M.W. Craven has been announced as the winner of the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2023, presented by Harrogate International Festivals, for The Botanist, the latest thriller featuring D.S. Washington Poe. A record-smashing 14,110 readers voted for the winner this year from among the other shortlisted authors: Elly Griffiths (The Locked Room), Doug Johnstone (Black Hearts), Fiona Cummins (Into the Dark), Ruth Ware (The It Girl), and Gillian McAllister (Wrong Place Wrong Time). The judges, including Simon Theakston, Steph McGovern, Matt Nixson from the Daily Express, journalist Joe Haddow, Lisa Howells and Gaby Lee from Waterstones, decided the winner, with the public vote counting as the seventh judge on the panel. Elly Griffith was given a "Highly Commended" nod (essentially runner-up) for The Locked Room, and Ann Cleeves was awarded the Theakston Old Peculier Outstanding Contribution Award in recognition of her impressive writing career.
The Public Safety Writers Association announced the winners of the PSWA awards at the organization's annual conference. The Public Safety Writers Association is open to both new and experienced, published and not yet published writers, with members including police officers, civilian police personnel, firefighters, fire support personnel, emergency personnel, security personnel and others in the public safety field. Also represented are those who write about public safety including mystery writers, magazine writers, journalists, and those who are simply interested in the genre. You can see the full list of award winners in finalists in all of the various categories here, including The Marilyn Meredith Award for Excellence in Published Book-Length Fiction, which was won by James L’Etoile for Dead Drop, and The Marilyn Meredith Award for Excellence in Published Book-Length Non-Fiction, won by William Soldato for Under Too Long.
The finalists were announced for The Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award, honoring the Best Books of 2022. The conference also revealed the finalists for The Claymore Award for the best first 50 pages of an unpublished manuscript at the time of entry into the competition. Winners in each of the 17 categories for both published and unpublished entries will be announced at the 2023 Killer Nashville Awards Dinner on Saturday, August 19, 2023 in Nashville, Tennessee.
Karen Meek posted on EuroCrime the 43 titles eligible for the 2023 Petrona Award for the Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year. Titles must be in translation and published in English in the UK during the preceding calendar year; the author of the submission must either be born in Scandinavia or the submission must be set in Scandinavia; and the submission must have been published in its original language after 1999. The winner of the 2022 Award was Fatal Isles by Maria Adolfsson, translated from the Swedish by Agnes Broomé and published by Zaffre.
LA-based publisher Sumerian is lining up a comic book series based by the 2000 thriller movie classic, American Psycho, which starred Christian Bale as iconic madman Patrick Bateman. Drawn from the original novel and characters by Bret Easton Ellis, the four-issue comic book series, publishing later this year, will have a dual narrative, one showing a different perspective of Bateman’s killing spree (with a notable "twist"), and another revealing a modern day arc with surprising connections to the past, focusing on an all-new psychopath--social media obsessed millennial, Charlie (Charlene) Carruthers, who embarks on a downward spiral filled with violence.
This week's crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "A Crime Unspoken" by J.H. Johns. On a related note, 5-2 editor, Gerald So, indicated that the site will be closing to submissions for good after this year (sooner, if he doesn't receive enough poems to complete the year), although all previously published poems will be available in the archives.
In the Q&A roundup, Laura Lippman spoke with The Guardian about her latest psychological thriller, Prom Mom, Lippman's most political novel to date that centers around a teen with an unwanted pregnancy; Eli Cranor interviewed fellow Arkansas crime writer, Kelly J. Ford, about her latest thriller, The Hunt; and James Lee Burke stopped by CrimeReads to discuss his new novel, Flags On the Bayou, as well southern history and the hatred burning through America.
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