Mystery Melange

Strand Magazine announced the finalists for its Critics Awards and also named Peter Lovesey and R.L. Stine as the recipients of The Strand’s Lifetime Achievement Award for excellence in crime and thriller writing.  (Hat tip to Mystery Fanfare). Here are the nominees:

Best Novel:
• The Shining Girls, by Lauren Beukes  
• Solo, by William Boyd  
• Sandrine’s Case, by Thomas H. Cook  
• A Serpent’s Tooth, by Craig Johnson  
• Ratlines, by Stuart Neville  
• The Double, by George Pelecanos   

Best First Novel:
• Just What Kind of Mother Are You? by Paula Daly
• Ghostman, by Roger Hobbs  
• A Killing at Cotton Hill, by Terry Shames  
• Walking Into the Ocean, by David Whellams  
• Norwegian by Night, by Derek Miller  

The Left Coast Crime conference, which wrapped up this past weekend, handed out the "Leftie" Awards for best humorous, historical, U.S.-based and international mysteries.

If you happen to be in Edinburg on Saturday, April 12, reserve your free tickets to a panel discussion among some of the leading spy fiction writers of the present moment: Charles Cumming, Jeremy Duns, Dame Stella Rimington, and Tim Stevens. This is the culmination of Spy Week activities at the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures, University of Edinburgh.

Noir Nation's latest edition for Kindle is the "Canada issue," with over 20 entries from some of the very best literary crime fiction writers in the international scene. If you don't have a Kindle, stay tuned: the print version is coming soon.

This week's featured crime poem at the 5-2 is "For Newtown" by Rachel Lynn McGuire. The pulp story of the week at Beat to a Pulp is "Para Bellum" by Kieran Shea.

J. Kingston Pierce has a timely article at Kirkus Reviews, focusing on eight of the best crime and thriller stories set in the former Soviet Union.

The New Yorker posted a slide show online of "American public libraries great and small featuring photos from The Public Library: A Photographic Essay by Robert Dawson (being released in April by Princeton Architectural Press.

A piece on Buzzfeed reimagines six Hardy Boys covers starring True Detectives characters from the HBO series.

The Q&A roundup this week includes Harlan Coben chatting with the New York Times about literary guilty pleasures and more; Jenny Milchman is interviewed by fellow author Cynthia Lott; and Jim Wilsky grills Paul D. Brazill.