They've announced the winners of this year's Deutscher Krimipreis, a leading German crime fiction award. The German category was won by Johannes Groschupf's Die Stunde der Hyänen (The Hour of the Hyenas); second place went to Oliver Bottini's Einmal noch sterben (Die once more); and third place to Sybille Ruge for Davenport. The international category was won by Onda Riku's The Aosawa Murders; 2nd place: Jacob Ross - The Bone Readers; and 3rd Place: Cherie Jones - How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps the House. The German Crime Prize, awarded since 1985 by a jury of crime critics, literary scholars, and crime booksellers, is bestowed on novels that "give new impetus to the genre with their original content and literary skill."
The Saltire Society announced the winners of 2022 Scotland’s National Book Awards at a ceremony at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh early in December. Alexander McCall Smith, librettist, playwright, poet, polymath, and novelist (of the Ladies' #1 Detective Agency series) was awarded the 2022 Saltire Society Lifetime Achievement Award for his contribution to Scottish literature.
Kate Jackson a/k/a "The Armchair Sleuth" over at the Cross-Examining Crime blog announced the winners of the blog's Reprint of the Year awards, drawing from over 160 possible reprints to choose from that were voted on by participating bloggers and blog readers. I think the book in the #1 position will be a surprise to many.
A slew of new creative works (music, movies, books) enter the public domain in the U.S. in 2023, including The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, meaning that every Sherlock story will be out of copyright. This is legally important since the Arthur Conan Doyle estate has been suing just about everybody in recent years, even when it comes to certain public domain works. Most infamously, the Doyle Estate went after the creators of the Enola Holmes series, claiming a copyright over Sherlock stories where Holmes was "capable of friendship," "expressed emotion," or "respected women," based on the idea that these character traits are copyrightable. Although the cased was dismissed "with prejudice" (e.g. likely settled), with all Holmes stories now in public domain, such cases will no longer be tying up the courts. Author Cory Doctrow has an overview of the 2023 public domain landscape.
The 100 pages pages of a 1934 murder mystery, Cain’s Jawbone, were intentionally printed out of order by a British crossword master. As the book's cover declared, "It is possible — through logic and intelligent reading — to sort them into the only correct order, revealing six murder victims and their respective murderers." A relatively obscure work, it recently took on a new life on TikTok, which made it a global sensation, especially when it was revealed that only four people have solved the puzzle since its publication nearly eight decades ago.
It appears that a book-loving fungus has alien-hunting scientists excited.
This week's crime poem at the 5-2 weekly is "Where Donald T. Trump Has Been Jumping the Shark" by Clay Thistleton.
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