Mystery Melange

Liam McIlvanney's Where the Dead Men Go won the the prestigious Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel at the WORD Christchurch Writers & Readers Festival this past Saturday. (Hat tip to Craig Sisterson at Kiwicrime.) The other finalists were Joe Victim by Paul Cleave, Frederick’s Coat by Alan Duff, and My Brother’s Keeper by Donna Malane.

The Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards announced shortlists for the CWA Goldsboro Gold Dagger for Best Crime Novel of the Year, the CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger for Best First Novel, and the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for Best Thriller of the Year.  (Hat tip to It's a Crime.)

Hard Case Crime, the award-winning line of vintage-style crime fiction from editor Charles Ardai and publisher Titan Books, announced it will publish a newly-discovered pulp crime novel by Gore Vidal, lost for more than 60 years and never before published under the author’s real name. Thieves Fall Out, the story of an American trying to smuggle an ancient treasure out of Egypt on the eve of a bloody revolution, will be published in hardcover in April 2015.

The latest issue of Noir Nation features several stories by Canadian authors as well as stories set in Canada by non-Canadian writers. In keeping with the journal’s international flavor, there are also stories from other parts of the globe. This particular edition is dedicated to Ghanaian poet Kofi Awoonor, who was murdered during the terrorist attack at the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi.

The new Yellow Mama edition also has new crime fiction and poems on themes of everything from vengeance to snooty writers' workshops and even a "mystically-empowered Samurai vigilante."

The recently-released Thuglit Issue Thirteen is titled "Hepcats and Kittens," with "eight new hardboiled treats to keep you purring."

Mike Ripley's latest "Getting Away with Murder" column for Shots ezine has a profie of the "Prince of Storytellers," a/k/a Edward Phillips Oppenheim (1866-1946), a review of a new biography of John Creasey, and much more.

New York and Minnesota now have at least one more thing in common: they both have "floating libraries." The Minneapolis location, in the middle of Cedar Lake, features a wooden raft with around 80 artists’ books and is staffed by friendly librarians. Simply pull up your kayak or boat and you're in business. New York's is slightly different: The Lilac Museum Steamship will host a pop-up floating library at Pier 25 on the Hudson River from September 6 through October 3.

Over at the 5-2, the weekly crime poem is "The Saturday Night Special in Gary, Indiana" by Joseph S. Pete.

The Q&A roundup this week includes Gregg Hurwitz chatting with The Mystery People about his latest, Don’t Look Back, set in the jungle because he wanted to "write something where cell phones and cops and evidence played no role"; Anonymous-9 is interviewed by Anthony Neil Smith about her new book Bite Harder; and Kristi Belcamino spoke with Omnimystery News about her series featuring San Francisco reporter Gabriella Giovanni.

Eleven-year-old Sebastian Griffith and his father Kevin have recreated 100 scenes from the 1,079-page David Foster Wallace novel Infinite Jest in Lego.

In case you were wondering, ShotsMag reported that Yorkshire did indeed beat the Guinness World Record for the Most People Dressed as Sherlock Holmes, on August 31, with a total of 443!