Janet Rudolph has updated her list of St. Patrick's Day Crime Fiction over at Mystery Fanfare, and you can enjoy reading those titles while showing down on recipes from Mystery Lovers Kitchen, including Fully-Loaded Irish Colcannon from Cleo Coyle; Bubble and Squeak, Santa Cruz Style via Leslie Karst; and Gluten-Free Cinnamon Irish Soda Bread by Libby Klein.
The Spur Award winners from Western Writers of America were announced this past weekend at the Tucson Festival of Books. The Longmire Defense (Viking), Johnson’s 19th installment of his Walt Longmire mystery series, won for Best Contemporary Western Novel. The other finalists include: Calico by Lee Goldberg (Severn House) and Standing Dead: A Timber Creek K-9 Mystery by Margaret Mizushima (Crooked Lane Books).
With an announcement coinciding with Women's History Month, the longlist for this year's Carol Shields Prize for Fiction was announced. The honor rewards "creativity and excellence in fiction by women and non-binary writers in Canada and the United States." Of the fifteen titles under review are two books that may be of interest to crime fiction fans, the psychological thrillers, Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton, and I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makka. The shortlist will be announced on April 9, and the winner on May 13. The unusually well-endowed contest will offer the winner $150,000 and a residency at Fogo Island Inn, with the four finalists each receiving $12,500.
Congratulations to Philip Wilson, winner, ("A Recipe for Stovies") and also to runner-up Elisabeth Ingram Wallace ("The Strange Sheep of Greshonish"), in the annual Glencairn Glass Crime Short Story Competition. Glencairn Crystal, the maker of Glencairn Whiskey Glass and sponsor of the McIlvanney and Bloody Scotland Debut crime writing awards, also sponsors this contest that seeks crime short stories in collaboration with Bloody Scotland and Scottish Field Magazine. This year’s theme was "A Crime Set In Scotland."
Mystery Writers of America-New York are hosting the panel discussion, "Criminal Tendencies: What makes a 'good' villain?" at Harlem Public Library in New York City, March 21, 2024. Moderator Elizabeth Mannion will be joined by panelists Catherine Maiorisi (the NYPD Detective Chiara Corelli mystery series), Charles Salzberg (Swann's Last Song), and Cathi Stoler (Murder On the Rocks Series).
Virginians are fortunate to have two crime fiction conferences coming up: The Suffolk Mystery Authors Festival this Saturday, featuring special guest Donna Andrews interviewed by Art Taylor, as well as author panels and signings, and the Virginia Book Festival Crime Wave held in Charlottesville next weekend, March 22-23, with authors Sarah Weinman, Aggie Blum Thompson, Steve Weddle, Meagan Jennett, Polly Stewart, Peter Malone Elliott, Patti McCracken, Jennifer Sutherland, Yasmin Angoe, Cara Black, Alma Katsu, Victoria Gilbert, Laura Sims, and Ashley Winstead.
In forensics news that's out of this world, a new study by Staffordshire University and the University of Hull highlighted the behavior of blood in microgravity and the unique challenges of bloodstain pattern analysis aboard spacecraft. Bloodstain expert Zack Kowalske is a Crime Scene Investigator based in Atlanta, USA, and led the study as part his PhD research. He added, "Studying bloodstain patterns can provide valuable reconstructive information about a crime or accident. However, little is known about how liquid blood behaves in an altered gravity environment. This is an area of study that, while novel, has implications for forensic investigations in space."
In April 2015, B.K. Stevens debuted the blog series "The First Two Pages," hosting craft essays by short story writers and novelists analyzing the openings of their own work. The series relocated to Art Taylor's website after B.K.'s passing in 2017, and Art's latest guest is Charles Ardai, the Edgar and Shamus Award-winning author and founder of Hard Case Crime. Ardai is publishing the first collection of his short stories, Death Comes Too Late, and his contribution to First Two Pages is an essay on his Edgar Award-winning story, "The Home Front."
In the Q&A roundup, Lisa Haselton chatted with thriller author Liz Crowe about her new domestic suspense, Cul-de-Sac, and also with Jack Lowe-Carbell about his new thriller, Arlya; and Deborah Kalb spoke with Loreth Anne White, author of the new novel, The Unquiet Bones, inspired by the true-life 1976 murder of 16-year-old Rhona Duncan.
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