The nominees for the 2022 Strand Critics Awards were announced today. The finalists for Best Mystery Debut include: Who Is Maud Dixon? by Alexandra Andrews; The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris; Bullet Train by Kōtarō Isaka, Translated by Sam Malissa; Lightseekers by Femi Kayode; Velvet Was the Night by Silvia Moreno-Garcia; and All Her Little Secrets by Wanda M. Morris. The finalists for Best Mystery Novel are The Dark Hours by Michael Connelly; Razorblade Tears by S. A. Cosby; The Low Desert by Tod Goldberg; These Toxic Things by Rachel Howzell Hall; Dream Girl by Laura Lippman; and 1979 by Val McDermid. This year's Strand Magazine Publisher of the Year Award, which recognizes excellence in publishing, goes to Sandra Brown and Nelson DeMille. The winners will be presented in early September.
Organizers of this year’s Bloody Scotland international crime-writing festival, to be held from September 15-18, announced the shortlist for the Scottish Crime Debut of the Year 2022. The shortlisted titles will be promoted in bookshops throughout Scotland in the period between the announcement, and the presentation of the winner (as well as the winner of the 2022 McIlvanney Prize) will be on Thursday, September 15 at the conference in Stirling. The finalists include Welcome to Cooper by Tariq Ashkanani; Meantime by Frankie Boyle; The Wolf Hunters by Amanda Mitchison; The Girl, The Crow, The Writer and The Fighter by George Paterson; Hear No Evil by Sarah Smith.
Amazon posted a list of twenty of the "Best mysteries and thrillers of 2022 so far," according to Amazon's editorial staff. The top pick for best mystery and thriller of the year went to Nita Prose for The Maid. (FYI for those concerned that Amazon's own crime imprint, Thomas & Mercer, might dominate the list, I actually saw no T&M titles included.)
The latest Noir at the Bar Dallas returns to the Wild Detectives tomorrow night at 7pm. The "Hap and Leonard" edition will feature Joe R. Lansdale, Kasey Lansdale, Keith Lansdale, Jim Nesbitt, Mike McCrary, V.P. Chandler, Williams Dylan Powell, Scott Montgomery, Eryk Pruitt, Kevin R. Tipple, Kathleen Kent, and Henry Hunsicker reading from their work. The event will also include a spoken word/musical duet performance by local artists Trang Vu & Patrick Pombuena.
Orion’s immersive events space, the Incident Room, is returning to Harrogate on July 22 as part of the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival. Running in tandem with the festival’s main program, the line-up includes a UK signing with festival headliner, Michael Connelly; panels with former Met Police officer John Sutherland, authors Sharon Bolton, and Anna Mazzola; and an event on representation in crime fiction with Mari Hannah, Robin Morgan-Bentley, and Winnie M Li. Orion will also be working with podcasts Blood Brothers and CrimeTimeFM to provide two Orion-exclusive Incident Room episodes featuring interviews with authors such as Steve Cavanagh, Joanne Harris, Joe Ide, and M J Arlidge. Clemence Roux, festival manager, added, "We are thrilled to welcome the Orion Incident Room for the sixth year. It’s such a fabulous feeling to bring the festival back to full capacity after an incredibly difficult last two years for our arts charity."
Sisters in Crime (SinC) recently opened up submissions for their 2022 Pride Award for Emerging LGBTQIA+ Crime Writers, a $2,000 grant awarded to one-up-and-coming writer who identifies as part of the LGBTQIA+ community. CrimeReads spoke with two of the 2022 award judges, Leslie Karst and Brenda Buchanan, to find out why the Pride Award is so important and the benefits of applying. They noted that publishers have often refused to take a chance on books with queer protagonists. But as Buchanan said, "Old habits are hard to break and some folks in the industry still haven’t adjusted to reality."
Also on CrimeReads, Molly Odintz wrote that, in light of the recent Supreme Court decision, we need more crime novels in which women make choices about reproduction.
This week's crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "Total Immersion" by Charles Rammelkamp.
In the Q&A roundup, E. B. Davis interviewed Barbara Ross for the Writers Who Kill blog about Muddled Through, the tenth book in her Maine Clambake mystery series; and Lisa Haselton interviewed Robert Creekmore about his new dark thriller, Prophet’s Debt.
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