S.A. Crosby's Razorblade Tears has won the 2022 Hammett Prize from the International Association of Crime Writers, North America. The other finalists this year included: Stung by William Deverell; Five Decembers by James Kestrell; Harlem Shuffle by Coleman Whitehead; and The Sacrifice of Lester Yates by Robin Yocum. Crosby's novel was also an Edgar Award finalist and won the Thriller Writers Awards for Best Audiobook and Best Hardcover Novel.
Foreword Reviews announced their Indie Awards 2022 winners. The Gold Winner in the Mystery Category was Shadow Music by Helaine Mario; the Silver Winner was Murder at Greysbridge by Andrea Carter; and the Bronze Winner was Death of a Messenger by Robert McCaw. Honorable Mentions were also handed out to 10 Days by Jule Selbo and Windfall by Bryan TD Smith. In the Thriller Category, the Gold Winner was The Quiet People by Paul Cleave; the Silver Winner was Paradise, WV by Rob Rufus; and the Bronze Winner was The Necklace by Matt Witten. Honorable Mention for thrillers went to Crickets by Lee Chappel.
The longlist was announced for the 2022 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel. The award is made for the best crime, mystery, or thriller novel written by a New Zealand citizen or resident, published in New Zealand during the previous year. Decided by a panel of local and international judges, it is named after New Zealand’s most successful crime writer, Dame Ngaio Marsh. Last year's winner was Sprigs by Brannavan Gnanalingam. You can check out all twelve longlisted titles via this link.
Mystery Writers of America announced the establishment of the Lilian Jackson Braun Award for the best full-length, contemporary cozy mystery published by an MWA-approved publisher. This annual award comes with a $2,000 prize as the result of a generous endowment to MWA by the late Lilian Jackson Braun, who died in 2011 at the age of 97. Braun was the New York Times bestselling author of the "The Cat Who…" series of amateur sleuth mysteries which spanned 29 books published between 1966 and 2007. "Lilian Jackson Braun is a legend in the mystery community," stated Greg Herren, the Executive Vice-President of Mystery Writers of America. "Her incredibly generous bequest to MWA was a very pleasant surprise and will enable us to fund some exciting new projects and programs to benefit our membership. It felt appropriate to honor her career and her legacy in this way."
After a hiatus due to the pandemic, the biennial NoirCon is back this year, and it's going virtual from Friday, October 21 through Sunday, October 23. The three-day symposium celebrates noir in all its artistic incarnations with live and pre-recorded events, including panel discussions, award ceremonies, author talks, art exhibitions, movie screenings, and more. "Noir is truly a global phenomenon," said NoirCon co-founder and president, Lou Boxer. "By going fully virtual this year, we can connect with authors and fans from around the world. We’re very excited for what the digital experience can offer." NoirCon 2022 will celebrate the honorees that were unable to receive their awards in 2018, as well as this year’s recipients, including the 2018 David Goodis Award winner, Walter Mosley, and this year's Goodis winner, Megan Abbott. There's also the Anne Friedberg Award for Contributions to Noir and its Preservation (Dana Plan; Sarah Weinman) and the Kogan Award For Excellence (Geoffrey O’Brien and Max Rudin; Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini). Register now via this link.
Mystery Readers Journal: New England Mysteries II is now available as PDF and hardcopy. Editor, Janet Rudolph, had so many articles, reviews, and author essays that she spread the topic out into two issues. (Mystery Readers Journal: New England Mysteries I is also still available.) You can read a few free articles online including, "An Unlikely Home to Criminal Debuts" by Gabriel Valjan; "The Boston Infrastructure Blues: Or How Geography Is Ruining My Writing Life" by Hank Phillippi Ryan; and "The Dark Side of Boston’s Music Scene" by Clea Simon
The New York Times reported on "How Paintings Lost in a Small-Town Art Heist Were Recovered 50 Years Later" as two sleuths—a curator and a librarian—in New Paltz, N.Y., helped the F.B.I. track down 200-year-old paintings that were stolen from a historical society in 1972. (If you're not a subscriber, you can read more about the story here.)
This week's crime poem at the 5-2 weekly is "Her Shadow" by Kelly Sargent.
In the Q&A roundup, Lisa Haselton Interviewed Canadian author. Nathalie Guilbeault. about her psychological thriller, Inhaled; over at Writers Who Kill, E. B. Davis spoke with Debra H. Goldstein about Five Belles Too Many, Goldstein’s fifth book in the Sarah Blair mystery series; and novelist Mark Rubinstein chatted with Lisa Haselton about his new suspense thriller, Assassin’s Lullaby.
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