Pulitzer Prize finalist, Megan Kate Nelson, and Emmy Award-winning director, Walter Hill, are among the 2023 Spur Award winners announced by Western Writers of America at the Tucson Festival of Books. Among the crime-themed honorees was the winner of the Original Mass-Market Paperback Novel, Dead Man’s Trail by Nate Morgan (Pinnacle/Kensington); and winner of the Traditional Novel category was The Secret in the Wall: A Silver Rush Mystery by Ann Parker (Poisoned Pen Press). Presentations are scheduled during WWA’s convention June 21-24 in Rapid City, S.D. For more details about all the winners and finalists, head on over here.
As part of the annual Oxford Conference for the Book on the University of Mississippi campus, there will be a "Noir at the Bar" March 31 at Ajax Diner. Ace Atkins will discuss crime fiction with authors Megan Abbott, S.A. Cosby, Eli Cranor, and Tyler Keith, a Southern studies alumnus who will perform with Teardrop City afterward.
Some sad news to share: Christopher Fowler, author of the Bryant & May series of detective novels, has died at the age of 69, having been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer three years ago. Fowler was best known for his Bryant & May thrillers, featuring the veteran detectives solving unusual crimes in London from the second world war to the present day. The series began with Full Dark House in 2003, and 17 more novels followed, most recently London Bridge Is Falling Down, published in 2021. Fowler's final words on his blog were: "All fun things have to come to an end. I love you all. Except for that horrible old troll – are there any other kind? There, now you have a smidgen of extra time on your hands, go have fun … and read a book.”
Cara Black, award-winning author of the Private Investigator Aimée Leduc series, applied the Page 69 Test to Night Flight to Paris, the latest installment in her World War II-set novels featuring American markswoman, Kate Rees.
This week's crime poem at the 5-2 weekly is "The Six-Shooter" by Tony Dawson.
In the Q&A roundup, Criminal Element interviewed Alex Finlay, author of Every Last Fear, which was a Goodreads Choice nominee for Best Mystery and Thriller, about his latest release, What Have We Done; and Lisa Haselton spoke with crime author, Wendy K. Koenig, about her new thriller, On The Sly, which follows a young bar owner, also the daughter of a small-town cop, who becomes the suspect in a murder investigation.
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