The Los Angeles Times revealed the winners of the 2022 Book Prizes. Alex Segura won the Mystery/Thriller category with his novel, Secret Identity. The other finalists in that category were We Lie Here: A Thriller by Rachel Howzell Hall; Back to the Garden by Laurie R. King; All That's Left Unsaid: A Novel by Tracey Lien; and The Cartographers: A Novel by Peng Shepherd.
The longlist was announced for Theakston's Old Peculiar Crime Novel of the Year 2023. The winner of the prestigious award will be announced at the opening night of the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival (July 20), which this year celebrates its 20th anniversary. To mark the occasion, for the first time the longlist includes twenty outstanding authors, rather than the traditional eighteen, competing for the UK and Ireland’s most coveted crime fiction writing Award. Members of the general public will now be able to vote on the longlisted titles, from which a shortlist of of six titles will comprise the shortlist. Voting closes on Thursday, May 18. (HT to Shots Magazine)
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine announced the winners of the 2022 EQMM Readers Award. W. Edward Blain’s story, "The Secret Sharer," took first place; second place went to Doug Allyn, a ten-time first-place winner of the award, for his story, “Blind Baseball"; and third place was won by Anna Scotti for "Schrödinger, Cat."
The longlist was also announced for the 2023 Margery Allingham Short Mystery Competition, sponsored by the Crime Writers Association and the Margery Allingham Society. A shortlist culled from the twelve longlisted stories will be revealed online in early May, with the ultimate winner crowned at CrimeFest in Bristol on Friday 12 May.
Sisters in Crime has partnered with the Innocence Project to raise $35,000 to "restore freedom for the innocent, transform the systems responsible for their unjust incarceration, and advance the innocence movement." As of January 2020, the Innocence Project has documented over 375 DNA exonerations in the United States. Twenty-one of these exonerees had previously been sentenced to death. The auction will take place from May 18-21, but you can get a sneak preview of all the items that are up for grabs, courtesy of such authors as Lee Child, Michael Connelly, Laurie R. King, Sara Paretsky. and many more.
After being discontinued in the 1980s, Penguin Modern Classics announced it will be reviving its crime and espionage series in summer 2023 with titles by the likes of John le Carré, Josephine Tey, and Chester Himes, published with classic “bottle-green” jackets. The series, to be published in 10-book tranches, will be curated by author and Penguin Press publishing director, Simon Winder. The publisher said the revival of Penguin Crime and Espionage “has seen Simon dig deep into the archives, reading hundreds of books to determine which of our existing titles should make the list, and which titles, previously not published by Penguin, should have been included years ago."
Jam Bookshop in Hackney, London, which opened just last year, is hosting an exhibition of art paying tribute to fictional TV detective Columbo, after soliciting drawings through social media. Just One More Thing, honoring the popular detective brought to life on screen by the late Peter Falk, opens on May 4th, 2023 and runs until May 30th at the independent shop. There's more information here, as well as a couple of the illustrations. (HT to Elizabeth Foxwell at The Bunburyist blog)
This week's crime poem at the 5-2 weekly is "Peterborough Murder Mystery" by William Doreski.
In the Q&A roundup, Shots Magazine had an interview with Teresa Driscoll about her new novel, Tell Me Lies; Dennis Lehane chatted with CrimeReads about his latest novel, Small Mercies and its topics of Boston, busing, and the summer of '74; and Writers Who Kill had an Interview with Annette Dashoffy about her latest novel, Helpless.
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