On Thursday, March 7, from 2-3 pm, the New York Public Library will host a Historical Mystery panel in honor of Women's History Month, hosted by the NY Sisters in Crime and featuring authors Mally Becker, LA Chandlar, Mariah Fredericks, and Nina Wachsman. This is a free virtual event, and you can register following this link.
Tickets are also available for another library event across The Pond, the ninth annual Bodies From The Library conference at the British Library, taking place on 1 June 2024. The Conference celebrates the Golden Age of Detective Fiction and will be of interest to fans of Agatha Christie and her contemporaries–Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy L Sayers, John Dickson Carr, Margery Allingham, the Detection Club–and also to those wanting to discover forgotten authors from the period. Highlights include Simon and Lucy Brett discussing Lord Peter Wimsey, Martin Edwards and Christine Poulson discussing "John Bude and the British Library Crime Classics," and more. (HT to Shots Magazine)
Michael Mann has set his second novel collaboration with Edgar-winning author Meg Gardiner. After starting out with Heat 2, a novel that topped the bestseller charts and spawned a movie that Mann is writing to direct at Warner Bros, Mann and Gardiner have set up a new original novel that explores an intense global manhunt launched by a renegade federal agent and a stateless operator on a global vendetta. The book is intended to serve as the first in a series.
Sisters in Crime Australia’s 24th Davitt Awards have opened nominations for the best crime and mystery books by Australian women from 2023. The competition is open to books by all women, whether cisgender, transgender or intersex, who are citizens/residents of Australia (self-published books are eligible) with a deadline for submissions of Friday, March 1st. A longlist will be announced in mid-June and a shortlist in late July, with the six winners presented at a gala dinner in Melbourne on August 31. Categories include Best Adult Novel; Best Young Adult Novel; Best Children’s Novel; Best Non-fiction Book; Best Debut Book (any category); and Readers’ Choice (as voted the 600+ members of Sisters in Crime Australia).
The Mysterious Bookshop's American Mystery Classics series has early access to their reprint of Helen Reilly's McKee of Centre Street, one of the first police procedurals written by a woman. Published in 1934, the book begins with a murder at a refined New York speakeasy, then closely follows the investigation as it's carried out by the police detectives on the case. A pioneer in what has now become commonplace among mystery writers, Reilly extensively researched her subject and even spent time shadowing cops to lend authenticity and realism to her work. As Mysterious Press' Charles Perry adds, "A stand-out early entry in her long-running Inspector McKee series, the book is a vivid look not only at police work of the 1930s, with all its then-high tech gadgetry and cutting edge forensics, but also at New York City in the first half of the previous century." Though not officially in stores until early next month, the book is available now from The Mysterious Bookshop.
Writing for the Sydney Morning Herald, Jake Kerridge investigated why crime fiction is obsessed with suburbia, from Big Little Lies to The Couple Next Door. As Kerridge notes, "readers seem to be able to identify with a suburban thriller whatever country it is set in. Cities may have their distinctive flavours, but the suburban tang of quiet desperation seems to smell much the same the world over."
Controversy has always dogged the literary field, and crime fiction is no exception. In one cautionary tale for authors, J.D. Barker was slammed for encouraging BookTok creators to promote his thriller novel by sharing racy videos and using "only the book to cover up your naughty bits." He's since been dropped by his agent and publicity firm. Meanwhile, controversial author AJ Finn is set to release his second novel after the 2018 bestseller, Woman at the Window. The five-year delay may have something to do with a scathing New Yorker article that exposed Finn for his years of deceit, from "borrowing" story ideas to lying about having brain cancer, relatives dying, and his education and work background.
In the Q&A roundup, author Shawn Wilson chatted with Book Trib about her debut thriller, Relentless, featuring Detective Brian "Brick" Kavanagh; journalist Charlotte Langley talked to Crime Time about her new novel, The Blame, in which Detective Erin Crane and her partner Tom Radley are investigating the murder of a 16-year-old girl and World Literature Today featured a conversation with Iceland’s prime minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir and author Ragnar Jónasson about their co-authored novel, Reykjavík: A Crime Story.
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