I apologize for the slight delay with this week's Mystery Melange, but we're dealing with a bit of family Covid right now. But without further ado:
The Crime Fiction Lover blog announced the winners of the third annual Crime Fiction Lover Awards, culled from shortlists nominated by readers, who also voted for the winners. Within each of the six categories, the team also selected an Editor’s Choice Award and this year added a lifetime achievement award, the "Life of Crime Award," which was bestowed upon James Ellroy. The Book of the Year was The Last Remains by Elly Griffiths. Book of the Year Editor’s Choice: Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent. Best Debut Winner: You’d Look Better as a Ghost by Joanna Wallace. Best Debut Editor’s Choice: City Under One Roof by Iris Yamashita. Best in Translation Winner: Thirty Days of Darkness by Jenny Lund Madsen, translated by Megan E Turney. Best in Translation Editor’s Choice: The Sins of our Fathers by Åsa Larsson, translated by Frank Perry. Best Indie Novel Winner: Scratching the Flint by Vern Smith. Best Indie Novel Editor’s Choice: The Associate by Victoria Goldman. Best Crime Show Winner: Only Murders in the Building S3. Best Crime Show Editor’s Choice: Happy Valley S3. Best Crime Author Winner: Michael Connelly. Best Crime Author Editor’s Choice: Mick Herron.
After two separate rounds of voting, the Goodreads Choice Awards announced the winners for 2023 in various categories. The Mystery & Thriller category winner was The Housemaid’s Secret by Freida McFadden, which collected 86,468 votes. You can see the full list of Mystery & Thriller nominees via the above link and winners in all the other categories here.
If you're an unpublished crime fiction author, you have one day left to submit a manuscript to the 2024 Minotaur Books/Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel Competition, sponsored by Minotaur Books and Mystery Writers of America (MWA). Entrants should complete an online entry form and upload an electronic file of your manuscript by 11:59pm EST on December 15, 2023. The winner will receive an offer from Minotaur Books for publication and an advance against future royalties of $10,000.
Harrogate International Festivals has announced that international bestselling novelist, Ruth Ware, will serve as Festival Programming Chair in 2024, when the world’s largest and most prestigious celebration of crime fiction, the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, returns with a world class line-up of authors and special guests. The acclaimed crime writer will follow in the footsteps of such stellar predessors as Ian Rankin, Val McDermid, Elly Griffiths, Denise Mina, Lee Child, and Vaseem Khan.
A literary magazine is printing a previously unpublished work by the novelist Raymond Chandler, and it's not a hard-boiled detective story. Strand Magazine announced that its latest issue will include a poem by Chandler written around 1955 that shows the "softer, sensitive side" of the writer known for his pulp fiction hits such as The Big Sleep. Andrew Gulli, managing editor of Strand, explained, "He wrote the poem after his wife had passed away and this poem also serves as a love letter to her," noting it was the first time Chandler wrote a poem as an adult. Chandler's wife, Cissy, died in 1954, after which the author grew depressed and attempted suicide one year later.
Chanukah (aka Hanukah or Hanukkah) began December 7 and continues through December 15. Over at Mystery Fanfare, Janet Rudolph has updated her lists of Chanukah-themed crime fiction titles.
Did you ever wonder where the word "shamus" comes from?
In the Q&A roundup, Jacqueline Seewald spoke with Kathleen Marple Kalb, an award-winning weekend anchor at New York’s 1010 WINS Radio, who also pens novels including The Stuff of Murder and the upcoming Ella Shane mystery, A Fatal Reception; Publishers Weekly spoke with Laurie R. King and how the latest entry in her Mary Russell series mines new corners of Sherlockian lore and offers glimpses into the author’s own life; and Catherine Ryan Hyde took the Page 69 Test for her new novel, A Different Kind of Gone, in which the truth behind a teenage girl’s disappearance becomes something to conceal "in a gripping novel about justice, lies, and impossible choices."
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