Mystery Melange

 

Declan Burke confessed to Ireland's Sunday Tribune about the book that changed his life.

Marcus Sakey says he initially decided to write in the crime fiction genre because "I wanted to tell the stories that a lot of people read and crime fiction is the most popular genre out there. But once I started working in it and reading in it, I fell head-over-heels for it. I think it's such a strong medium for exploring social and philosophical ideas, at the same time telling a story that makes people stay up too late and miss their train stops."

Patrick Anderson at the Washington Post is delighted that John Harvey has resurrected, so to speak, Nottingham Detective Inspector Charlie Resnick with Harvey's latest novel Cold in Hand, and goes so far to say that "Micahel Connelly and Ian Rankin, whose rumpled, stubborn, romantically challenged Harry Bosch and John Rebus were surely influenced by Resnick."

Orion has acquired two new books from crime writer Elmore Leonard, Comfort to the Enemy, a three-part novel centered on Leonard's protagonist Carl Webster, and Road Dogs, which will unite three characters from past Leonard novels: bank robber Jack Foley, Cuban conman Cundo Ray, and beautiful psychic Dawn Navarro.

Commentator Tony Smith makes the case that whereas during the 1990s, Australia’s best crime fiction originated in Sydney with authors Peter Corris, Marele Day, Jean Bedford, Susan Geason and Gabrielle Lord, in the early 21st century Melbourne leads the way in crime fiction.

An English professor at Fordham College at Lincoln Center and a lifelong lover of crime fiction has written a cultural history of crime fiction titled Hard-Boiled Sentimentality: The Secret History of American Crime Stories. Author Leonard Cassuto is also the author of a book on serial killers, Already he had examined the subject of monsters in his 1997 book, The Inhuman Race: The Racial Grotesque in American in American Literature and Culture.

The Delaware Book Festival, which takes place on November 1st, will include a panel featuring successful fiction writers who have pulled expertise from former careers to craft their stories, including physician/medical thriller author Tess Gerritsen, prosecutor/mystery writer Alafair Burke, and TV news producer/media thriller author Mary Jane Clark, as well as a mystery panel featuring Linda Barnes, author of two criminal thriller series, and Chuck Logan, author of seven novels including Hunter’s Moon, Absolute Zero and After the Rain.

And from News of the Weird, coming to a movie theater near you, no doubt, comes the story of a crime-fighting bear.