Warren Easley was announced as this year's recipient of the annual Friends of Mystery Spotted Owl Award, for his book, No Witness (Poisoned Pen Press). The Spotted Owl Award was established in 1995 and is given to the best mystery novel of the year by an author who lives in the Pacific Northwest (Alaska, British Columbia, Canada, Idaho, Oregon or Washington). Previous winners have included Bill Cameron, Robert Dugoni, Earl Emerson, G.M. Ford, Dana Haynes, Mike Lawson, Phil Margolin, and Jon Talton. The other finalists this year were (in order) Robert Dugoni, Martin Limon, Dana Haynes, John Straley, Valerie Geary, Michael Niemann, Marc Cameron, Dana Stabenow, and Amy Stewart.
The Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance has announced the list of finalists for the 2022 Maine Literary Awards. This list was derived from over 400 submissions featuring the work of Maine authors, either full-time or part-time seasonal residents. The winners will be announced at a ceremony held at 7 p.m. on May 24 at SPACE in Portland. The contenders in the Crime Fiction category this year include Paul Doiron, Dead by Dawn; Jule Selbo,10 Days: A Dee Rommel Mystery; and Caitlin Wahrer, The Damage.
If you happen to be in Dallas tonight, check out Dallas Noir Fest, which kicks off with a panel discussion tonight, moderated by Robert Wilonsky and featuring authors Johnathan Brownlee, Harry Hunsicker, Steve Stodghill, and Paul Coggins. There will also be showings of iconic noir films like Chinatown, Sunset Boulevard, Double Indemnity, The Big Sleep, and more, including Reservoir Dogs with special guest Michael Madsen, who played the unforgettable sadistic ex-con in the film but is also a talented producer, director, writer, photographer, and poet.
Capitol Crimes is sponsoring an in-person Killer Workshop this Saturday, May 14 in Rancho Cordova, California. The keynote speaker is Gregg Hurwitz. Other special guests include: authors Dr. Ellen Kirschman, Cara Black, Simon Wood, Eileen Rendahl, Claire Booth, Kris Calvin, James L'Etoile, and Quan Huynh; Ryan Nickel, Crime Scene Lead from the Sacramento Crime Lab; Cover Artist Karen Phillips from Phillips Covers; and District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert, who will be live streaming about closing the groundbreaking 40-year-old Golden State Killer case using genetic genealogy. The registration deadline for this event is today, which you can do so via this link.
On May 21 from 6.30pm-8pm, Barnet Libraries Literary Festival in the UK will present an evening with four bestselling female crime fiction authors including Erin Kelly (The Poison Tree); Heidi Amsinck (My Name is Jensen); Caz Frear (Sweet Little Lies); and C J Tudor (The Chalk Man) discussing their most recent books. There will also be a Q&A session and book signing to follow.
In honor of the Crime Writers Association's National Crime Reading Month in the UK, Louise Phillips, Dublin’s CWA National Crime Reading Month Ambassador, will be in conversation on June 1 with bestselling author of the Lottie Parker series, Patricia Gibney. There will also be readings from Fiona Sherlock, EV Kelly, and Paul McNeive.
Dean Street Press is republishing the works of golden age crime novelist, Alice Campbell, beginning June 6th. They'll be reissuing the first ten of her mysteries initially, with the remainder to follow next year. As the publisher noted, the novels are "not merely excellent detective stories, but atmospheric works of suspense, many set in France." This is their first time these novels have been in print for over seventy years, and are prefaced by an introduction from crime fiction historian, Curtis Evans. Campbell (1887-1955) came originally from Atlanta, Georgia, where she was part of the socially prominent Ormond family, before she moved to New York City at the age of nineteen and quickly became a socialist and women’s suffragist. She later moved to Paris, marrying the American-born artist and writer, James Lawrence Campbell, and ultimately to England just before World War One. Campbell wrote crime fiction until 1950, though many of her novels continued to have French settings. She published her first work (Juggernaut) in 1928 and published nineteen detective novels during her career.
Climate change is bringing a whole host of problems that countries and local jurisdictions will have to deal with, but there's another strange side effect: as water levels drop to historic levels in Lake Mead near Las Vegas, bodies in barrels are being found in the reservoir. Geoff Schumacher with The Mob Museum in Las Vegas predicts more bodies will be found and some may be linked to organized crime. "A barrel has a signature of a mob hit," he said.
Speaking of crime, this is the definition of karma.
This week's crime poem at the 5-2 weekly is "The Purge" by Rena J. Worley.
In the Q&A roundup, Connie Berry spoke with E. B. Davis about her fourth Kate Hamilton mystery, where American antiques dealer Kate Hamilton uncovers a dark secret buried in Victorian England; Kirstyn Petras chatted with Lisa Haselton about her new political thriller, The Next Witness; Joanna Penn interviewed Angela Marsons about writing a successful crime thriller series; Chris Holm, author of the cross-genre Collector trilogy, the Michael Hendricks thrillers, and thirty-odd short stories in a variety of genres, stopped by Author Interviews to talk about his new standalone biological thriller, Child Zero; and D V Bishop, author of the Cesare Aldo series set in Florence (shortlisted for the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize and longlisted for both the CWA Gold Dagger and Historical Dagger), spoke with Shots Magazine's Ayo Ontade.
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