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

A "Noir at the 'Voir" event is coming up Tuesday, August 22 at The Boathouse at Sunday Park in Midlothian, Virginia. Host Josh Pachter will be joined by authors Maya Corrigan, Eleanor Cawood Jones, Ken Lawrence, Hugh Lessig, Shawn Reilly Simmons, and Lane Stone in reading from their works. Attendees can also enjoy dinner, cocktails, and the view of the beautiful Swift Creek Reservoir. Come early to make sure you get a seat and a ticket for a free raffle, with bags of books donated by event co-sponsors, including Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Crippen & Landru Publishers, Destination Murders, Genius Book Publishing, Atria Books, the Lifelong Learning Institute in Chesterfield, and more.

Terror Australis Readers and Writers Festival, Tasmania's International Crime and Mystery Festival, returns Thursday, October 26 to Sunday, October 29 at the Kermandie Hotel in Port Huon. This year's theme is Tassie Vice (think 80s detective shows, the rise of the amateur sleuth, and How to Host a Murder dinners). The panels will include featured authors such as Ann Cleeves, Garry Disher, Vanda Symon, David Owen, and a host of others. The event is partnering with the Way Down South Arts production team and is supported by Regional Arts Australia, RANT Arts, the Tasmanian Government, and the Australian Government.

Murder by the Book, a crime fiction-focused independent bookstore in Houston, TX, is partnering with Abby Endler from Crime By The Book to curate a new book subscription service. Crime by the Box will deliver a hand-selected, newly-released signed hardcover mystery, thriller, or suspense novel to readers on a monthly basis plus some little extras like further reading recommendations and exclusive author content. As an added bonus, Murder by the Book will also host in-store events with each of the Crime by the Box featured authors.

Seiichi Morimura was a Japanese author reported to have written about 300 books, nearly all of them mystery novels. But he might be most widely known for his 1981 nonfiction book, Akuma no Hoshoku (The Devil’s Gluttony), a searing exposé of the Japanese Army’s secret biological warfare program during WWII. The New York Times had an obituary of Morimura, who died this month at the age of 90.

The Bookseller reported that Severn House has scooped Playing Dead, a new anthology from members of the Detection Club, including Ann Cleeves, Elly Griffiths, Felix Francis and Lynne Truss, edited by novelist Martin Edwards. The anthology is due to be published in spring 2025 in celebration of the 80th birthday of the Detection Club’s seventh president, Simon Brett. Edwards is the eighth and current president of the Detection Club, the world’s oldest social network of crime writers, formed in 1930. Previous members include Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers, G K Chesterton, and John le Carré.

The blog, Beneath the Stains of Time, compiled an overview of "The Locked Room Mystery & Impossible Crime Story in the 21st Century: A Brief Historic Overview of the First Twenty (Some) Years." Although the crime fiction subgenre dates all the way back to Edgar Allan Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841), the Covid-era lockdowns prompted a bit of a resurgence.

Writing for The Daily Yonder, Keith Roysdon turned a spotlight on rural crime fiction, while Molly Odintz over at CrimeReads looked outward for "The Best International Crime Fiction of August 2023."

I'm a member of several writer forums, and the hottest topic these days is artificial intelligence (AI) and the potential impact it will have—and is already having—on writing and publishing. It's a very controversial and highly charged issue, with a case in point being Death of an Author, a crime novel "written" almost entirely by three different AI programs (ChatGPT, Sudowrite and Cohere). The Sydney Morning Herald wonders if this is the beginning of the end for human authors.

If you have a New York Times subscription, check out the essay by Amor Towles, "All Hail the Long-Suffering Cadaver." Once at the center of the murder mystery, Towles argues that the cadaver has become increasingly incidental to the action and now figures as little more than a prop.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "Thoughts and Prayers" by Jennifer Lagier.

Mystery Melange

A M Heath literary agency, the Orion Publishing Group and Crime Monthly have teamed up to launch Criminal Lines 2023, a new £3,500 crime writing prize open to unagented debut (i.e. no traditionally published crime novel) authors, born or resident in the UK and Ireland who are 18 and over. From psychological thrillers, to cozy crime, to serial killer thrillers, entrants are invited to submit the opening 5,000 words of a novel with "criminal intent" plus a synopsis of no more than 1,000 words. Entries close on December 7, 2023. The winner will be selected by a panel of judges including A M Heath agents Euan Thorneycroft and Oli Munson, Crime Monthly assistant editor Lisa Howells, Orion Fiction editors Leodora Darlington and Sam Eades, and authors Vaseem Khan and Mari Hannah. (HT to Shots Magazine)

Five writers have been shortlisted for the Lindisfarne Prize for Crime Fiction, currently in its fifth year after being established by LJ Ross, writer of the North East-based DCI Ryan series. The prize aims to celebrate outstanding crime and thriller storytelling of those who are from, or whose work celebrates, the North East of England. This year's finalists include Robert Meddes, Those Men, Those Faces; Sarah Jeffery, The Perfect Alibi; Alan Sendall, Double Infidelity; Karys Frank, Stone Cold Truth; and Sarah Williams, Vacancy for Murder. The winner will be announced on September 6 and will receive a cash prize to support the completion of their work, alongside funding for membership of the Society of Authors (SoA) and the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLI).

Twelve crime novels from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland have made the longlist for the 2023 Petrona Award for the Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year. The longlist contains a mix of new and established authors including previous Petrona Award winner, Gunnar Staalesen. The shortlist will be announced on September 7, 2023. The Petrona Award was established to celebrate the work of Maxine Clarke, one of the first online crime fiction reviewers and bloggers, who died in December 2012. Maxine, whose online persona and blog was called Petrona, was passionate about translated crime fiction but in particular that from the Scandinavian countries. The award is open to crime fiction in translation, either written by a Scandinavian author or set in Scandinavia and published in the UK in the previous calendar year.

Antony Johnston’s cozy crime murder mystery, The Dog Sitter Detective, has won the Barker Book Award for fiction. Antony’s previous work includes the film Atomic Blonde and the Brigitte Sharp spy thrillers, which are being developed for TV. The Dog Sitter Detective is the first in a series of mysteries starring semi-retired actress Guinevere "Gwinny" Tuffel and a varied cast of dogs, with a different breed planned to feature in each book. Now in their second year, the Barker Book Awards are billed as "The bark of excellence for dogs in literature." This year’s head judge is the actor and animal advocate Peter Egan, famous for his roles in Downton Abbey and Ever Decreasing Circles. The fiction award includes prize money of £2,000 and encompasses all genres, not only crime.

HitchCon '23 is an international Alfred Hitchcock conference to be held October 7-8, both online and in person at Mercy College, Dobbs Ferry, NY. The organizers are planning a weekend of all-new insights from leading Hitchcock experts "that will change the way you look at film and provide inspiration to improve your own creative skills." There will be talks and panels, Q&A sessions, breakout groups, social events and networking both in person and online, and film screenings including an 80th anniversary screening of Shadow of a Doubt. Special guests include authors William Rothman, Murray Pomerance, Thomas Leitch, Richard Allen, and Paula Marantz Cohen. (HT to Mystery Fanfare)

The inaugural Chiltern Kills festival heads to Gerrards Cross in the UK on Saturday, October 7, featuring 70 of the industry’s best crime fiction authors delivering 20 panels and talks. Special guests include Frederick Forsyth, Ruth Ware, Mark Billingham, and Sarah Pinborough, who will be joined by celebrity names from TV moderating panels, as well as real-life professionals from the world of law and order, and many more. Visitors to the festival can also enjoy a specially written play written by and starring the authors themselves; karaoke led by writer Mark Edwards; one-to-one interviews; signed books; a one-off festival short story anthology; a beer tent; and a huge array of food and drink stalls. All ticket sales in aid of Centrepoint, a youth homeless charity.

An imprint of Disney Publishing Worldwide, Hyperion Avenue, is debuting new fiction under Marvel Crime. The new endeavor will feature three original novels by bestselling authors S.A. Cosby, Lisa Jewell, and Alex Segura. The stories will be gritty crime novels geared towards adults and will use familiar Marvel characters. The first, due out in 2024, will be written by Jewell and is inspired by Jessica Jones. Cosby’s Luke Cage book and Segura’s Daredevil will both be released out in 2025. Sven Larsen, Vice President of licensed publishing at Marvel, said, "We are always looking for new ways to tell stories about Marvel’s beloved superheroes, and working with Hyperion Avenue on the Marvel Crime novels will showcase these characters in an exciting new light. We know that lifelong Marvel fans and crime fiction enthusiasts alike will enjoy this inventive new series."

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "L.A. Nocturne" by Libby Cudmore.

In the Q&A roundup, Deborah Kalb spoke with Rhys Bowen, author of the the Molly Murphy historical mystery series, about her new historical novel, The Paris Assignment; and Lisa Haselton welcomed Thriller Award-nominated author Allen Wyler to chat about his new medical thriller, Dead End Deal.

Mystery Melange

The Gotham Writers Genre Fiction Conference will take place mostly on Zoom, August 12-13, 2023. There will be at least one pitching roundtable in NYC. On Day 1, there are four panels and presentations, each designed to give you a peek behind the genre fiction book publishing curtain. You’ll hear from agents, editors, and writers, all offering their insight into the process of getting your genre fiction book out to the world. On Day 2, there are Pitching Roundtables where pre-selected writers spend the day at a table with two agents who specialize in the field that matches the writers’ book projects (fantasy, science fiction, mystery, thriller, horror). 

Otto Penzler announced that he has formed Crime Ink, a new imprint at his publishing company, Penzler Publishers, which will focus on publishing literary true crime. Tom Wickersham, formerly the manager of The Mysterious Bookshop, will head the imprint as its editor. Charles Perry will be the Publisher, a position he currently holds with The Mysterious Press, American Mystery Classics, Scarlet, and MysteriousPress.com, an electronic book publisher—the other imprints of Penzler Publishers. Luisa Smith will oversee as Editor-in-Chief of Penzler Publishers. The Crime Ink imprint plans to publish four to six books in its first year, starting in the Winter of 2024. Crime Ink will be distributed by W. W. Norton and Company, which also distributes The Mysterious Press, Scarlet, and American Mystery Classics.

In 1970, a gay detective debuted in the novel Fadeout by author Joseph Hansen, who took a risk creating Dave Brandstetter. But fifty years later, there's a Netflix series in development and new book editions offering new opportunities to shine a light on Hansen’s work. Hansen was a serious writer, a poet published in The New Yorker, a journalist, and an author of novels and stories beyond crime fiction. But he is most celebrated for the elegant, literary mystery novels featuring the 40ish investigator Brandstetter, who was smart, observant, compassionate and gay. Although not as famous as perhaps he should be, the Private Eye Writers of America awarded Brandstetter The Eye, the group’s lifetime achievement award, and he received the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Men’s Mystery for the last Brandstetter novel, A Country of Old Men. 

Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe is getting a trigger warning from publisher house Vintage. The 1939 novel The Big Sleep, considered among the greatest works of crime fiction, has been reprinted with a cautionary note by publishing house Vintage. Would-be readers of Chandler’s most famous work are now warned that the book may contain "outdated language and cultural representations." The note addressed to the "dear reader" cautions that while the story centered on Los Angeles detective Philip Marlowe is an outstanding example of crime fiction, it is nevertheless "firmly of its time and place."

Sometimes, truth really is stranger than fiction: When an early draft of Emma Rosenblum’s debut murder mystery was leaked to the inhabitants of Fire Island where it’s set, events there began to take a weirder turn.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "Ballad of Menstruation & Crime" by Sylvia Wenmackers.

In the Q&A roundup, Ken Jaworowski, an editor at the New York Times, chatted with Author Interviews about his debut thriller, Small Town Sins; Lisa Haselton welcomed mystery author Dale T. Phillips to talk about his new mystery and crime anthology, Crime Time; the blog Indie Crime Scene interviewed Lynn Slaughter about her debut crime novel, Missed Cue; Deborah Kalb spoke with Rachel Howzell Hall, author of the new novel What Never Happened, and also Gillian McAllister, whose new novel Just Another Missing Person was recently released; and Laura Lippman stopped by The Guardian to discuss her latest novel, Prom Mom, which delivers her most political novel to date about a teen with an unwanted pregnancy.

Mystery Melange

M.W. Craven has been announced as the winner of the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2023, presented by Harrogate International Festivals, for The Botanist, the latest thriller featuring D.S. Washington Poe. A record-smashing 14,110 readers voted for the winner this year from among the other shortlisted authors: Elly Griffiths (The Locked Room), Doug Johnstone (Black Hearts), Fiona Cummins (Into the Dark), Ruth Ware (The It Girl), and Gillian McAllister (Wrong Place Wrong Time). The judges, including Simon Theakston, Steph McGovern, Matt Nixson from the Daily Express, journalist Joe Haddow, Lisa Howells and Gaby Lee from Waterstones, decided the winner, with the public vote counting as the seventh judge on the panel. Elly Griffith was given a "Highly Commended" nod (essentially runner-up) for The Locked Room, and Ann Cleeves was awarded the Theakston Old Peculier Outstanding Contribution Award in recognition of her impressive writing career.

The Public Safety Writers Association announced the winners of the PSWA awards at the organization's annual conference. The Public Safety Writers Association is open to both new and experienced, published and not yet published writers, with members including police officers, civilian police personnel, firefighters, fire support personnel, emergency personnel, security personnel and others in the public safety field. Also represented are those who write about public safety including mystery writers, magazine writers, journalists, and those who are simply interested in the genre. You can see the full list of award winners in finalists in all of the various categories here, including The Marilyn Meredith Award for Excellence in Published Book-Length Fiction, which was won by James L’Etoile for Dead Drop, and The Marilyn Meredith Award for Excellence in Published Book-Length Non-Fiction, won by William Soldato for Under Too Long.

The finalists were announced for The Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award, honoring the Best Books of 2022. The conference also revealed the finalists for The Claymore Award for the best first 50 pages of an unpublished manuscript at the time of entry into the competition. Winners in each of the 17 categories for both published and unpublished entries will be announced at the 2023 Killer Nashville Awards Dinner on Saturday, August 19, 2023 in Nashville, Tennessee.

Karen Meek posted on EuroCrime the 43 titles eligible for the 2023 Petrona Award for the Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year. Titles must be in translation and published in English in the UK during the preceding calendar year; the author of the submission must either be born in Scandinavia or the submission must be set in Scandinavia; and the submission must have been published in its original language after 1999. The winner of the 2022 Award was Fatal Isles by Maria Adolfsson, translated from the Swedish by Agnes Broomé and published by Zaffre.

LA-based publisher Sumerian is lining up a comic book series based by the 2000 thriller movie classic, American Psycho, which starred Christian Bale as iconic madman Patrick Bateman. Drawn from the original novel and characters by Bret Easton Ellis, the four-issue comic book series, publishing later this year, will have a dual narrative, one showing a different perspective of Bateman’s killing spree (with a notable "twist"), and another revealing a modern day arc with surprising connections to the past, focusing on an all-new psychopath--social media obsessed millennial, Charlie (Charlene) Carruthers, who embarks on a downward spiral filled with violence.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "A Crime Unspoken" by J.H. Johns. On a related note, 5-2 editor, Gerald So, indicated that the site will be closing to submissions for good after this year (sooner, if he doesn't receive enough poems to complete the year), although all previously published poems will be available in the archives.

In the Q&A roundup, Laura Lippman spoke with The Guardian about her latest psychological thriller, Prom Mom, Lippman's most political novel to date that centers around a teen with an unwanted pregnancy; Eli Cranor interviewed fellow Arkansas crime writer, Kelly J. Ford, about her latest thriller, The Hunt; and James Lee Burke stopped by CrimeReads to discuss his new novel, Flags On the Bayou, as well southern history and the hatred burning through America.

Mystery Melange

Waterstones announced the shortlist for the bookstore chain's Debut Fiction Prize, an award for exceptional first novels voted on by booksellers. Celebrating debut fiction in all its forms, "the prize highlights the importance of discovering and championing new talent and acts as an extension of the alchemy of bookseller word-of-mouth recommendation." Two crime-themed titles on the list include Chain Gang All Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, about two top women gladiators fight for their freedom within a depraved private prison system not so far-removed from America’s own, and Kala by Colin Walsh, in which former friends, estranged for twenty years, reckon with the terrifying events of the summer that changed their lives. The winner will be announced on Thursday, August 24, 2023.

The year 2023 marks 120 years since the birth of Georges Simenon, and in celebration, the Liège's Grand Curtius Museum is mounting the exhibition "Simenon: Images of a World in Crisis" featuring photographs taken by Georges Simenon on his extensive travels in the 1930s. Between 1931 and 1935, Georges Simenon, an author best known for his detective Jules Maigret series, traveled the world and brought back reports, novels and thousands of photographs, often of very high quality. A selection of them is on display at the Grand Curtius, dotted along a tour that asks the following question: what does Simenon the photographer tell us about Simenon the novelist and reporter? How do the pictures complement or illuminate his writing? These photographs thus show Simenon immersed in his era and as an observer of history in the making, while providing the true setting for some of his greatest novels, such as Tropic Moon, The Window over the Way, and Avrenos’ Customers. Other events have also included literary readings, projection of films at the Les Grignoux cinema, and a symposium. (HT to The Bunburyist)

Thousands of writers including Nora Roberts, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Michael Chabon, and Margaret Atwood have signed a letter asking artificial intelligence companies like OpenAI and Meta to stop using their work without permission or compensation. It's the latest in a flurry of efforts the literary world has launched in recent weeks against AI, although as NPR noted, protecting writers from the negative impacts of these technologies is not an easy proposition. According to a forthcoming report from The Authors Guild, the median income for a full-time writer last year was $23,000, and writers' incomes declined by 42% between 2009 and 2019. The advent of text-based generative AI applications like GPT-4 and Bard, which scrape the Web for authors' content without permission or compensation and then use it to produce new content in response to users' prompts, is giving writers across the country even more cause for worry.

In more of a "locked house" scenario, over 100 people were trapped for several hours in Greenway, the former home of famed British mystery writer Agatha Christie, in the English countryside on Friday. In a series of events which could have been lifted straight out of the pages of one of Christie’s mystery novels, the group of tourists were left stranded after stormy weather knocked down a tree, blocking the road leading down to the property in the county of Devon, southwest England. The stranded tourists kept themselves busy, drinking cups of tea in the houses’ tearoom and playing rounds of croquet on the lawn. I have a feeling Dame Agatha would approve, even if no bodies were to be found.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "Midsummer Mischief!" by Sarah Das Gupta.

In the Q&A roundup, Colson Whitehead spoke with The Guardian about writing a sequel to Harlem Shuffle, the influence of Stephen King’s Carrie, and why he no longer makes fried chicken; Lisa Haselton chatted with thriller author Robert Creekmore about his new grit lit fantasy noir, Prophet’s Lamentation; and Elly Griffiths discussed embracing politics in her teens, discovering the thrill of George Eliot, and learning from Wilkie Collins for The Guardian's "Books in My Life" series.

Mystery Melange

 

The International Association of Media Tie-in Writers president Jonathan Maberry today announced the nominees for the Scribe Awards for superior works published in 2022. The IAMTW’s Scribe Awards honor licensed works that tie in with other media such as television, movies, gaming, or comic books. There are some honorees of interest to the crime fiction community, including in the General/Adapted Novel category: Murder She Wrote: Death on the Emerald Isle by Terrie Moran, and Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Firewall by James Swallow (which was also nominated in the Audiobook category). The winners will be announced at San Diego Comic-Con on July 21. 

Submissions are now open for the 30th Sisters in Crime’s Scarlet Stiletto Awards for best short crime and mystery stories, with a record $12,720 in prizes. The closing date for the awards is August 31, 2023, with an entry fee of $25 (or $20 for Sisters in Crime members), and a maximum length of 5,000 words. The competition is open to all women, whether cisgender, transgender, or intersex, who are citizens/residents of Australia. The first prize winner takes home $2,000, donated by Swinburne University of Technology, plus the coveted trophy, a scarlet stiletto shoe with a steel stiletto heel plunging into a mount. The shortlist will be announced in October, with the awards being presented at a gala ceremony in Melbourne in late November. In the lead-up to the ceremony, all of the winning stories over the past 30 years are being narrated by Susanna Lobez for Sisters in Crime’s very first podcast – Scarlet Stiletto Bites: Scintillating stories by Australian women. The podcast is free and a new episode is available weekly on Fridays on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, Google, and other services.

Volume 13 in the McFarland Companions to Mystery Fiction series, edited by Elizabeth Foxwell, will be on James Sallis (author of Drive, creator of detective Lew Griffin, biographer of Chester Himes, critic, poet, and cross-genre writer). The author of the retrospective is University of East Anglia's Nathan Ashman, who is also editing the Routledge Handbook to Crime Fiction and Ecology. The McFarland Companions book is expected to be issued in fall 2023.

The late Charlie Watts, longtime drummer for The Rolling Stones, was a passionate reader and book collector. Hundreds of his rare books will be put up for sale this autumn, representing the "best collection of modern first editions" to come to Christie's auctions in over 20 years. The offerings include a first edition of The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald, inscribed inside the front cover to "the original Gatsby," Harold Goldman, a screenwriter friend of Fitzgerald’s in the 1930s, expected to fetch between £200,000 and £300,000; and a first edition of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles with an inscription reading, "I perambulated Dartmoor before I wrote this book." Conan Doyle’s inscriptions are "often very formulaic," said Mark Wiltshire, a books and manuscripts specialist at Christie’s, making this "really quite special."

Here's something to consider for your summer travel plans, via the World of Footprints - Exploring the World of Crime Fiction: Unveiling the Best Destinations for Thriller Enthusiasts From London to Los Angeles, Stockholm to New Orleans, to Baltimore, and more.

And if you need another travel idea, there's the Sherlock Holmes Museum in Lucens, Switzerland, which the International Diplomat recently profiled.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "Bar Fight" by Adam Stemple.

In the Q&A roundup, Deborah Kalb spoke with Siena Sterling about her new novel, The Game She Plays, and also with L.R. Dorn (the pseudonym of screenwriters Matt Dorff and Suzanne Dunn) about the new novel, With a Kiss We Die; S. J. Parris stopped by Crime Time to discuss her new book, Alchemy; and multi-award-winning author Reed Farrel Coleman was featured at Author Interviews, discussing his writing and new novel, Sleepless City, featuring NYC "fixer" Nick Ryan.

Mystery Melange

S.J. Rozan has won the Japanese Maltese Falcon Award, given by the members of the Maltese Falcon Society of Japan for the best hardboiled novel published in Japan. It's for Paper Son, which was published in the U.S. in 2019 but only recently was published in Japan. This is Rozan's second appearance on that list, having won in 2009 for Winter and Night. Other previous winners include Robert B. Parker, Lawrence Block, Michael Connelly, George Pelecanos, Dennis Lehane, Robert Crais, Walter Mosley, and C.J. Box among others. Rozan is one of only three female authors to have won the award, in addition to Sue Grafton and Nanami Wakatake.

The longlist was announced for the 2023 Ngaio Marsh Awards, which celebrate excellence in New Zealand crime, mystery, and thriller writing. They are named for Dame Ngaio Marsh, one of the Queens of Crime of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, who penned bestselling mysteries that entertained millions of global readers from her home in the Cashmere Hills. You can check out the list of fourteen titles here, which are currently being considered by an international judging panel of crime and thriller writing experts from the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. The finalists for Best Novel, Best First Novel, and Best Non-Fiction will be announced in August, with the finalists celebrated and the winners announced as part of a special event held in association with WORD Christchurch later in the year.

Thirty-three books have made it to Sisters in Crime’s longlist for its 23rd Davitt Awards for the best crime and mystery books published by Australian women in 2022. Six Davitt Awards will be presented at a gala dinner at South Melbourne’s Rising Sun Hotel on Saturday, September 2, by award-winning investigative journalist and true-crime author, Debi Marshall: 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 Locus Science Fiction Foundation announced the winners in each category of the 2023 Locus Awards on June 24, 2023, during the Locus Awards Weekend. There are a few crime fiction-themed books among the finalists including Katherine Addison's The Grief of Stones (The Cemeteries of Amalo Book 2) in the Best Fantasy category, which centers on Thara Celehar, who can speak to the recently departed and works to find the killers of the murdered; and The Spare Man, by Mary Robinette Kowal, in the Best Science Fiction category, which follows a brilliant inventor and heiress on her honeymoon on an interplanetary space liner when her husband is arrested for murder.

HQ, an imprint of HarperCollins, has announced the launch of a new £10,000 competition to find an unagented author writing Scotland-set crime novels. A search to discover the next Ian Rankin or Val McDermid has begun via the literary competition, which offers budding crime writers a book deal, a £10,000 advance, and representation by an agent. Any author who is born or raised in Scotland, is a permanent resident, or has a strong and enduring connection with the country can enter with a synopsis and the first 5-10,000 words of their manuscript.

Independent publisher Black Spring Press is launching a new imprint, Black Spring Crime, following the hire of consultant crime editor Luca Veste. The new imprint will publish one crime title a month for the first year beginning with Zephaniah Sole’s A Crime in the Land of 7,000 Islands, a novel "dripping with rich reality" and fantastical elements. Sole’s novel will be followed by Rob McClure’s "hard-hitting" detective novel, The Scotsman, later this month; J K Nottingham’s Jasper’s Brood, publishing in September 2023; and Clare Grant’s historical crime novel, The Winter of Shadows, publishing in November 2023.

ITW's 10th Annual Online Thriller School begins September 12, with a ten-week program focusing on the craft of thriller writing. Each instructor will teach an aspect of craft during a live Zoom session, will provide written materials for further reading along with study suggestions (when applicable), and will offer live Q&A with the attending students. Classes will be held every Tuesday at 1:00pm Eastern. The series also includes two bonus panels: a Q&A with bestselling authors Clare Mackintosh and Ruth Ware, and "What Makes a Literary Agent Go 'Wow'" with Jenny Bent, Jeff Kleinman, and Barbara Poelle. For more information and registration, follow this link.

Hachette India is spearheading a revival of the legendary Yellowbacks series, first published a century ago by Hodder & Stoughton in the iconic yellow book jackets. Thomas Abraham, the managing director of Hachette India, has personally curated the list of nearly 200 titles over a period of seven years, with the aim of leading readers on a journey through the history of crime and detective fiction—from the 18th century to the golden age of the 1950s and ’60s. A second release, with another 50 to 70 titles, will be announced at the end of this year (with extensions beyond crime fiction to other categories).

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "Osip" by Paul Hostovsky.

Mystery Melange

The Crime Writers Association of North America announced the winner of the 2022 Dashiell Hammett Award for Literary Excellence in Crime Writing is Samantha Jayne Allen for Pay Dirt Road. The novel, described as "Friday Night Lights meets Mare of Easttown" is a small-town mystery about an unlikely private investigator searching for a missing waitress. It's Allen's debut novel, which also won the 2019 Tony Hillerman Prize and was recently nominated for a Shamus Award for Best First Novel by the Private Eye Writers of America. The other Hammett finalists were Copperhead Road, by Brad Smith (At Bay Press); Gangland, by Chuck Hogan (Grand Central); Don’t Know Tough, by Eli Cranor (Soho Crime); and What Happened to the Bennetts, by Lisa Scottoline (Putnam).

In recognition of the legacy of Shirley Jackson’s writing, and with permission of the author’s estate, The Shirley Jackson Awards were established for outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic. The awards are voted on by a jury of professional writers, editors, critics, and academics and given for the best work published in the preceding calendar year in the following categories: Novel, Novella, Novelette, Short Fiction, Single-Author Collection, and Edited Anthology. You can check out all of those nominees via this link. Winners will be presented in-person on Saturday, July 15 at 8pm at Readercon 32, Conference on Imaginative Literature, in Quincy, Massachusetts.

Noir at the Bar in DC returns tonight, June 29, at 7pm, at the Looking Glass Lounge on Georgia Avenue, with Ed Aymar taking on hosting duties. Authors scheduled to read from their works include S.A.Cosby, Angie Kim, Cheryl Head, Eryk Pruitt, and Art Taylor, along with music by Sara Jones.

New York's Grolier Club will feature the exhibition, "Whodunit? Key Books in Detective Fiction," November 30, 2023 - February 10, 2024, showcasing significant and unusual mystery works from the more than 400-piece collection of Grolier Club member, Jeffrey Johnson. The detective novels, mostly from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, include The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle, The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie, and The G-String Murders by Gypsy Rose Lee, often thought to be ghosted by Craig Rice. (HT to The Bunburyist)

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "Seventy-Eight Dollars" by Peter Mladinic.

In the Q&A roundup, Chris Brookmyre stopped by the Shots Magazine blog to talk about his writing and offer up some of his favorite books; Indie Crime Scene interviewed Kathleen Kaska, whose novel Murder at the Pontchartrain had its debut on June 28th; and Crime Fiction Lover chatted with Sarah Hilary, winner of Theakston’s 2015 Crime Novel of the Year, about her latest standalone psychological thriller, Black Thorn, set in the south west of England.

Mystery Melange

The winners of the 2023 Colorado Book Awards were recently announced at a ceremony at the historic Penrose House in Colorado Springs. The Colorado Book Awards annually celebrates the accomplishments of Colorado’s outstanding authors, editors, illustrators, and photographers. Volunteer selectors and judges from across Colorado read submissions to choose finalists and winners. Here are the winners in the categories related to crime fiction:

Best Mystery: Aunt Dimity & the Enchanted Cottage by Nancy Atherton (Viking Books)

Also nominated: The Chimera Club by Chuck Greaves (Tallow Lane Books); Where Is Mary Bergen? by Craig Marshall Smith.

Best Thriller: The Wrong Woman by Leanne Kale Sparks (Crooked Lane Books)

Also nominated: Dark of Night by Barbara Nickless (Thomas & Mercer); Deep Waters of Destiny by Peter Carlson (Calumet Editions).

Best Anthology: Denver Noir, ed. by Cynthia Swanson (Akashic Books)

Also nominated: The Long Devotion by Emily Pérez (The University of Georgia Press); Bizarre Bazaar: A Collection of Stories from Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers.

 

Sisters in Crime (SinC) announced the winner of the annual Eleanor Taylor Bland Crime Fiction Writers of Color:  Nicole Prewitt of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her winning submission, "Harts Divided," follows Neema Hart, a black, bisexual thief-turned-P.I., who owns a detective agency and therapy office with her estranged wife, Genie Hart. Established in 2014, The Eleanor Taylor Bland Award is strongly aligned with SinC’s mission to promote the ongoing advancement, recognition and professional development of current and prospective members and intends to support a recipient at the beginning of their crime writing career. The grantee may choose to apply the grant toward workshops, seminars, conferences, retreats, online courses, and research activities to assist in completion of their work. Prewitt’s story was selected from over 60 submissions by 2023 judges Shizuka Otake — winner of the award in 2022 — plus novelists R. Franklin James and Andrea J. Johnson. In addition to Prewitt’s 2023 achievement, SinC has also awarded five runners-up a year-long membership to the organization. Recipients were Josette Covington (Wilmington, Delaware), Ann Harris (Atlanta, Georgia), Kathryn Harrison (Bingham Farms, Michigan), Karabi Mitra (Toronto, Ontario), and Deena Short (Stonecrest, Georgia).

Author LJ Ross is calling for final entries to be made for this year's Lindisfarne Prize, which will close on June 30. Now in its fifth year, the Lindisfarne Prize is a literary prize recognizing outstanding crime and thriller storytelling by new, emerging and established writers who are from, or whose work celebrates, the Northeast UK. The winner will receive a cash prize of £2,500 and receive mentoring and editorial support to develop their work. Joining LJ Ross on the judging panel will be fellow crime writer Trevor Wood; Dr Jacky Collins, director of Newcastle Noir Crime Writing Festival; and BBC Look North presenter Carol Malia. To be considered, entrants must submit a short story of no more than ten thousand words or the first two chapters and a synopsis of their work in progress.

Editors at Amazon have compiled a list of their picks for "the 20 best mystery, thriller, and suspense novels of the year" thus far. They also chose S. A. Cosby's All the Sinners Bleed as their pick for the best mystery and thriller of the year released up to this point. Not to be outdone, Barnes and Noble selected their "best of the year thus far" lists in several more whimsical categories, such as Best Unconventional Detective: Warrior Girl Unearthed by Angeline Boulley; Sisters of the Lost Nation by Nick Medina; and Scorched Grace: A Sister Holiday Mystery by Margot Douaihy.

Even the Library Journal jumped into the fray with "The Best Thriller Books of the Year (So Far)." You can see which fifteen books made it that list via this link. (HT to Jeff Pierce at The Rap Sheet.)

RIP, Carol Higgins Clark, who has passed away at 66 from rare appendix cancer. Higgins Clark was best known for following in the footsteps of her mother, the best-selling author Mary Higgins Clark, with whom she also collaborated on Christmas-themed anthologies. Ms. Higgins Clark authored more than a dozen novels featuring Regan Reilly, a private investigator who is the daughter of a mystery writer, including Decked, which was nominated for the Agatha Award in 1992 and the Anthony Award for best first novel. Higgins Clark also acted in several film adaptations of her mother's books, beginning with a small role in Where Are the Children? and leading to a leading role in movies such as A Cry in the Night.

Two weeks from tonight, Noir at the Bar Dallas returns to The Wild Detectives at 314 W 8th St in Oak Cliff. Readings will take place from 7 to 9 pm from authors to include Rod Davis, Harry Hunsicker, Kathleen Kent, Keith Lansdale, Scott Montgomery, Sean C. Wright Neeley, Jim Nesbitt, Graham Powell, Opalina Salas, Kevin R. Tipple, Danni Trest, and Trang Vu. (HT to Kevin Tipple)


This week's crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "Jealous Guy" by Charles Rammelkamp.

In the Q&A roundup, Crime Fiction Lover chatted with RA Cramblitt about his latest book, Like Printing Money, a technological crime novel set in Baltimore; and Writers Who Kill spoke with Krista Davis about The Diva Delivers on a Promise, Davis's sixteenth book in her Domestic Diva Mystery series.

Mystery Melange

The shortlist for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2023, produced by Harrogate International Festivals, has been announced with six bestselling authors competing to win the UK’s most wanted crime writing prize. The public is now invited to vote for the winner via this link. The six novels shortlisted for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2023 are:

• The Botanist by M.W. Craven (Little, Brown Book Group; Constable)
• Into The Dark by Fiona Cummins (Pan Macmillan; Macmillan/Pan)
• The Locked Room by Elly Griffiths (Quercus)
• Black Hearts by Doug Johnstone (Orenda Books)
• Wrong Place Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister (Penguin Random House; Michael Joseph)
• The It Girl by Ruth Ware (Simon & Schuster)
  
  

Goldsboro Books, based in London, has announced its longlist of contenders for the 2023 Glass Bell Award, which "celebrates the best storytelling across contemporary fiction, regardless of genre." This year, the list of twelve finalists includes one crime novel, Notes on an Execution, by Danya Kukafka (winner of the Edgar Award for Best Novel this year), although Metronome by Tom Watson is also technically a sci-fi suspense thriller. You can check out the full list of nominees via this link. A shortlist of candidates will be released on Thursday, July 27, with the winner to be revealed on September 28. The prize includes £2,000 and a handmade glass bell.

The 2023 Lambda Literary Award winners have been announced, including the winner of the Best LGBTQ+ Mystery, Dirt Creek: A Novel by Hayley Scrivenor. The other finalists in that category include: Dead Letters from Paradise by Ann McMan; A Death in Berlin by David C Dawson; And There He Kept Her by Joshua Moehling; and Lavender House by Lev AC Rosen.

The conference Crime Fiction and Democracy will be held at Paris Nanterre University, June 22-24. This multidisciplinary symposium will explore the complex and multifaceted relationship between the detective novel and democracy, from the end of the 19th century to the present day, and is organized by the Anglophone Research Center (Paris Nanterre University) and Queen’s University Belfast, in partnership with the Multidisciplinary Research Center (Paris Nanterre University).

Bruce Lisman is selling a trove of 18th and 19th-century American books and rarities via an auction at Christie's. His collection offers a rare look into the foundations of American literature, including rare and inscribed works by Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Fenimore Cooper, Mark Twain, and Walt Whitman. Edgar Allan Poe is also represented by such works as an inscribed Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque from 1840, with an estimated bidding range of $300,000-$500,000.

Adam Mitzner is a practicing attorney in a Manhattan law firm and the bestselling author of Dead Certain, Never Goodbye, and The Best Friend in the Broden Legal series as well as the stand-alone thrillers A Matter of Will, A Conflict of Interest, A Case of Redemption, Losing Faith, The Girl from Home, and The Perfect Marriage. Mitzner applied the Page 69 Test to his latest novel, Love Betrayal Murder.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "Bae" by Melodie Bolt.

In the Q&A roundup, Writers Who Kill's Grace Topping interviewed Linda Norlander about Death of a Fox, the latest book in A Cabin by the Lake Mystery Series; Crime Fiction Lover spoke with Danish crime fiction author, Michael Katz Krefeld, who can now be read in English with the recent translation of his novel, Darkness Calls, published in May 2023.