Mystery Melange

Bouchercon 2014 wrapped up this past weekend, which also means we now know this year's winners for the Anthony Awards, the Barry Awards, the Macavity Awards, and the Shamus Awards. William Kent Krueger scored close to a sweep by winning the Best Novel Anthony, Best Novel Barry, and Macavity Best Novel nods for Ordinary Grace, while the Shamus for Best Hardcover PI Novel went to Brad Parks for The Good Cop. (For all the winners, check out the Shots Ezine blog.) For all the finalists, check out these websites for the Anthonys, the Barrys, the Macavitys, and the Shamus Awards (via Crimespree).

RT Book Reviews also announced the finalists for their annual awards in various categories, including a general Mystery, Suspense, Thriller category and Romantic Suspense.

Kirkus Reviews named their "Best of 2014" fiction selections, including several mysteries and thrillers.

Martin Edwards notes on his blog that the British Library's Crime Classics series are publishing two anthologies of Golden Age fiction edited and introduced by Edwards that he hopes will "introduce a new generation of readers to some of the marvellous short stories published between the wars." The two books are Resorting to Murder, which focuses on holiday mysteries, and Capital Crimes, a collection of stories set in and around London, with each volume including include one or two rare stories. Edwards has also been named Series Consultant for the Crime Classics initiative, which has several more interesting titles in the publishing pipeline.

The latest Mystery Readers Journal is devoted to bibliomysteries, mystery stories set in the world of books (publishing, bookselling, libraries, academia, etc.).

India's first Crime Fiction Festival debuts January 17-18, 2015, featuring crime and thriller writers from across the world, as well as noted scriptwriters and directors, who will "dissect the genre in visual medium and performing arts."

Law enforcement officer and author B.J. Bourg's blog Righting Crime Fiction aims to help authors get the details in their fiction just right. His latest offering is about spent casings and crime scenes.

Author Val McDermid takes a look at the brillliant unconventional crime novels of Josephine Tey, the "enigmatic writer whose dark, unsettling stories dragged the crime novel into the modern age."

An essay in The New York Times claims that modern technology has led to "The Death of the Private Eye," although the P.I. team Colleen Collins and Shaun Kaufman have a different take on the subject.

Paul Dickson selects his top 10 favorite "authorisms"  – neologisms coined by authors which have entered the wider language, from Shakespeare to Joseph Heller.

The Guardian profiled the tiny books in the famous Queen Mary's Doll House collection, including the 503-word Sherlock Holmes story "How Watson Learned The Trick" that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created for the Doll house. The newspaper is giving away five tiny replicas of the book to lucky winners who enter by November 24 November.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "Escape From Dallas" by William G. Rector.

The Q&A roundup this week includes an interview over at The Mystery People blog with Paul Oliver, founder of Syndicate Books, a new independent publisher dedicated to bringing back the works of great and influential crime authors back in print; Mark S. Bacon stops by Omnimystery News to talk about his new mystery Death in Nostalgia City; and Preston Lang takes Paul D. Brazill's "Short, Sharp Interview" challenge.