Mystery Melange

The winner of the £5,000 Telegraph Harvill Secker crime writing competition for an unpublished manuscript is Abir Mukherjee. His novel, A Rising Man, is set in Calcutta in the dying days of the Raj and opens with the brutal murder of a British burra sahib. Mukherjee's submission was picked from a pool of 400 submissions.

The latest issue of Mystery Readers Journal is out, with a focus on medical mysteries.

If you're in London on March 21st, reserve your spot at the symposium on continental crime writing and its translation into English. Sponsored by the European Commission Representation in the UK in partnership with City University London, the one-day event includes an introductory lecture and workshops with authors and translators. (Hat tip to ShotsMag)

If you're in New York City on April 30th, check out the launch party for the latest Mystery Writers of America anthology, Ice Cold, edited by Jeffery Deaver and Raymond Benson. The launch party will be held at The Mysterious Bookshop, and many of the contributors and 2014 Edgar Award nominees are scheduled to appear.  

Thanks to Crime Fiction Lover for noting that Crime Story, a new festival for crime fiction lovers, is coming to Newcastle at the University of Northumbria on May 31st. The organizers have added a fun twist: they've commissioned author Ann Cleeves to invent a fictional crime which will then be investigated by various experts including forensic scientists, police detectives and legal eagles.  

AM Heath is partnering with The Writers’ Workshop to offer Criminal Lines 2014, a new crime writing prize open to unagented, debut authors, born or residing in the UK and Ireland. First prize is First prize: £1,000 and the chance to meet with literary agents. 

Linda Dewberry, the owner of Olympia, Washington's Whodunit? Books, has put her mystery bookstore up for sale. She's trying to find a new owner, but if a sale doesn't go through by April, the store will close for good.

Did your city make the  America's "most literate" cities list?

This week over at the crime poem site The 5-2, editor Gerald So is featuring love poems for Valentine's month or, as he calls it, "Love is a Crime" and also has this week's new poem, "Salt" by Sarah Nichols; the featured short story at Beat to a Pulp is "Cop," from . . . Gerald So! He's been a very busy fellow this week.

The Q&A roundup this week includes a chat with award-winning author Paul Levine over at the Harvard Square Edition; Jim Winter takes the Short Sharp Interview test for Paul D. Brazill; Charles Salzberg stops by the Sons of Spade blog; Declan Burke wecomes fellow author Frances di Plino; and Laura Lippman has a lenghty Q&A session with the New York Times.

John Dufresne, an American author of French Canadian descent, once collaborated with Carl Hiaasen, Dave Barry, Elmore Leonard and nine other South Florida writers on Naked Came the Manatee, a detective novel. He recently picked his "Top 10 Florida Noir" titles for Shots Magazine.