Quote of the Week

 

Ngaio Marsh Magnificence

 

The finalists were revealed for the 2025 Ngaio Marsh Awards. Now in their sixteenth season, the Awards celebrate excellence in mystery, thriller, crime, and suspense writing from New Zealand authors. Finalists will be celebrated and this year’s winners announced at a special event, "The Ngaio Marsh Awards and The Murderous Mystery," to be held in association with the WORD Christchurch Confrence at Tūranga on Thursday, September 25.

BEST NOVEL

• Return To Blood by Michael Bennett (Simon & Schuster)
• A Divine Fury by DV Bishop (Macmillan)
• Woman, Missing by Sherryl Clark (HarperCollins)
• Home Truths by Charity Norman (Allen & Unwin)
• 17 Years Later by JP Pomare (Hachette)
• The Call by Gavin Strawhan (Allen & Unwin)
• Prey by Vanda Symon (Orenda Books)

BEST FIRST NOVEL

• Dark Sky by Marie Connolly (Quentin Wilson Publishing)
• Lie Down With Dogs by Syd Knight (Rusty Hills)
• A Fly Under The Radar by William McCartney 
• The Defiance Of Frances Dickinson by Wendy Parkins (Affirm Press)
• The Call by Gavin Strawhan (Allen & Unwin)
• Kiss Of Death by Stephen Tester (Heritage Press)

BEST NONFICTION

• The Trials Of Nurse Kerr by Scott Bainbridge (Bateman Books)
• The Survivors by Steve Braunias (HarperCollins)
• The Crewe Murders by Kirsty Johnstone & James Hollings (Massey Uni Press)
• The Last Secret Agent by Pippa Latour & Jude Dobson (Allen & Unwin)
• Gangster’s Paradise by Jared Savage (HarperCollins)
• Far North by David White & Angus Gillies (Upstart Press)

Friday's "Forgotten" Books: One Night's Mystery

May Agnes Fleming (1840-1880) was one of the first Canadians to pursue a highly successful career as a writer of popular fiction, reportedly earning $10,000 a year, a princely sum at the time. Her work became so popular that many of her novels were re-issued under different titles, often due to piracy. Her first book was published in her adopted state of New York in 1963, titled Erminie; or The gypsy's Vow: A Tale of Love and Vengeance. Using several pen names, including Cousin May Carleton and M.A. Earlie, she published several serial tales in the New York Mercury, the New York Weekly, the Boston Pilot and the London Journal (and set several of her books in England).

She wrote somewhere around 40 novels and would have written more if she hadn't died prematurely from Bright's Disease at the age of 39. Despite her literary success, she struggled in her personal life, separating from her alcoholic husband and ultimately excluding him from her will and the upbringing of their four children. This misfortune didn't break her but rather may have inspired the many strong female characters in her novels, both good and evil.

One Night's Mystery follows the lives and loves of three young women: Cyrilla Hendrick, the daughter of handsome, penniless, scoundrel; her best friend, Sydney Owenson, a naive heiress; and Dolly De Courcy, a spirited actress. Both Cyrilla and Sydney are engaged, although things aren't as they seem in either case. Sydney's gold-digging fiance is besotted with Dolly, while Cyrilla's is arranged through her aunt, whom Cyrilla calls "the crossest, spitefulest old woman on earth." The one night's mystery of the title refers to the disappearance of Sydney's fiance the day before her wedding, but did he run off with Dolly or was he murdered?

One Night's Mystery was first serialized in New York Weekly and the London Journal before being published in book form by G.W. Carleton in 1876, toward the end of Fleming's life. It is a prime example of the type of work Fleming wrote, romantic suspense with a few Gothic elements thrown in. Her writing style is direct, her characters simple but reasonably well fleshed out, and the complicated relationships between the characters thorny and entertaining, if a tad melodramatic.

Despite the melodrama, Fleming does insert moments of poetic descriptions that are especially effective with settings, such as this one about the grim street that houses the dull and respectable Demoiselles Chateauroy school for young ladies (where Cyrilla and Sydney met):

There were no shops, there were no people; the houses looked at you as you passed with a sad, settled, melancholy mildew upon them; the doors rarely opened, the blinds and curtains were never drawn; prim little gardens, with prim little gravel-paths, shut in these sad little houses from the street; now and then a pale, pensive face might gleam at you from some upper window, spectre-like, and vanish.

Mystery Melange

 

The Washington Center for the Book announced the finalists for the 59th annual Washington State Book Awards on Tuesday. The awards honor outstanding books published by Washington authors in 2024. This year, there were 42 finalists in seven categories, with the winners in each to be announced Sept. 16. The Best Fiction category includes the crime novel, Rough Trade by Katrina Carrasco, which was also named a Best Crime Novel of 2024 by The New York Times Book Review.

Despite all the craziness in D.C. right now, the 2025 Library of Congress National Book Festival is full steam ahead for on Saturday, September 6, at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center. Among the mystery and thriller events are a discussion about "Justice on Trial" with Ron Currie (The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne) and Scott Turow (Presumed Guilty); and Liz Moore (The God of the Woods) and Chris Whitaker (All the Colors of the Dark) in conversation about their blockbuster novels, which both are both set in the 1970s and feature missing people. There will also be book signings by these authors and many more.

Thirty-five years, ago, Jim Sanborn created a coded message within Kryptos, a sculpture stationed in a courtyard at the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia. The piece, a meditation on secrets in a house of secrets, has fascinated and bedeviled professional and amateur cryptologists since its dedication, and over the years, the first three panels were cracked by code breakers within the C.I.A., a California computer scientist, and the National Security Agency. The fourth panel has remained unsolved—until now. In an auction on November 20, Sanborn will provide the answer to the remaining code to the highest bidder. Along with the original handwritten plain text of K4 and other papers related to the coding, Mr. Sanborn will also provide a 12-by-18-inch copper plate that has three lines of alphabetic characters cut through with a jigsaw, which he calls “my proof-of-concept piece." His ideal winning bidder is someone who will hold on to that secret.

Sad news to report: After 42 years, the always humorous Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, founded in 1982 at San Jose State University in California, has announced its retirement. It's the brainchild of Professor Scott Rice, who had to write a seminar paper on a minor Victorian novelist and chose Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, author of the novel, Paul Clifford. That novel began with the famous "purple prose" opener that has been plagiarized repeatedly by the cartoon beagle, Snoopy, "It was a dark and stormy night." You can still read the contest archives online, which includes the winning entries for the Crime & Detective category through the years, as well as this entry, which won the Grand Panjandrum's Special Award last year: "Mrs. Higgins’ body was found in the pantry, bludgeoned with a potato ricer and lying atop a fifty-pound sack of Yukon golds, her favorite for making gnocchi, though some people consider them too moist for this purpose."

This week's crime poem up at the 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly is "Give and Take" by Angela McClintock.

In the Q&A roundup, Lisa Towles was interviewed by the Writers Fun Zone about her technothrillers, with the latest, Switch (the third installment in the E&A Investigations Thriller Series), out next month; and Writers Who Kill's E. B. Davis spoke with with Alyssa Maxwell about Murder At Arleigh, the thirteenth book in the Gilded Newport Mystery series.

Media Murder for Monday

It's the start of a new week and that means it's time for a brand-new roundup of crime drama news:

THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES

In a highly competitive situation, New Regency has landed Fixation, an erotic thriller spec from Wednesday screenwriters Erika Vazquez and Siena Butterfield. The project will be produced alongside Emmy winner Bruna Papandrea’s Made Up Stories production company. While not much is known about the film’s plot, it has been reported it centers on a couple’s therapist who is drawn into a dangerous triangle of lust, lies, and manipulation.

Elsie Fisher (Eighth Grade), Ty Simpkins (The Whale), Julie Ann Emery (Better Call Saul), and Mel Rodriguez (The Last Man on Earth) have joined the cast of Busted, an indie revenge thriller from director Maria Bissell (How to Deter a Robber), who penned the script with cinematographer Stephen Tringali. Currently in production, the film follows naive college freshman Wendy (Fisher), who gets trapped in a vicious blackmail scheme by her own roommate, forced into a seedy strip club to pay off the debt. But when she uncovers the sick truth behind the setup, the tables turn — hard. Joining forces with the club’s outrageous misfit crew, Wendy launches a daring reverse con to take her tormentor down. Others in the cast include Michael Rose, Kathleen Wilhoite, Maria Zhang, and Ava Allan.

TELEVISION/STREAMING

Glenn Close will star in the Channel 4 and Sony Pictures Television drama, Maud, playing Maud Oldcastle, an old killer with a tortured past. Determined to break from a lifetime spent caring for her sister, Maud sets out to claim a long-overdue second act, but a suspicious detective and an unrelenting world built for youth may soon discover just how far she’ll go to protect her freedom. Written by Nina Raine and Moses Raine (Donkey Heart) and produced by Wolf Hall maker Playground, the show is based on the short story collections, An Elderly Lady Is Up To No Good and An Elderly Lady Must Not Be Crossed, by best-selling Swedish author Helene Tursten.

Oscar winner Nicolas Cage is in talks to headline the upcoming fifth season of HBO‘s Emmy-winning crime anthology series, True Detective, which marks the return of Season 4’s Issa Lopez as writer-showrunner. The new installment will be set in New York, in Jamaica Bay, per HBO’s Head of Drama Series and Film Francesca Orsi. Cage is in talks for the lead role of Henry Logan, a New York detective on the case at the center of the new season. The actor has been circling the part for a while, but it's unclear whether the deal will close. Another Oscar winner, Jodie Foster, also took a long time to make her deal for True Detective's Season 4, Night Country.

George Kay, the creator of Apple’s Hijack, is back with War, a new legal thriller starring Dominic West (The Crown) and Sienna Miller (Anatomy of a Scandal). West plays tech titan Morgan Henderson, and Miller stars as his estranged wife, international film star Carla Duval. The drama is set in the elite world of London law and kicks off with a "scandalous divorce case that sends shockwaves through boardrooms, bedrooms, and courtrooms alike." HBO and Sky have handed the show a two-season order, setting it up as an anthology series with a new case each season. Season one also stars Phoebe Fox, James McArdle, Nina Sosanya, Pip Torrens, and Archie Renaux.

Star Trek: The Next Generation star Marina Sirtis and Dynasty star Stephanie Beacham are returning to the small screen this fall in The Sunshine Murders, a new cozy crime drama premiering Thursday, September 4, on UPtv with a two-episode debut beginning at 8pm ET/PT. The series is about an unlikely crime fighting duo made up of two very different sisters: Shirley Rangi (played by Emily Corcoran), a farmer from New Zealand who travels to Athens in search of her father, and her half-sister and detective, Helen Moustakas (Dora Chrysikou). Shirley soon helps Helen solve crimes with her "bush" wisdom and wit while they try to find their missing father. Beacham will play Lady Gloria Whitten-Soames, and Sirtis is stepping into the role of Helen's mother, Alexa Moustakas.

Laura Donnelly (The Nevers) is set to star in the ITV serial killer drama, The Dark, playing Scottish Detective Monica Kennedy, the protagonist in the crime series. When the body of a young man is found eerily staged in the idyllic Scottish wilderness, she fears this is the beginning of a terrifying campaign that will strike at the heart of a rural community. The series is based on GR Halliday’s novel, From the Shadows, and there are hopes for more seasons with two more books already penned in the trilogy: Dark Waters and Under the Marsh.

PODCASTS/RADIO/AUDIO

Science Friday welcomed chemist-turned-author Kathryn Harkup to discuss her new book, V is for Venom: Agatha Christie’s Chemicals of Death, and the science of poisons: why they’re so popular in whodunnits, and how to get away with murder (in fiction writing, of course).

On the latest episode of Spybrary, host Shane Whaley interviewed author Alex Gerlis about his latest novel, The Second Traitor, book 2 in a spy series which is set against the backdrop of World War II and the early Cold War. Gerlis also chatted with Crime Time FM host, Paul Burke, about the book; Operation Sea Lion; Hitler as military commander; German spies in England; and Alan Furst.

Debbi Mack's latest guest on the Crime Cafe podcast is thriller novelist, Howard Kaplan, author of the Jerusalem Spy Series, the latest of which is The Syrian Sunset.

The Cops and Writers podcast featured a playback of a Sisters in Crime panel, "Behind the Badge," with moderator Patrick J. O'Donnell, retired NYPD Detective Marique Bartoldus (Twenty and Out), retired Chicago PD Detective Lieutenant Richard Rybicki (Dead Line), and retired Milwaukee Fire Department Captain Greg Renz (Beyond the Flames).

On Read or Dead, Katie McLain Horner and Kendra Winchester discussed historical crime and horror novels.

The latest episode of Mystery Rat's Maze featured the mystery short story, "A Funny Name" by Gregory Meece, read by actor MW Hoffman.