Hundreds of writers are to gather in New York this week to read from Salman Rushdie’s works, in a recreation of an event first held after the fatwa on the author was issued in 1989. The writers will gather on the steps of the New York Public Library on Friday morning, exactly a week after 75-year-old Rushdie was stabbed during an event at the Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York. The International Thriller Writers Organization also denounced the attack, which, they noted, "goes beyond the ten to fifteen stab wounds Rushdie received. It is also an attack on two of our core values—freedom of speech and freedom of artistic expression."
Author and blogger Martin Edward took note of the recent passing of two crime writers, June Thomson and Michael Pearce. Thomson was best known for her long series of novels featuring Chief Inspector Jack Finch (who was re-named Rudd in the US, to avoid confusion with another series detective called Finch), and who early books drew comparisons with P.D. James. Pearce was the author of the Mamur Zapt series of historical fiction police procedurals as well as a number of "A Dead Man in..." mysteries, set in the period preceding the First World War and featuring Sandor Seymour, an officer of Scotland Yard's Special Branch who is sent by the British Foreign Office to deal with various crimes involving members of the British diplomatic service.
President Biden's nominee for Archivist of the United States, Colleen Shogan, also happens to be a prolific author of a series of murder mystery whodunits (The Washington Whodunnit Series) starring congressional staffer Kit Marshall. Shogan previously worked on Capitol Hill as a legislative staffer in the United States Senate and as a senior executive at the Library of Congress. She is currently a Senior Vice President at the White House Historical Association.
I hope to increase the number of crime fiction reference book features on this blog, but in the meantime, Pietro De Palma takes a look at his favorite major crime criticism texts in English, French and Italian. It was good to see a couple of books represented by fellow bloggers who have regularly participated in the Friday's "Forgotten" Books series of blog posts that I join in on a weekly basis, including Martin Edwards (The Golden Age of Murder) and Curtis Evans (Masters of the Humdrum' Mystery).
I've never needed a reason to read other than the pure enjoyment of it, but many studies have recently discussed the benefits reading has for stress relief, cognition, vocabulary, and even empathy. Or as Reader's Digest recently noted, "Why Reading 2 Books a Month Could Help You Get Ahead."
In the Q&A roundup, Author Interviews spoke with Ed Lin, journalist and author (of the Taipei Night Market series and the Robert Chow crime series set in 1970s Manhattan Chinatown), who is also the first author to win three Asian American Literary Awards; Indie Crime Scene interviewed Jonathan Woods, whose novel Hog Wild has its debut on August 26; and cozy mystery author Ted Mulcahey joined Lisa Haselton to discuss his new novel, Juiced, about secret research and a band of bumbling criminals who will stop at nothing to get what they want.
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