Gene Christie has been named the winner of the 2024 Munsey Award. The award was presented at PulpFest in Pittsburgh on August 3 and voted on by a committee made up of all the living Lamont, Munsey, and Rusty Award recipients. Named for Frank A. Munsey, publisher of the first pulp magazine, the award recognizes someone who has contributed to the betterment of the pulp community through disseminating knowledge, publishing, or other efforts to preserve and to foster interest pulp magazines. A researcher of fantasy, science fiction, mystery, and adventure fiction for over thirty years, Gene Christie has extensively studied and indexed the magazines of the pulp era.
Some sad news this week, via Janet Rudolph at Mystery Fanfare: Victoria (Vicki) Thompson passed away last week due to complications of Non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Thompson began her writing career as the author of 20 historical romance novels, then turned her hand to writing the bestselling historical Gaslight Mysteries series, which has been nominated for six Agatha Awards, an Edgar Award, and a Bruce Alexander Award. The Gaslight Mysteries follow midwife Sarah Brandt and Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy as they solve murder mysteries in turn-of-the-century New York City. Thompson also wrote the historical Counterfeit Lady series, which was nominated for the Sue Grafton Memorial Award by Mystery Writers of America.
Via Elizabeth Foxwell's Bunburyist blog comes an unusual but interesting event; the Victorian Interdisciplinary Studies Association of the Western United States will hold a Victorian gaslighting roundtable on Zoom on Thursday, September 5, at 11 a.m. Pacific time (2 p.m. Eastern time). Presenters will discuss various examples of gaslighting in Victorian literature and culture. The term "gaslighting" refers to a form of psychological manipulation stemming from Patrick Hamilton's play Angel Street, aka Gaslight, adapted as a 1944 film. Advance registration for the Zoom event is required.
Dean Street Press noted on Twitter that in December, it will be re-printing the mystery novels of British author Lana Hutton Bowen-Judd, better known under her pen name of Sara Woods (1922-1985). During World War II, Woods worked in a bank and as a solicitor's clerk in London, where she gained much of the information later used in her stories. Her main series of some forty-eight novels featured barrister Antony Maitland, but she also penned three other shorter series under various pen name. In 1957, she and her husband emigratedd to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where Woods was also instrumental in forming Crime Writers of Canada, serving on its first executive committee.
During a recent trip to Scotland, Martin Edwards traced some of the locations which crop up in Dorothy L. Sayers' 1931 novel, The Five Red Herrings, which are set in Galloway, a place I've always wanted to visit.
In the Q&A roundup, cozy mystery author Janice Hallett spoke with The Telegraph about how women dominate crime fiction "because we fear for our lives," as well as the life-saving potential of her novels, her love of Richard Osman, and why she won’t cancel Enid Blyton; and Steve Hamilton chatted with Writer's Digest about the process of continuing a series with his new thriller novel, An Honorable Assassin.
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