The winners of this year's German Mystery Prize have been announced, with Thomas Knüwer's Das Haus in dem Gudelia stirbt (Pendragon) taking first place in the domestic category. The second spot in that category went to Matthias Wittekindt for Hinterm Deich (Kampa), with third place won by Karina Urbach, Das Haus am Gordon Place (Limes). In the international category, Jake Lamar's 2001 novel (only now translated into German, by Robert Brack) If 6 were 9 snagged top honors, followed by Lavie Tidhar's Maror (translated by Conny Lösch), and Lisa Cody's Die Schnellimbissdetektivin (translated by Iris Konopik).
The Goodreads Readers Choice Award votes were also revealed in the various categories including Mystery/Thriller, with The God of the Woods by Liz Moore sitting in the top spot. Over a half million voters weighed in on their favorites of the year, with Moore's novel edging out second-place First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston by seven thousand-plus votes, followed by Freida McFadden's two novels, The Boyfriend and The Teacher, in third and fourth place, respectively. Rounding out the top five was Chris Whitaker's All the Colors of the Dark. You can check out all the crime fiction finalists via this link.
Cross Examining Crime announced the results for the Reprint of the Year Award 2024, with voting coming in from 20 countries. Leading the contenders was Christianna Brand's Tour de Force, part of the British Library Crime Classics series. Other top vote-getters included Cat of Many Tails by Ellery Queen, from Otto Penzler Presents American Mystery Classics, and The Noh Mask Murder by Akimitsu Takagi (Trans. Jesse Kirkwood) via Pushkin Vertigo.
The Jan/Feb 2025 Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine (issue #1000) reported the official news that after thirty-three years as editor-in-chief of EQMM, Janet Hutchings has retired. Hutchings has served as one of the most important editors in the world of short crime fiction, creating the publication's "Passport to Crime" department (helping make crime fiction in translation more mainstream), as well as the "Something Is Going to Happen" blog and the EQMM podcast. Hutchings is only the third editor of the publication, and will be succeeded by Jackie Sherbow, who has served as Senior Managing Editor of both Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.
Martin Edwards shared some remembrances of Kinn McIntosh O.B.E., better known to crime readers as the Diamond Dagger winning author Catherine Aird, who recently passed away. She was 94, born in the same year that the Detection Club, of which she was a loyal member for more than forty years, was founded. She penned twenty-six novels, almost all of them featuring her Calleshire cop DI Sloan, as well as many short stories, one of which is due to appear in a forthcoming Detection Club anthology next March.
A bit more sad news to start off the new year: Canadian thriller author Andrew Pyper died at home from cancer on January 3rd at the age of 56. He was known for such bestselling novels as Lost Girls, which won the Arthur Ellis Award for best first novel in 2000, The Demonologist, The Damned, The Only Child, The Homecoming, and The Killing Circle.
In the Q&A roundup, Thriller author Ian Coates chatted with Lisa Haselton about his new novel, Backlash; Sam Wiebe, author of the Wakeland series set in the Pacific Northwest, took the Page 69 Test to his latest crime novel, Ocean Drive; Alafair Burke spoke with the New York Times about how Encyclopedia Brown got her started on her love of crime fiction; and the Crime Fiction Lover blog interviewed Charlotte Printz, a German cozy crime author whose debut novel, Nightingale & Co, arrives this month in English for the first time, from Corylus Books.
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