Fair is Fair

 
The international Miami Book Fair is taking place this week, up through Sunday, November 24th, with headliner guest Dan Brown. Crime fiction events include a panel at noon on Saturday, sponsored by the Mystery Writers of America, which includes Libby Fischer Hellman (Havana Lost); Miriam Auerbach (Dirty Harriet), Deborah Sharp (Mama Gets Trashed), and Fausto Canel (Dire Straits). Then on Sunday at 11 a.m.,  there's a panel with Jeff Lindsay (Dexter’s Final Cut), Peter de Jonge (Buried on Avenue B); Tim Dorsey (The Riptide Ultra-Glide); and Bill Petrocelli (The Circle of Thirteen).

Across the Pond, there are two other terrific events taking place this weekend, including:

November 22-23, 2013
Irish Crime Fiction Festival
Trinity College, Dublin
Scheduled authors include Declan Burke, Jane Casey, Paul Charles, John Connolly, Conor Fitzgerald, Alan Glynn, Declan Hughes, Arlene Hunt, Kevin McCarthy, Brian McGilloway, Eoin McNamee, Niamh O’Connor, Louise Phillips, Peter Quinn, Michael Russell and Stuart Neville; and Michael Connelly will be interviewed by John Connolly.

November 21-24, 2013
Iceland Noir
Reykjavik, Iceland
This inaugural Iceland crime fiction event is designed to be "informal" with free admission and the chance to rub elbows with authors like Iceland's Yrsa Sigurðardóttir, Ragnar Jonasson, Sigurjón Pálsson; British authors Quentin Bates and Michael Ridpath, who write crime series set in Iceland; and visiting authors, including Ann Cleeves and Susan Moody.

Hot Shorts for Cold Weather

 If you're in the mood for some good short crime fiction, there are three new entries hot off the presses. Grove/Atlantaic and Mysterious Press just released The Hunter and Other Stories by iconic author Dashiell Hammett. These aren't reprints, but rather new Hammett stories found among his personal archives, as well as some screen treatments long buried in film-industry files. The volume is edited by Julie M. Rivett, Hammett's granddaughter, and Richard Layman, author of the first full-length biography of Hammett, Shadow Man.

The Shamus Sampler, also just released in ebook form, is edited by Sons of Spade blogger Jochem Vandersteen and features new private eye fiction from Bill Crider, James Winter, Jeffrey Marks, Stephen D. Rogers, and many more. In Reed Farrel Coleman's introduction, he notes that private eye fiction isn't as popular as it once was, with the explosion of so many other types of crime fiction (cozies, thrillers, Scandinavian, etc). But he adds that the PI is an "important cultural icon because he or she embodies the struggles we all face as individuals in an increasingly confusing, alienating, and potentially dangerous world."

The new Dallas Noir continues the "city noir" series of anthologies from Akashic Press. David Hale Smith penned the intro, saying that "In a country with so many interesting cities, Dallas is often overlooked—except on November 22 every year. The heartbreaking anniversary keeps coming back around in a nightmare loop, for all of us. On that day in 1963, Dallas 'became' American noir." The volume has 16 new stories divided into three sections, "Cowboys, "Rangers," and "Mavericks."