Mystery Melange

The ebook service Kobo launched its inaugural Kobo Emerging Writer Awards for Canadian authors this year, and the names on the mystery shortlist include A Quiet Kill by Janet Brons; The Monarch, a thriller by Jack Soren; Cipher by John Jantunen; A Siege of Bitterns by Steve Burrows; and The Last of the Independents by Sam Wiebe. (HT to Crime Fiction Lover.)

The American Bar Association's ABA Journal and the University of Alabama Law School announced the finalists for the 2015 Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction, handed out to “a book-length fictional work that best exemplifies the role of lawyers in society, and their power to effect change."  The honorees include: My Sister’s Grave, by Robert Dugoni; Terminal City, by Linda Fairstein; and The Secret of Magic, by Deborah Johnson. (HT to Mystery Fanfare.) The public is invited to cast their vote for their favorite, with the audience vote counting as a "fifth judge" in addition to the four judges on the awards panel.

This year's Deadly Ink Conference in New Jersey will include a one-day Deadly Ink Academy, held on Friday August 7th in New Brunswick. Instructors will include S.W. Hubbard, leading a workshop title "Plot Your Way to Success," in the morning, and in the afternoon, Kathryn Johnson will talk about "The Extreme Novelist: The No-Time-To-Write Method for Drafting your Novel in 8 Weeks." The public is welcome to register for the workshop as an add-on to the conference or can attend the conference on its own.

If you happen to be in delightful Dublin tomorrow (May 28), author Dennis Lehane will join Declan Burke in conversation at the Irish Writers Centre.

A "major collection" of letters, photos and publications of the late crime fiction author Dashiell Hammett has been acquired by the University of South Carolina, with the institution planning on making the materials available to students and scholars within the coming year. The collection includes hundreds of family letters, photographs, personal effects and documents from Hammett's daughter Josephine, 89, and two of his grandchildren, 300+ Hammett books and rare first editions, and dozens of screenplays, files, documents and serialized magazines compiled by Hammett biographer and Columbia publisher Richard Layman.

Mysterious Press announced the release of two new short story collections in paperback and eBook from two masters of the crime genre: The Complete Crime Stories of James M. Cain, and The Last Drive and Other Stories by Rex Stout.

The Malice Domestic Conference announced a change to their William F. Deeck-Malice Domestic Grants Program for Unpublished Writers. The award will now be given to one individual instead of two, but the grant will increase to $2,500 plus a comprehensive registration for the upcoming convention and two nights’ lodging at the convention hotel. Applicants can send along a plot synopsis of no more than 300 words and three consecutive chapters of the writer’s Malice Domestic genre work-in-progress before the deadline of November.

Thuglit has a revamped website and has upped the payment for accepted stories. As always, they're seeking short crime fiction between 3,000-6,000 words.

Author Sophie Hannah (who published a Hercule Poirot continuation novel) wrote an essay for The Guardian titled "No one should condescend to Agatha Christie – she's a genius." Hannah notes that while Christie is consistently dismissed as merely a brilliant plotter of mysteries, she's "so much more than that."

The Guardian also profiled Agatha Christie's "forgotten" Syrian memoir that recounts travels with her archaeologist husband after the second world war and features little-seen photographs. HarperCollins will publish the memoir, title Come, Tell Me How You Live, this August.

Agatha Christie was known for using poisons in her mystery novels, and WaPo rcently took a look at the ancient art of poisoning, which seems to be making a comeback.

David Prestidge at the Crime Fiction Lover blog posted some of the latest crime fiction titles including Mr. Campion’s Fox by Mike Ripley. Ripley has been commissioned by the Margery Allingham estate to continue Allingham's popular Albert Campion series with a brand new case set in the world of London’s diplomatic circles. Ripley previously completed Allingham’s Mr. Campion’s Farewell, left unfinished at the time of her death in 1966.

The Daily Beast re-published an article by Ross Macdonald on "How America Fell for the Private Eye," where the late author talks about the origins of Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe and his own Lew Archer.

Students at a primary school in Donnybrook, Dublin, have written and published their very own mystery novel to benefit charity. Each student wrote a chapter, complete with illustrations, to create the 140-page book, and regular votes were taken to decide the direction the story should take. All proceeds raised with go to the Irish Cancer Society and Down Syndrome Ireland.

Futures Mysterious Anthology Magazine (FMAM) was founded by Babs Lakey, who published many excellent crime fiction short stories during the magazine's tenure, and received an award for “Supporting the Writing and Publishing of Works of Fiction in their community" from the city of Minneapolis in 2002. But Lakey developed serious health and financial problems and is now in danger of losing her senior housing, something that has prompted a Go Fund Me campaign. If you'd like to contribute, you can do so by name or anonymously.

In the Q&A roundup, journalist and author Ace Atkins chats with Huffpo about
continuing Robert B. Parker's Spenser series; Omnimystery News wecomed author Rio Ramirez to discuss his new crime series featuring small town hitman Tommy Darlington; Peter James got the Q&A rubber-hose treatment from Declan Burke; Craig Faustus Buck talks with the Examiner about novel Go Down Hard and other works; Crime Fiction Lover interviewed Quentin Bates about writing and living in Iceland; and the Mystery People spoke with George Wier about his pulp-influenced stories and grilled Joseph Kanon about his spy novels.

 

Media Murder for Monday

Here's this week's Media Murder for Monday roll call of crime drama news:

MOVIES

Broad Green Pictures acquired U.S. film rights to Brad Furman’s adaption of The Infiltrator, the true story of one of history’s largest and most elaborate stings in the 1980’s with undercover US Customs agent Robert Mazur (played by Bryan Cranston).

The adaptation of Paula Hawkins' novel The Girl on the Train has signed its director, Tate Taylor (The Help).

Paramount and Skydance have hired Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz to pen the screenplay for Jack Reacher 2, based on Lee Child's novel Never Go Back. Christopher McQuarrie will not be returning to direct the sequel, however, with Zwick stepping in for that role.

Mission Impossible 5 has yet to hit the theaters, but apparently installment #6 is already in the planning stages at Paramount. Tom Cruise, David Ellison, Dana Goldberg and J.J. Abrams are returning to produce, with Don Granger and Matt Grimm set to serve as exec producers.  

Mr. Holmes, the film based on the elderly version of Sherlock created in Mitch Cullen's novel, has run into a legal roadblock after the Conan Doyle estate sued the author and the producers for copyright and trademark infringement. However, given recent court battles the estate has lost, the legal challenges may not be enough to halt the movie's release.

Aaron Paul is in negotiations to join the cast of the dramedy Central Intelligence, which stars Kevin Hart as a boring accountant who reconnects with an old school chum (Dwayne Johnson) who has morphed from nerd to rogue spy. Paul will play Johnson's CIA partner.

Michael Nyqvist has joined the cast of I.T., the indie revenge thriller from Pierce Brosnan, who produces and stars, along with Stefanie Scott, James Frechville and Anna Friel. Brosnan plays a man who had it all until his I.T. consultant starts threatening his family, business, and his life.

T.R. Knight has joined the cast of the Hulu series 11/22/63. The drama is based on Stephen King’s novel of the same title and stars James Franco as an English teacher that time travels back to 1958 and tries to prevent the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

David Oyelowo (Selma) is set to co-star with Luke Evans (Furious 7, The Hobbit) in the upcoming big screen thriller Three Seconds, an adaptation of the bestselling Swedish novel by authors Anders Roslund and Borge Hellstrom. The plot centers on an undercover prison assignment that goes terribly wrong, with Evans playing the protagonist, an ex-con who poses as a prison inmate as part of an FBI operation, and Oyelowo playing an anti-social N.Y.P.D. detective who catches on to the FBI mission after a fellow officer is murdered.

Tony winner John Gallagher, Jr. will play a lead role in The Belko Experiment, the new thriller from The Guardians of the Galaxy writer and director James Gunn, about a group of American expats in South America who are caught up in a dangerous experiment on morality.

Lake Bell and Benjamin Bratt have joined the cast of the thriller Shot Caller, about a gangster who gets released from prison and is forced by the leaders of his gang to orchestrate a major crime with a brutal rival gang in Southern California.

TELEVISION

Tomorrow evening, the Hallmark Channel will broadcast Murder, She Baked: A Chocolate Chip Cookie Mystery adapted from the first in the popular series of mysteries by Joanne Fluke featuring baker Hannah Swensen.

Bruce Greenwood has been added to the A-list cast of the FX series American Crime Story: The People V OJ Simpson, playing Gil Garcetti, the Los Angeles district county prosecutor on the Simpson trial.

Viacom's premium network Epix is getting into scripted programming, including the espionage drama Berlin Station, written and executive produced by spy novelist Olen Steinhauer, with fellow exec producer and director Michael Roskam (The Drop) also on board. The plot centers on a new CIA case officer in Berlin, Daniel Meyer, who is on a secret mission to find who leaked information to a now-famous whistleblower, a quest that leads back to Washington.

An extended trailer and behind-the-scenes interviews with the cast was released ahead of the new season of Hannibal.

PODCASTS/RADIO/VIDEO

Mystery Writer John Sandford appeared on public radio station WABE to talk about his long-running book series featuring Minnesota cop Lucas Davenport.

On the latest Crime and Science Radio: "Investigating the Criminal Mind with Author Alan Jacobson."

To mark Arthur Conan Doyle's 156th birthday last week, Elizabeth Foxwell pointed out some 1930 sound files of Doyle speaking, via Centre for History and Analysis of Recorded Music, King's College London.

THEATER

Illionois' Marriott Theatre (outside Chicago) is currently staging the six-time Tony Award-winning musical City of Angels through August. The production is described as a "deliciously funny celebration of the decade's film noir genre and dark detecti
ve fiction, with a liberal touch of femme fatale."

A Database on European Crime Fiction, You Say?

Crime fiction is growing in popularity around the world, and the recent burst of Scandinavian crime fiction on the bestseller lists is yet another marker of that growth. So it only makes sense that the academic world is taking notice, spearheaded in Europe by the International Crime Fiction Group based at Queen’s University of Belfast. The group brings together scholars from disciplines such as literature, film studies and cultural history in a series of initiatives to study various aspect of the genre.

Recently, they sponsored a symposium at the British Library titled "Towards a Digital Atlas of European Crime Fiction?", investigating how to harvest the catalogs of the 48 European national libraries to analyze the transnational spread of crime fiction (including books, covers, authors, films, etc.)  with the help of maps and graphs. Hopefully, this will not only help the libraries involved create virtual as well as physical exhibitions based on their collections, including book covers and illustrations, it will benefit crime fiction authors, too, thanks to online resources coming soon.

There's already a strong scholarly crime fiction presence in Europe, including such institutions as the Library of Crime Literature (Bilipo) a Parisian public library exclusively concerned with crime-themed publications (which journalist Brad Spurgeon discusses in this blog post). And, if you happen to be in London early this summer, check out the London exhibition "Forensics: The anatomy of crime" at the Wellcome Collection through June 21.

Mystery Melange

At CrimeFest this past weekend, the CWA announced the shortlists for the International Dagger Award, the Short Story Dagger, the Non Fiction Dagger, the Endeavour Historical Dagger and the Debut Dagger. For the complete lists of all honorees, check out the official CWA website.

The CrimeFest conference also hosts several awards of its own, with winners announced this past Saturday. The Audible Sounds of Crime Award went to Robert Galbraith for The Silkworm, read by Robert Glenister; the Goldsboro Last Laugh Award was handed out to L. C. Tyler for Crooked Herring; the eDUNNIT AWARD (for best crime fiction ebook first published in the British Isles) went to Charles Cumming for A Colder War; and the H.R.F. Keating Award for the best biography or critical book was awarded to Clare Clarke for Late Victorian Crime Fiction in the Shadows of Sherlock. (Hat tip to Crimespree Magazine.)

One of the more recent honors in the crime fiction community, the Petrona Award, was established in 2013 in memory of the late reviewer and crime fiction advocate Maxine Clarke to honor the best in Scandinavian crime novels. This year's winner is The Silence of the Sea by Yrsa Sigurðardóttir (tr. Victoria Crib).

The International Association of Media Tie-In Writers revealed their finalists for the 2015 Scribe Awards. In the Best Original Novel – General, category, the finalists included Murder She Wrote:  Death of a Blue Blood by Don Bain; Mike Hammer: King of the Weeds by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins; Homeland:  Saul’s Game by Andrew Kaplan; and The Killing:  Uncommon Denominator by Karen Dionne. (Hat tip to Bill Crider.)

Happy 10th Anniversary to the online publication Mysterical-E, founded by editor Joe DeMarco! (Via its media columnist, Gerald So.)

The Deadly Ink Conference taking place in New Brunswick, New Jersey in August, released more details about this year's program, which includes Guest of Honor, Brad Parks, Toastmaster E. F. Watkins (winner of last year's David award), and fan Guest of Honor, Ilene Schneider. Other authors scheduled to attend include Jane Cleland, Roberta Rogow, Patricia Morin, Jane Kelly, Alice Orr, S.W. Hubbard, Annamaria Alfieri, Tim Hall, Mary Perry, R.G. Belsky, S.A. Solomon, with additional panelists Les Blatt (Classic Mysteries blog), Leslie Blatt, Tricia Vanderhoof, Rebecca Mears, In addition, Allison Cohen of The Gersh Agency and other agents will be on hand.

Oldcastle Books is launching a new short story competition for its crime fiction imprint No Exit Press. The competition launches on May 25 and is open to any unpublished writer with a passion for crime fiction of any genre. There is a £5 entry fee and stories must be no longer than 3,000 words and written in English.

Simon & Schuster is partnering with mobile content distribution platform Foli to help deliver specific books or chapters from books to readers on mobile devices in specific locations. The initial push will be to deliver sample chapters to users in hotels, airports, or museums. The first such offering will be David McCullough’s new biography The Wright Brothers, which will be available at National Air and Space Museum and at more than 50 major airports nationwide.

Salon took a look at the crime fiction of Ross Macdonald (the pen name of Kenneth Millar, whose wife was mystery writer Margaret Millar), and the new release from The Library of America, Four Novels of the 1950s, edited by Macdonald biographer Tom Nolan.  

CNN had a slide show of Los Angeles crime scenes from 1953 in conjunction with a new book by James Ellroy, LAPD 53, which Ellroy created in partnership with the Las Angeles Police Museum.

Document forensics of the oldest kind: new X-ray technology scans can read letters on documents blackened by Vesuvius from a library at Herculaneum.

The Washington Post looked at "Why the ancient art of poisoning appears to be making a killer comeback," especially in places like Russia. But is there really such a thing as untraceable poison in light of modern technological advances?

You can call him "Dr. MacBride" next month when crime author Stuart MacBride is one of ten leading figures from the worlds of literature, cinema, science and the media who will be honored by the University of Dundee next month with the degree of Doctor of Laws (LLD).

Mental Floss posted a fun list of 17 behind-the-scenes secrets of bookstores, noting that "For book lovers, there's no more magical place than the local bookstore. And while most of us have probably spent a significant amount of time wandering the aisles, few of us know what goes on behind the scenes."

Via Atlas Obscura: "The strange afterlife of Edgar Allan Poe's hair."

From the "Seems a Fitting End" department, Italian police are opening a headquarters in a former mafia hideout that once housed Cosa Nostra boss Salvatore “Totò” Riina.

The new crime poem over at the 5-2 is "Ghoul in the Crowd" by Matthew Wilson.

Barbara Fister spoke with Diane Kovacs, founder of the online Dorothy-L crime fiction fan group, which continues to host conversations among over 2,500 members. Kovacs talked about the history of Dorothy-L as well as where she might like to see it head in the future.

The Q&A roundup includes author John Carenen stopping by Omnimystery News to talk about his debut novel; ON also welcomed author Eric Beetner to promote his new
crime novel Rumrunners; the Irish Examiner hosted Dennis Lehane, talking about his adaptation of Love/Hate for an American audience; Craig Johnson got roped in by the Mystery People; Huffpo interviewed Alex Grecian, the author of the Scotland Yard Murder Squad novels; and the Mrs. Peabody Investigates blog had a wrap-up of the Q&A between Maj Sjowall and Lee Child at the recent Crimefest.