Mystery Melange

This week's edition of IRTM's Mystery Melange has awards, conferences, and book goodies galore:

Congratulations to all the Edgar Award winners, announced this past weekend at the annual banquet in New York City. The Best Novel nod went to Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King; the Best First Novel by an American Author was given to Dry Bones in the Valley by Tom Bouman; and the winner of the Best Paperback Original prize was The Secret History of Las Vegas by Chris Abani. For all the winners in the various categories, head on over to the Mystery Writers of America official awards website.

Former Edgar Award winner (and multiple nominee) Ruth Rendell died this past week at the age of 85 after complications from a stroke she suffered in January. Rendell was the creator of Inspector Wexford series and published 60+ novels, becoming known as the queen of psychological suspense. The Guardian has an overview of her life and work. The Telegraph's Jake Kerridge also selected his list of "The best of Ruth Rendell: 10 to read, watch and listen to." Mike Lawson reflected on Rendell and the other "giant" of detective fiction we lost recently, P.D. James, calling them “the George Eliot and Jane Austen of the homicidal novel: different minds and style but equal talent."

Finalists for the Anthony Awards were announced, to be handed out at the annual Bouchercon mystery conference in October in Raleigh, NC. Nominees in the Best Novel category include Lamentation by Joe Clifford; The Secret Place by Tana French; After I’m Gone by Laura Lippman; The Long Way Home by Louise Penny; and Truth Be Told by Hank Phillippi Ryan.

The longlist for the 2015 Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award has a lot of familiar names and one or two newer faces. Longlisted titles will be featured in a four-week campaign across all 600 WHSmith stores and 80 library services in the UK, then pared down to a shortlist of six titles announced in June. (Hat tip to Ayo Onatade of the Shots Magazine blog.)

Congrats also to Lincoln University English Professor Dr. J.K. Van Dover, who won the 2015 George N. Dove Award for outstanding contributions to the serious study of mystery, detective and crime fiction from the Mystery and Detective Fiction Caucus of the Popular Culture Association. Van Dover has written 10 books on such luminaries as Erle Stanley Gardner, Ian Fleming, Rex Stout, Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett.

This year's Sydney Writers’ Festival from May 18-24 includes international crime fiction authors Michael Connelly, James Patterson and Anthony Horowitz, as well as Australian crime authors Michael Robotham, Jaye Ford, Sarah Hopkins, Kate McClymont

Here's some happy bookstore news: Trevor Thomas and his wife, Natalie Sacco have purchased Mystery Lovers Bookshop in Oakmont, Pennsylvania, after the previous owners announced they would have to close the shop unless they found a buyer. Thomas noted that "It's that sense of community – the idea that an individual can find his or her people among aisles of mysteries and biographies…You don't really understand until it's gone." (Hat tip to Shelf Awareness.)

Booklist posted their "Top 10 Crime Fiction" lists for adult novels, audiobooks, and crime fiction for youth for 2015. Booklist uses the period between May 1, 2014, and April 15, 2015 as their "year" for the purposes of creating their lists.

The 50th International Congress on Medieval Studies will take place at Western Michigan University May 14-17. How does relate to crime fiction, you may ask? One of the papers to be presented will include "Detectives in the Middle Ages? The (Exceptionally) Popular Genre of Medievalist Crime Fiction," by Anne McKendry of the University of Melbourne. If you're also a fan of Game of Thrones (books and TV) and Arthurian romance, the congress has you covered there, too.

The inaugural Jeremiah Healy Mystery Writing Award – "The Jerry" – will be presented at the 2nd Annual Mystery Writers Key West Fest, August 14-16 in Key West, Florida. Sponsored by Absolutely Amazing eBooks, the award "salutes the author's legacy as a beloved and influential mentor credited with helping and advising many aspiring writers." Candidates are invited to submit the first three pages of a finished, unpublished manuscript no later than June 30, 2015.

Dead Good Books has created six new crime writing awards, asking readers to nominate their favorite authors and books for the awards online through the Dead Good website. The winners will be presented in Harrogate this July at the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival.

The Nancy Drew series of mystery novels for young readers celebrates its 85 anniversary this year. FirstPost took a look at this iconic literary creation and facts you may not know about the popular teen detective.

Tess Gerritsen is helping to raise money for Alzheimers (the disease that killed her father) by auctioning off the chance to name a character in an upcoming Rizzoli & Isles novel, with money raised going to the Scripps Research Institute. Gerritsen will have more information on her website when the auction goes live in June.

Writing for The Globe and Mail, author Linwood Barclay reflected on mystery writer Ross Macdonald's work in honor of the 100th anniversary of his birth.

Author Craig McDonald noted that Betimes Books will bring the anthology Borderland Noir back this fall in eBook and trade paperback editions. Several of the original contributors may b
e back on board for this edition, but McDonald, who's serving as editor, is also looking for a couple of new stories set along the border between the U.S. and Mexico. If you think you have a story that's the perfect fit, you can send him an email pitch. More details are available via his blog.

The latest issue of Thuglit is out for the Kindle, with new short crime fiction from  Lane Kareska, Justin Porter, Matt Andrew, Dave Reddall, Galal Chater, Eddie McNamara, Steve Bailey, and Terrence McCauley.

The new issue of Jack Hardway's Crime Magazine (and unfortunately, its final issue) includes new short fiction by Jack Bates, Anita Page, Jed Power, Patti Abbott, and Stephen D. Rodgers, as well as a classic pulp novel by David Goodis. You can also listen to the audio program "The Whistler – What Makes a Murderer?," as well as watch Ida Lupino's film The Hitch-Hiker, from the National Film Registry.

Mike Ripley's latest Getting Away with Murder column for Shots Ezine takes a look at thrillers written in the 1930s, to see how they dealt with the rise of fascism and portrayed Nazi Germany in the pre-war years; there's also musings on a new spy novel re-release, new Scandinavian fiction and much more.

Robert Goldsborough, who has continued Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe series, wrote a profile of the iconic detective and his creator at The Life Sentence and talks about how Goldsborough got introduced to the series when he was only 13. Goldsborough's newest Nero Wolfe novel, Archie in the Crosshairs, is out now in paperback and in eBook.

Janet Hutchings, editor of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, blogged about crime fiction in Japan, which is the only place in the world in which the novels of Ellery Queen have remained consistently in print. But the island country is also beginning to add their own stories to the genre, with EQMM commissioning translations of the Japanese Mystery Writers Association’s Edogawa Rampo Award winners and runners-up for the past several years. It's a growing market, and her post is worth a read.

Professor Wesley Vernon (one of the world’s leading forensic podiatrists) wondered "Has forensic science made it impossible to commit the perfect crime?" in an article for the Yorkshire Post. 

In honor of Booklist Reader's Mystery Month, they have a new edition of their “You’re Doing It Wrong” feature, with Edgar Award winners Megan Abbott and Laura Lippman "agreeing to disagree in a wide-ranging conversation about truth, lies, true crime, and crime fiction."

The new crime poem at the 5-2 is "Star Wars: Dark Forces Re-awaken (for a 7th Time)" by Elizabeth Lash, and this month's short story at Beat to a Pulp is "The Hand That Feeds" by CT McNeely.

In the Q&A roundup this week, Bruce Rehburg spoke with the Mystery People about growing up on an Army base in Germany and how he used the experience for his debut novel, November’s Shadow; and mystery author Anne Emery stopped by Omnimystery News to chat about the eighth mystery in her Arthur Ellis Award-winning Collins-Burke series.