In Reference to Murder

Mystery Melange

The Women’s National Book Association of New Orleans announced this year's winners of the Pinckley Prizes for Crime Fiction. The award was established in 2012 for women writers to honor the memory of Diana Pinckley (1952-2012), a longtime crime fiction columnist for The New Orleans Times-Picayune, and her passion for mysteries. The Pinckley Prize for Distinguished Body of Work goes to C.S. Harris ( aka C.S. Graham and Candace Procter), while the Pinckley Prize for Debut Fiction goes to Angie Kim for her Edgar winning novel, Miracle Creek. New this year is the Pinckley Prize for True Crime Writing, won by Emma Copley Eisenberg for The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia. The prizes will be presented during the 2021 Bouchercon which takes place in New Orleans in August.

The Short Mystery Fiction Society announced the finalists for this year's Derringer Awards for excellence in short crime fiction (Flash Fiction; Short Story; Long Story; Novelette). The announcement was made in the group's membership forum and as of the press time for this blog post hadn't been posted on the SMFS website just yet. But you can follow this link to my list of Recent Awards for the details.

The Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) announced finalists in the prestigious IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award program, the association’s flagship book award program recognizing excellence and innovation in independent publishing. In the Mystery/Thriller category, the three finalists include: A Child Lost: A Henrietta and Inspector Howard Novel by Michelle Cox (She Writes Press); Hanging Falls: A Timber Creek K-9 Mystery by Margaret Mizushima (Crooked Lane); and Things to Do When You'd Rather Be Dead by Michael Guillebeau (Madison Press). One finalist in each of the various categories will be named a Gold winner during a set of four online ceremonies the evenings of May 11-14, 2021. The remaining finalists in each category will become Silver winners.

Mystery Readers Journal: Historical Mysteries is now available as a PDF and hardcopy. There are numerous Author! Author! essays, including two available online, "Why I Write Historical Mystery" by Rhys Bowen and "Quo Vadis, Mr. Saylor?" by Steven Saylor; articles including "Thomas Pynchon’s Take on 1970s California Noir" by Sean Day and "Crimes of Authority in Pious 19th Century Poland" by Jay Gertzman; and columns such as "Just the Facts: History’s First Detectives" by Jim Doherty.

Writing for the New York Times, Edmund White discussed the "Talented Mr. Ripley: a Shape-Shifting Protagonist Who’s Up to No Good," and how author Patricia Highsmith embedding her own repression, snobbery and sense of chaos into her psychological thrillers. This essay is part of T’s Book Club, a series of articles and events dedicated to classic works of American literature and will include a virtual conversation about "The Talented Mr. Ripley," to be led by Edmund White on April 22.

Janet Rudolph's Mystery Fanfare blog has seasonally themed mysteries for Passover (this year, March 27-April 4) and Easter (April 4).

Criminals are getting more creative all the time it seems; now they can pick your locks just by listening.

The latest crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "Wheelie Queen" by Charles Rammelkamp.

In the Q&A roundup, Allison Brennan chatted with the Wishful Endings blog about her latest thriller, Tell No Lies, centering on an edgy young female LAPD detective and an ambitious special agent, both part of a mobile FBI unit that is brought in to investigate the unsolved murder of a college activist and its alleged ties to high stakes crime in the desert Southwest; and Stephen Mack Jones was the latest 9mm interview for Craig Sisterson's blog, talking about his award-winning series featuring former marine sniper and Detroit cop, August Snow.

Mystery Melange

Book art by Alex Comfort

The Friends of the Orange County Public Library are presenting a conversation with crime writers, S.A. Cosby and Eryk Pruitt, on Friday, October 4th, at 7pm. This event is free and open to the public, but registration is required. S.A. Cosby is the bestselling author of Razorblade Tears, Blacktop Wasteland, and All the Sinners Bleed, which have won the LA Times Book Prize, Anthony Award, International Thriller Writers Best Hardcover Novel, Macavity Award for Best Mystery Novel, the Crime Writers’ Association’s Silver Dagger, and Gold Dagger awards. Eryk Pruitt is a filmmaker, podcaster, short story writer, novelist, and publisher of the quarterly literary magazine, Dark Yonder.

One More Page books in Arlington, Virginia, is hosting a Cozy Mystery Panel with authors Donna Andrews (Meg Lanslow mysteries), Maureen Klovers (Rita Calabrese Culinary Mysteries), Korina Moss (Cheese Shop Mysteries), and Maya Corrigan (Five-Ingredient Mysteries) on October 31st in honor of Halloween. Registration for the event is free.

Janet Rudolph has a list of crime fiction titles themed around Rosh Hashana, the "Days of Awe" in the Jewish religion, with ten days of repentance and renewal that begin at sunset on Rosh Hashanah and close with Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. This year, Rosh Hashanah begins October 2, 2024, at sundown and it concludes at nightfall on October 4.

Suspense Magazine announced on Facebook that it's making a comeback after closing down the PDF version of the magazine in 2021. But starting in January 2025, Suspense will be producing a quarterly digital magazine for free with more educational articles from bestselling authors and tips and tricks for authors. There will also be new reviews, features and much more. The magazine's Suspense Radio digital interview series is also back on the air, with author interviews posted on the magazine's website and subscriptions available via Spotify, Apple Music, and other podcast sites.
 

Publisher Penguin Random House (PRH) announced that Oscar-winning actor Reese Witherspoon is writing a thriller novel (her first) in collaboration with bestselling author Harlan Coben, of the Myron Bolitar series. Set to be published in autumn 2025, the untitled thriller is said to be based on an original idea from Witherspoon, and the co-writers "have been developing the concept, creating characters, and writing pages over many months," according to PRH.

Over at The Rap Sheet blog, Jeff Pierce has a list of new crime fiction releases coming out through the end of the year in both the U.S. and the U.K., including some titles he's particularly looking forward to.

This week at "The First Two Pages" on Art Taylor's blog, Linda Landrigan, long-time editor of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, stops by to discuss how knowing some of the pitfalls for writers in this form and genre is different from avoiding those pitfalls yourself.

In the Q&A roundup, Suspense Magazine chatted with Anthony Horowitz, author of the Moonflower Murders and the new PBS show based on the book; Janice Hallett spoke with the Irish Times about scripting, art, the crime genre, epistolary murder-mysteries and her admiration for healthcare workers after the death of her brother when she was 12; and Readers Digest welcomed Iris Yamashita to talk about her debut novel, City Under One Roof, as well as the difference between writing for the page and the screen, and more.

Mystery Melange

The winner of this year's Crime Cologne Award for a German-language mystery is Die Spiele by Stephan Schmidt. The honor has been presented as part of the Crime Cologne conference since 2015 and is intended to honor a work from the previous year that is linguistically, thematically, and psychologically convincing - and at the same time offers exciting entertainment at an outstanding level. A four-member jury, consisting of Mike Altwicker, Judith Merchant, Birgitt Schippers, and Margarete von Schwarzkopf, selected the novels. The winner receives 3,000 euros (approximately $3,300 USD).

Elly Griffiths, who writes the Dr. Ruth Galloway Mysteries, the Brighton Mysteries, and the Justice Series, has won Author of the Year at the Booksellers Association Conference Awards. The awards honor key figures in the book industry and the work they do to support UK bookshops. The winners were selected by 489 booksellers from across the UK.

Mystery Writers of America's 2025 Barbara Neely Scholarship, an award named after the late trailblazing Black crime novelist chosen as a Grand Master by MWA in 2019, is now open for applications from authors who are Black, American citizens, and age 18 or older. Applicants must submit a brief biography, competed application form, a five-page sample of their writing in the crime genre, a 300-500-word statement, and a copy of their CV/resume highlighting their education/writing career. The deadline is November 8, 2024. Two scholarships of $2,000 will be awarded, one for an aspiring Black writer who has yet to publish in the crime or mystery field, and another for Black authors who have already published in crime or mystery.

NoirCon is moving from the East Coast to the West Coast this year, landing in Palm Springs from November 7-10. The event includes a variety of panels and speakers, classic film screenings with special guests, notable author events, in-person book signings, and more. The conference will also hand out the Jay and Deen Kogan Award for Excellence posthumously to Jim Nisbet, to be accepted by his widow, artist Carol Collier. The award reflects the preservation of literary excellence and achievement, and recipients have devoted a lifetime to cultivating a greater appreciation and pride in America's literary heritage by writing, and/or publishing the most authoritative editions of America's best and most significant writing within the genre of noir.

Banned Book Week (#BannedBooksWeek) is being commemorated this week by the American Library Association and a variety of organizations around the U.S. In a time of deep political divides, library staff across the country are facing an overwhelming number of book ban attempts. In 2023 alone, the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom tracked 1,247 efforts to censor books and other resources in libraries—an increase of 65% from the year before. In total, 4,240 unique book titles were targeted, many of them representing LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC voices and experiences. Even crime fiction books have been challenged through the years at some point, including Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet, Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell Tale Heart, and Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl.

Bedford Square Publishers announced that Maxim Jakubowski has joined as Editor-at-Large to acquire new titles both for the Bedford Square and the No Exit Press imprints. Jakubowski is a well-known novelist, critic, and reviewer, as well as editor of several award-winning anthologies and owner of London bookshop Murder One. Maxim spent several decades in publishing roles in France and at Virgin, Rainbird and Ebury Press, where he commissioned many important bestsellers and created several major crime imprints, including the now legendary Black Box Thrillers and Blue Murder. The first titles he will bring to the list will include the highly controversial French prize-winner Emma Becker’s La Maison; works by the king of the French locked-room mystery, Paul Halter, and the master of Western noir, Scott Phillips; and Keith Donohue’s The Motion of Puppets, which US critics have described as "Stephen King meets Toys."

The Strand Mystery Magazine published a rarely seen essay this week from the 1930s, written by crime author G.K. Chesterton. He remains best known for his Father Brown mysteries, but he was also founding president of the Detection Club, a gathering of novelists whose original members included Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and AA Milne among others. In the essay he wrote, "Detective fiction had grown a little dull," and proceeded to opine about new ways to tell crime stories.

Elizabeth Foxwell, editor of Clues: A Journal of Detection, announced a call for papers on the theme of "reappraising James Ellroy," in honor of the 30-year anniversary of James Ellroy’s American Tabloid in 2025. Guest Editors will be Nathan Ashman (University of East Anglia) and Steven Powell (University of Liverpool). The proposal deadline is March 1, 2025. For more information, follow this link.

Mystery Readers Journal editor, Janet Rudolph, is seeking articles, reviews, and author essays for the upcoming issue, "Mysteries Set in London." Author essays are first person, about yourself, your books, and the "London" connection. Reviews are for books both in and out of print that are set in London. Author essays and articles should be 500-1,000 words, and reviews 50-250 words. The deadline is November 1, 2024.

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 continued until just after her death in August 2017, at which point Art Taylor took over at the helm. This week, Art welcomed Avram Lavinsky for the first post in a series celebrating the latest music-themed anthology from editor Josh Pachter: Friend of the Devil: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of the Grateful Dead, coming out next week from Down and Out Books. In addition to Lavinsky, the anthology includes stories from Bruce Robert Coffin, James D.F. Hannah, Vinnie Hansen, James L’Etoile, G.M. Malliet, Twist Phelan, Faye Snowden, Joseph S. Walker, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine editor Linda Landrigan (with her first published story), and more.

In the Q&A roundup, James R. Benn, author of the Billy Boyle World War II series, historical mysteries set within the Allied High Command during the Second World War, applied the Page 69 Test to The Phantom Patrol, the nineteenth installment of the series; and Vicki Delany, author of over 40 novels in various crime genres, also took up the Page 69 challenge to the newest novel in her Year-Round Christmas mystery series, A Slay Ride Together With You.

Mystery Melange

Book art by Emma Taylor

The six finalists for this year's Booker Prize include Rachel Kushner's Creation Lake, a romantic spy thriller which sees an American woman infiltrate a radical anarchist collective in rural France, and Percival Everett's James, a retelling of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, written from the perspective of the runaway slave, Jim. Kushner, Everett, and the four other finalists will vie for the £50,000 (roughly $65,800 USD) top prize, with the winner to be revealed November 12.

Bestselling author Nelson DeMille, who grew up on Long Island and earned a Bronze Star in Vietnam before turning to a writing career, has died at the age of 81. He made his literary debut in 1974 with the novel, The Sniper, which introduced Joe Ryker, a tough New York police detective, a character who would return in several more novels. DeMille was known for his series of books featuring U.S. Army investigator Paul Brenner, introduced in the 1992 novel, The General’s Daughter, which was adapted into a 1999 film starring John Travolta. The author's most recent book, Blood Lines, co-written with his son Alex DeMille, was published last year. Many of his fellow authors have taken to social media to pay tribute to DeMille for his generosity, kindness, and sense of humor.

The latest print edition of Clues: a Journal of Detection (vol. 42, no. 2) is a themed issue on BIPOC female detectives in a global context, guest edited by Sam Naidu (Rhodes University, South Africa). Naidu discusses the rationale for and content of the issue, including articles on the TV series Brooklyn Nine-Nine and the work of Eleanor Taylor Bland, Oyinkan Braithwaite, K’im Ch’aehu?i, Maria L. M. Fres-Felix, Pauline Hopkins, Tiffany D. Jackson, Vaseem Khan, Angela Makholwa, Marcia Muller, BarbaraNeely, Nnedi Okorafor, and Kwei Quartey.

In homage to the 1964 classic film, Goldfinger, the prestigious Burlington Arcade in Mayfair, London, has created a unique James Bond experience – The 007, open from September 18 until December 31. Three handcrafted golden hanging sculptures, inspired by the iconic Aston Martin DB5, are seen careering down the centre of the Arcade. As visitors walk underneath, a bespoke carpet features famous lines from the film. Other highlights include iconic movie props including Oddjob’s hat, a Fort Knox gold bar, Goldfinger’s golf shoes and the spyhole clock from his private plane, never before exhibited. There's also a chance to bid on a limited number of The Macallan’s highly collectible 60th Anniversary Decades whisky sets, with all proceeds being donated to charity. Plus, speaking of libations, there are two exclusively designed bars where fans may enjoy a dash of 007 with signature cocktails specially created in partnership with Belvedere, Blackwell Rum, Champagne Bollinger, and Macallan.

The CBC profiled Winnipeg, Ontario's crime bookstore, Whodunit, which houses more than 23,000 new and used novels and has been in business for over thirty years. The bookstore hosts a Mystery Reading Club and has featured readings and signings by various mystery authors through the years.

One of the latest themed book recommendation lists over at Crime Reads comes from Sofie Kelly: "Librarians on the Case." I have a soft spot for this one, as my mother was a librarian. For those hungry for more, here's a list of more bookish sleuths via Mystery Fanfare.

In the Q&A roundup, Richard Osman talked to Lee Child about class, success and the secret to great crime writing; author Julia Dahl chatted with Nerd Daily about her psychological thriller, I Dreamed of Falling, which follows the death of a young mother and how it triggers an avalanche of secrets in a small Hudson Valley town; and Tara Laskowski interviewed Josh Pachter, editor and author of over a hundred crime short stories and the 2023 novel, Dutch Threat.

Mystery Melange

Book art by Emma Taylor

The organizers of the annual Bloody Scotland international crime-writing festival announced their shortlist of five titles for this year's McIlvanney Prize, including: A Divine Fury, by D.V. Bishop (Pan Macmillan); The Cracked Mirror, by Chris Brookmyre (Sphere); Past Lying, by Val McDermid (Sphere); Hunted, by Abir Mukherjee (Vintage); and A Spy Like Me, by Kim Sherwood (HarperCollins). The finalists, and also authors shortlisted for the Bloody Scotland Debut Prize, will lead a torchlit procession from Stirling Castle to the Albert Halls on the festival’s opening night of Friday, September 13, where the winner will be revealed. Presented annually since 2012, the McIvanney Prize is named in honor of Scottish author William McIlvanney, who passed away in 2015, with previous recipients including Chris Brookmyre, Peter May, Denise Mina, Alan Parks, and last year's winner, Squeaky Clean by Calum McSorley.

The longlist was revealed for the Petrona Award 2024, which honors the best crime fiction from Scandinavia. This year, ten crime novels from Denmark, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden will be competing for the title, including a mix of newer and more established authors, including previous Petrona Award winners, Jørn Lier Horst and Yrsa Sigurðardottir.

Registration is now open for Mystery Writers of America's MWA-U October 9th online Zoom session with Jeffery Deaver, who will be discussing "Writing a Commercial Thriller." The event is free to current MWA members and offered to nonmembers for $20. Jeffery Deaver is the author of 48 novels, 100 short stories, a nonfiction law book, who has received or been shortlisted for dozens of awards. His book A Maiden’s Grave was made into an HBO movie starring James Garner and Marlee Matlin (retitled Dead Silence). His novel The Bone Collector was a feature release from Universal Pictures, starring Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie. NBC television recently aired the nine-episode prime-time series, Lincoln Rhyme: Hunt for the Bone Collector, based on Deaver's book series, and the new CBS show, Tracker, is based on his novel, The Never Game, featuring his character Colter Shaw.

A group of 20-plus bestselling crime fiction authors are teaming up for a free online event as they talk about their books and answer your questions about their careers, books, or writing habits. Viewers can view the event live on YouTube Wednesday, September 18th at 5 PM PT/8 PM ET. Anyone who signs up beforehand can let them know if you have a question for one of the participating authors, including Megan Abbott, Lee Child, Michael Connelly, Laura Lippman, Walter Mosely and more. Note that this is also a politically-themed event, which is why it's titled "Crime Fiction for Harris."

The publisher Hard Case Crime announced that the story of iconic fictional sleuth, Sam Spade, will be continued by prize-winning crime writer Max Allan Collins. The Return of the Maltese Falcon will be released in January 2026, when the original Dashiell Hammett classic featuring Spade, The Maltese Falcon, enters the public domain. Hammett's novel, released in 1930, is known to movie fans for the 1941 adaptation starring Humphrey Bogart and is widely regarded as a model for the modern hard-boiled detective novel. According to Hard Case Crime, Collins’s new book will bring back Spade and Joel Cairo among other Hammett characters, and "a mysterious new femme fatale." Collins, whose Road to Perdition was adapted into a film starring Tom Hanks and Paul Newman, has a long history of working with famous literary detectives. He took over the Dick Tracy comic strip in the late 1970s after creator Chester Gould retired, and he was later authorized to continue Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer series. Jeff Pierce over at The Rap Sheet blog, has more about Collins and his other various latest endeavors.

It's long been a mystery of sorts that the creator of the scientifically minded Sherlock Holmes was also fascinated with the paranormal. Recently, six handwritten letters and notes from Arthur Conan Doyle to Captain John Allen Bartlett sold for £2,800 plus buyers premium of 30% at auction. The archive variously discussed spiritual matters, including one which references a letter to Captain Bartlett from Harry Houdini (1874-1926), and Conan-Doyle's reaction to it. Bartlett used the pseudonym John Alleyne when writing his poetry, lyrics and short stories, and was also an active spiritualist. It was his belief in psychic or paranormal phenomenon that linked Bartlett to Conan-Doyle and Houdini, with whom he almost certainly attended some seances. It was around this time that Houdini was unsuccessfully trying to convince Conan-Doyle that the seances were a magician's "allusions not the conversations with the dead he wanted to believe."

In the Q&A roundup, Matthew D. Saeman chatted with Lisa Haselton about his new suspense thriller, To Preserve, Protect and Destroy, featuring NASA geologist Terrence Sullivan; the New York Times (paywall) interviewed Liane Moriarty, author of the bestselling Big Little Lies and Apples Never Fall, both adapted for television; and Self Publishing Review spoke with Karl Wegener, a former Russian linguist, intelligence analyst, and interrogator who served in the U.S.military and the Intelligence Community during the Cold War, about his new novel, Operation Nightfall: The Web of Spies.

Mystery Melange

Book art by Pam Langdon

As I previously noted, last week's Bouchercon revealed winners of the Anthony Awards and Shamus Awards. But the top honorees of the Barry Awards were also announced during the opening ceremonies. The Barry Award is a crime literary prize awarded annually since 1997 by the editors of Deadly Pleasures, an American quarterly publication for crime fiction readers (from 2007 to 2009 the award was jointly presented with the publication Mystery News). The prize is named after the American literary reviewer, Barry Gardner. As posted on social media, this year's winner of Best Mystery or Crime Novel is Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane; Best First Mystery or Crime Novel is The Peacock and the Sparrow by I.S. Berry; Best Paperback original is Who the Hell is Harry Black? by Jack Needham; and Best Thriller is Secret Hours by Mick Herron.

The recent Killer Nashville conference in Nashville, TN, revealed the winners of both the Silver Falchion Awards for published works and the Claymore Awards for unpublished manuscripts. You can see the full list winners and nominees here, including the overall Best Book of 2023, Ghost Tamer by Meredith R. Lyons. The conference also handed out the 2024 John Seigenthaler Legends Award to Charles Todd, New York Times bestselling author of the Inspector Ian Rutledge Series and the Bess Crawford series. (Charles Todd is the pen name of Caorline Todd, who passed away in 2021, and her son, Charles.)

It's always nice to see crime fiction authors supporting their local libraries, including the Chilterns Crime Quarterly, which began last year as a series of "meet the author" events during the UK's National Crime Writing Week, and featured authors Denise Beddows, Joanna Wallace, Dan Malakin, Louise Burfitt-Dons, and JA Marley. It grew out of the decision by Buckinghamshire Unitary Authority to defund local libraries, and Beddows's subsequent idea to make popular writers accessible to readers on a more affordable basis, while also raising much-needed funds to help keep the libraries going. The next event will be Saturday, October 14 with Steph Broadribb, MJ Arlidge, SJ Benett, Dave Sivers and Morgen Bailey taking part.

The National Trust in the UK is hosting a range of writing workshops at Agatha Christie’s holiday home in Greenway in September to encourage the next generation of budding writers. The events will include a crime fiction workshop with Cate Quinn, bestselling thriller writer and journalist. Lauren Hutchinson, Senior Marketing and Communications Officer, noted that "The house and garden at Greenway inspired Agatha Christie in a number of her novels, and it continues to inspire people today."

In the Q&A roundup, Rob Starr spoke with Shots Magazine about the importance of having female led characters in crime novels; and author and journalist Fiona Barton chatted with Deborah Kalb about her new novel, Talking to Strangers, the second installment in Barton's Detective Inspector Elise King series.

Mystery Melange

Book art by Emma Taylor

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.

Mystery Melange

Book art by Andrea Singer

The Joffe Books Prize is looking for a talented new crime fiction writer of color. The prize invites submissions from unagented UK residents and British citizens (including those living abroad) from Black, Asian, Indigenous and minority ethnic backgrounds writing in crime fiction genres such as psychological thrillers, cozy mysteries, police procedurals, twisty chillers, suspense mysteries, and domestic noirs. The winner will be offered a prize package, one of the UK’s largest literary prizes, consisting of a two-book publishing deal with Joffe books, a £1,000 cash prize, and a £25,000 audiobook offer from Audible for the first book. The submission period ends at midnight on September 30, 2024. This year the Joffe Books Prize judging panel includes A.A. Chaudhuri, bestselling author of She’s Mine, and literary agent Gyamfia Osei from Andrew Nurnberg Associates. (HT to Shots Magazine)

Mystery Writers of America University 2024's latest online class via Zoom is coming up on Wednesday, September 4th at 8pm EDT. Daniel Stashower, a three-time Edgar-winner whose books include Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle and The Hour of Peril: The Secret Plot to Murder Lincoln Before the Civil War, will talk about setting. Powerful settings have always been essential to the mystery story, from Poe’s "rank sedges, vacant eye-like windows and white trunks of decayed trees" to I.S. Berry’s "noncontiguous streets, noises without origin or purpose, and angles that didn’t quite fit together." MWA-U classes are free to current MWA members and offered to nonmembers for $20 a session. For more information and to register, follow this link.

Thanks to Elizabeth Foxwell, over at her Bunburyist blog, I learned about a series of maps published by Herb Lester Associates, essentially insider's guides to the cities certain crime authors knew (and used in their stories), which can still be visited today. The latest, due out in September, is Maigret's Paris, a map of locations from the Chief Inspector Maigret oeuvre of Georges Simenon. Previous releases include The Raymond Chandler Map of Los Angeles; Agatha Christie's England; John le Carré's London; and The World of Patricia Highsmith.


In the Q&A roundup, Lisa Haselton interviewed Lindy S. Hudis about her new crime thriller, Hollywood Underworld, and spoke with Tracey Lampley about her new mystery, All Money Ain’t Good Money; Luke Deckard talked with CrimeReads about his latest novel, Bad Blood, which is set in 1922 and follows Logan Bishop, an American PI in London, looking for a missing woman who is connected to his father’s murder; and William Kent Krueger spoke with CrimeTime about the twentieth novel in his Cork O’Connor mystery series, Spirit Crossing, and the truths that inspired it.

Mystery Melange

Book art by Thomas Wightman

The Australian Crime Writers Association revealed the final shortlist of contenders for Australia’s distinguished Ned Kelly Awards, with winners from all categories to be unveiled in September. After announcing the contenders for Best Debut Crime Fiction, Best True Crime, and Best International Crime Fiction, it's finally time for Best Crime Fiction:

• Killer Traitor Spy, by Tim Ayliffe (Simon & Schuster Australia)
• Dark Corners, by Megan Goldin (Canelo)
• Dark Mode, by Ashley Kalagian Blunt (Ultimo Press)
• Darling Girls, by Sally Hepworth (Pan Australia)
• The Seven, by Chris Hammer (Allen & Unwin)
• Ripper, by Shelley Burr (Hachette Australia)
• The Tea Ladies, by Amanda Hampson (Penguin)
• Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect, by Benjamin Stevenson (Michael Joseph)
  
  

The winner of this year's Österreichischer Krimipreis, or Austrian Crime Fiction Prize, was revealed as attorney, journalist, and author, Eva Rossmann. Crime fiction specialists – booksellers, bloggers, journalists, readers – were called upon to name three authors who write in German whose crime novels are particularly convincing in terms of content and literature and underline the cultural and social relevance of the genre as well as initiate trend-setting new developments within the genre. This is the seventh iteration of the Prize, which comes by way of the Carinthia Crime Festival. The award ceremony will take place on October 13, where Rossman will receive a prize of 4,000 euros.

Contenders for the 2024 Petrona Award for the Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year are shaping up, with Karen Meet noting on her Euro Crime blog that 31 of the 32 titles that were eligible have been entered by the publishers. The winner will be announced online later this year. The Petrona Award honors books in translation that are published in English in the UK during the preceding calendar year by authors/books who born/set in Scandinavia (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden). The winner of the 2023 Award was Femicide by Pascal Engman, translated from the Swedish by Michael Gallagher and published by Legend Press.

Authors and fans of private eye fiction take note: A panel co-sponsored by Private Eye Writers of America and Mystery Writers of America/SoCal will feature three working Private Investigators discussing what they do and how writers can get it "write." The panel of Joe Koenig, Sheila Wysocki and John A. Hoda, will be moderated by Gay Toltl Kinman, President of the Private Eye Writers of America. Register now for this event on Sunday, September 15, 1-2:30 PST.

Open Road Integrated Media (ORIM) has created the Free Voices initiative, a new marketing service to fight book bans and enable challenged works to be discovered and purchased by readers everywhere. David Steinberger, CEO of Open Road, added, "With Free Voices, we are going to fight book bans with the same proven ORIM marketing technology that already drives discovery and sales increases for more than 40,000 titles from over 100 publishers." A portion of all proceeds from Free Voices will be donated to The Freedom to Read Foundation, a non-profit organization which protects and defends the First Amendment to the Constitution and supports the right of libraries to collect—and individuals to access—information. Free Voices is open to all publishers with books targeted by banning efforts at schools, libraries or bookstores.

From June 25-27 in 2025, Monash University in Melbourne will host the hybrid (online and in-person) conference, Crime Fiction and the Global Challenges of the Twenty-First Century. Organizers are seeking papers to be presented at the event that will examine the global socio-political engagement of crime fiction from a broad range of perspectives, drawing on examples from across the world. Interested participants should submit a 250-word abstract for a 20-minute presentation and proposal for panels and a short bio-note (about 100 words) via this form. Submissions are due by December 15, 2024. (HT to Shots Magazine)

In the Q&A roundup, Kate Atkinson spoke with The Guardian about her latest Jackson Brodie thriller, cozy crime, sniffy critics, and how she investigated her own family’s secrets; and Lisa Haselton interviewed mystery author Michael Ross about his new romantic thriller, Quiet the Waves.

Mystery Melange

Book art by Emma Taylor

Last week, the Australian Crime Writers Association announced the shortlist for the 2024 Ned Kelly Awards Best Debut Crime Fiction, and this week they continue the slow roll-out of award news with a revealing of the contenders for Best True Crime and Best International Crime Fiction. The True Crime finalists include: Crossing the Line: The explosive inside story behind the Ben Roberts-Smith headlines by Nick McKenzie; Killing for Country: A Family Story by David Marr; The Murder Squad: How Australia's toughest cops hunted the monsters of the Great Depression by Michael Adams; Reckless by Marele Day; and The Teacher’s Pet by Hedley Thomas. The Best International Crime Fiction finalists are Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton; Dice by Claire Baylis; Resurrection Walk by Michael Connelly; The Only Suspect by Louise Candlish; The Search Party by Hannah Richell; and Zero Days by Ruth Ware.

I somehow missed this one, but the Glass Key award, given annually to a crime novel by an author from the Nordic countries, named its 2024 winner back in June. Christoffer Carlsson won for his novel, Levende og døde (Living and Dead), which was also named Best Swedish Crime Novel of the Year in 2023.

The recently announced 2024 longlist for the Booker Prize, one of the world’s most prestigious prizes for a single work of fiction, contains two crime-related titles: Colin Barrett’s Wild Houses, which has been described as a "deftly told caper" by The Guardian, and Rachel Kushner’s Creation Lake, which "fuses a spy thriller with philosophical meditation" according to The Bookseller. They join other crime-themed books and authors from previous years such as Snap by Belinda Bauer, Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith, Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh, and and His Bloody Project by Graeme MaCrae Burnet, among others.

International Thriller Writers announced the 2025 honorees for ThrillerFest XX. The Thriller Masters are Janet Evanovich and John Grisham; the 2025 Silver Bullet Award honoree is James Patterson; the Spotlight Guests are Oyinkan Braithwaite and Jennifer Hillier; the 2025 Thriller Legend is Neil Nyren; and McKenna Jordan is the 2025 Thriller Fan. Registration is also now open for the event, which will take place June 17-21, 2025 at the New York Hilton Midtown Hotel in New York City.

Flatiron Books will launch a new imprint, Pine & Cedar Books, in summer 2025. Flatiron executive editor Christine Kopprasch has been named VP and publisher of the imprint, which will publish "compulsively readable, story-driven novels." Pine & Cedar’s inaugural list includes King of Ashes, the next novel from bestselling author S.A. Cosby, which Pine & Cedar bills as "a Black, Southern, Godfather-inspired crime epic," and is the first in a three-book deal. Also forthcoming from the imprint are We Live Here Now by Sarah Pinborough, marking the author's return to Flatiron, which published her 2017 bestseller Behind Her Eyes, and This Story Might Save Your Life by Tiffany Crum, billed as "the rare novel that successfully combines a gripping, pace-driven thriller with the soul of an epic love story." The publisher said there is no set number of titles that it plans to publish annually.

In the Q&A roundup, Lisa Haselton chatted with novelist Manda Scott about her new mytho-political thriller, Any Human Power; Reed Farrel Coleman, whose new Nick Ryan novel is Blind to Midnight, stopped by Writers Read to talk about what he's currently reading; and Liz Alterman applied the Page 69 Test to her new domestic thriller, The House on Cold Creek Lane.

Mystery Melange

The Maltese Falcon Society of Japan has named S.A. Cosby’s Razorblade Tears (first published by Flatiron Books in 2021) as the winner of its 2024 Maltese Falcon Award. The honor is bestowed upon the best hard-boiled/private eye novel published in Japan in the previous year. Cosby will receive a wood-crafted Falcon statuette. (HT to the Gumshoe Site by way of The Rap Sheet)

Sisters in Crime Australia has announced the shortlist for the 24th Davitt Awards for best crime and mystery books. Members of the organization are also able to vote on the Davitt Readers' Choice Award through the end of July. The Best Adult novel category include Bronwyn Hall, The Chasm (HQ Fiction); Amanda Hampson, The Tea Ladies (Penguin Random House); Marija Pericic, Exquisite Corpse (Ultimo Press); and also four debut novels, Christine Keighery, The Half Brother (Ultimo Press); Suzie Miller, Prima Facie (Pan Macmillan Australia); Darcy Tindale, The Fall Between (Penguin Random House); and Monica Vuu, When One of Us Hurts (Pan Macmillan Australia).

The BloodShed is a new, interactive crime fiction festival to be held in Swindon, UK, which will bring authors and readers together - with writing workshops led by published crime authors from across the UK. There will also be a variety of panel interviews, and the chance to show off your sleuthing ability against those who write mysteries for a living. More details will be forthcoming soon about this event, scheduled for October 18-20, 2024.

On the heels of Jo Callaghan winning the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2024 for In the Blink of an Eye, T&R Theakston Limited announced it's extending its partnership with Harrogate International Festivals to continue sponsoring the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, a partnership that's been in place for 20 years. The festival has attracted internationally best-selling authors such as Val McDermid, Denise Mina, S A Cosby, P D James, Lee Child, John Grisham, Michael Connolly, Ian Rankin, and Harlan Coben.

It's always difficult to keep up with all the end-of-the-year "best" crime fiction lists, but Parade Magazine decided to get a head start with "The 29 Best Mystery, Thriller and True Crime Books of 2024…so Far."

In the Q&A roundup, Criminal Element's Lisa Pulitzer interviewed her A Hunger to Kill co-author, Detective Kim Mager, about Mager's writing experience as a first-time author, goals for sharing the previously unrevealed details behind breaking open the Shawn Grate case, as well as personal details about her life as a mom, wife, and female police detective; and at Writers Who Kill, E.B. Davis interviewed Valerie Burns about the third book in her Baker Street series, titled A Cup of Flour, A Pinch of Death.