisco (once occupied by Dashiell Hammett and his private-eye creation, Sam Spade), passed away this last September 28. Arney’s studio became a periodic stop on literary historian Don Herron’s popular Dashiell Hammett Tour.
Here's a pandemic surprise: there's been a mini-indie bookstore boom.
Cross-Examining Crime has a fun classic crime quiz this week on the theme of Sherlock Holmes, in particular the artwork used to accompany the short stories. The quiz uses images from the short stories, most of them drawn by Sidney Paget.
This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "Carpet Jones" by Rena J. Worley.
In the Q&A roundup, S.A. Cosby chatted with CrimeReads' Eli Cranor about his latest novel, Razorblade Tears, but as Cranor noted, Cosby was a bit late to the interview thanks to some real "dead bodies"; Writers Who Kill spoke with Lorie Lewis Ham about her debut novel, One of Us, and also M. E. Browning about her latest book, Mercy Creek; and the Indie Crime Scene interviewed Kathleen Kaska, author of Murder at the Galvez (A Sydney Lockhart Mystery).
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