Mystery Melange

The North American Branch of the International Association of Crime Writers announced nominees for the annual Hammett Prize for a work of literary excellence in the field of crime writing by a US or Canadian author. The nominees include    

• The Stranger, by Harlan Coben
• Sorrow Lake: A March and Walker Crime Novel, by Michael J. McCann  
• The Whites: A Novel, by Richard Price, writing as Harry Brandt
• The Do-Right, by Lisa Sandlin  
• The Organ Broker: A Novel, by Stu Strumwasser

The organization will name the winner during the NoirCon literary conference in Philadelphia, October 26-30 with the winner receiving a bronze trophy designed by sculptor Peter Boiger.

Malice Domestic also announced today the nominees for the conference's annual Agatha Awards. The finalists for Best Contemporary Novel are:

• Annette Dashofy, Burned Bridges 
• Margaret Maron, Long Upon the Land
• Catriona McPherson, The Child Garden
• Louise Penny, Nature of the Beast
• Hank Phillipi Ryan, What You See 

For the complete listing of the Agathas, with winners announced at the awards banquet on May 1, check out this list.

The Deutscher Krimi Preis (the German Prize for Crime Fiction), handed out annually by the Bonner Krimi Archiv in Germany, also announced their top three finalists:  Day Without a Name: A Case for Jakob Franck (Der namenlose Tag) by Friedrich Ani; Sea Damage (Havarie) by Merle Kröger; and Fade to Black (Schwarzblende) by Zoë Beck.

This Friday, February 05, at 6:00 p.m., the Folger Theatre in Washington, D.C., will present crime authors James DeVita and Quintin Peterson in conversation about their Shakespeare-inspired novels A Winsome Murder and Guarding Shakespeare.

At the Poisoned Pen Bookstore in Scottsdale, Arizona, this past weekend, authors Ian Rankin, Diana Gabaldon, Michael Koryta and store owner Barbara Peters celebrated the start of Koryta's tenure as the Diana Gabaldon/Poisoned Pen Writer-in-Residence. Koryta will serve as host at a variety of author events at the bookstore and at Mesquite Library. He'll also lead two workshops: one for students at Phoenix Country Day School and another for community members at the Poisoned Pen, both of which will explore narrative writing and the use of suspense in fiction and nonfiction.

The next issue of Mystery Readers Journal will focus on crime fiction set in New York, New York, and editor Janet Rudolph is looking for submissions of reviews (50-250 words), articles (250-1,000), and Author! Author! essays (500-1,500). But don't wait too long: the deadline is February 20.

Janet Rudoloph's Mystery Readers Fanfare blog also posted a timely list of crime fiction themed on and around the Super Bowl and American football in general.

The International Crime Fiction Group posted a call for chapter submissions (6-8,000 words each) to the upcoming anthology, From the Domestic to the Dominant: The New Face of Crime Fiction. Celebrating domestic noir as typified by the works of Gillian Flynn, Paula Hawkins, and Megan Abbott, potential submissions should address various aspects of the genre, with writers submitting abstracts of 400 – 500 words including up to five keywords by March 18, 2016    

The New Yorker's Paul Grimstad wrote an article on "What Makes Great Detective Fiction, According to T. S. Eliot."

The February issue of Mystery Weekly features new short crime fiction by Tim Kane, Benjamin Cooper, Maddi Davidson, Tom Barlow, and Robb White, plus a "You Solve It!" mystery.

Writing for The Guardian, author Sophie Hannah asked (with tongue firmly in cheek) if the popularity of dark crime fiction written by women really the sign of a game-changing new genre? "Only if you have forgotten PD James, Ruth Rendell, Daphne du Maurier ..."

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "Fifty-seven Lousy Bucks" by Bill Baber, and the new story up at Beat to a Pulp is "Town Pride" by Dave Zeltserman.

In the Q&A roundup, Writers Who Kill welcomed Terrie Farley Moran, who won an Agatha for Best First Novel and recently collaborated with bestselling author Laura Childs; The Mystery People snagged screenwriter and author Scott Frank to talk about his satirical crime fiction debut, Shaker; Dana King stopped by Omnimystery News to discuss the most recent mystery in his Nick Forte series, The Man in the Window; Dr. Richard Michael Cartmel took the 9mm Interview at Crime Watch about his trilogy of crime novels set in the Burgundy wine region in France; and Shots Magazine sat down with actor David McCallum (Man from U.N.C.L.E. and NCIS), about his debut crime novel, Once a Crooked Man.